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The World Outside
Entertaining, informative, and all-round
beguiling books for the armchair naturalist.
- 591.59 / FRI
Animal talk: breaking the codes of animal
language.
Tim Friend. 2004.
Exploring animal communication in all its
manifestations - singing, dancing, scents, chirps,
hoots, yowls, gestures, body stance, eye contact–
Friend demonstrates that human and animal
communication are remarkably similar both in
motivation and execution.
- 508 / ANG
The beauty of the beastly: new views on the
nature of life.
Natalie Angier. 1995.
Declaring that “every single story that nature
tells is gorgeous,” Angier seeks our respect for
the less popular creatures (those that slither, for
example), while at the same time debunking a
few of the popular myths surrounding our more
cuddly favorites.
- 551.576 / PRE
The cloudspotter’s guide: the science,
history, and culture of clouds.
Gavin Pretor-Pinney. 2006.
The author is the founder of The Cloud
Appreciation Society and is, quite frankly,
obsessed with clouds. A delightful and
knowledgeable writer, he is out to win the hearts
and minds of those “sun fascists” who would dare
complain about a cloudy day.
- 591.38 / ART
Creatures of accident:
the rise of the animal kingdom.
Wallace Arthur. 2006.
Arthur, an Irish zoologist, offers a reader-friendly
introduction to the new science of evolutionary
developmental biology, (popularly known as evodevo)
combined with a guided tour of the history
of biology from the early days through the latest
discoveries of DNA.
- 631.49 / LOG
Dirt: the ecstatic skin of the Earth.
William Bryant Logan. 2007.
Newly re-published, this cult classic presents dirt
in all its geological, agricultural, and spiritual
manifestations. From dung beetles to dowsing
to cathedrals, Logan elegantly depicts the
interconnectedness of life, the soil, and human
civilization.
- 592.64 / STE
The earth moved: on the remarkable
achievements of earthworms.
Amy Stewart. 2004.
Everyone knows worms are “good for the
garden,” but no one pays much attention beyond
that. Stewart, however, decided to get to know
worms and discovered a small but passionate
group of researchers with interesting tales to
share. By the end of the book, you may be
inspired to join the author in keeping a
companionable pot of worms on your desk.
- 582.13 / BUR
Flowers: how they changed the world.
William C. Burger. 2006.
Immobile, brainless, and residing at the bottom
of the food chain, the 226,000 identified
flowering plant species in the world have
nevertheless flourished and offer an astonishing
array of diversity and complexity.
- 551.6 / CER
Freaks of the storm: from flying cows to
stealing thunder, the world’s strangest true
weather stories.
Randy Cerveny. 2006.
We know that weather is a powerful and sometimes
dangerous force; sometimes it is also just plain
weird. Climatologist Cerveny presents an
entertaining collection of unusual but documented
weather occurrences proving, once again, that you
can always talk about the weather.
- 600 / FOR
The gecko’s foot: bio-inspiration:
engineering new materials from nature.
Peter Forbes. 2006.
Velcro and self-cleaning windows are just the
beginning! Though synthetic fiber with the
strength of spider’s silk remains an elusive dream,
nanotechnology and the electron scanning
microscope are revealing the secrets behind some
of nature’s most marvelous creations.
- 591.756 / COU
The hopes of snakes: and other tales from
the urban landscape.
Lisa Couturier. 2005.
Shrinking natural habitats and improved
pollution controls are leading more and more wild
animals to a life in the big city. Couturier’s
writing is in the naturalist’s tradition but her
“wilderness” is found in New York City and
Washington D.C.
- 632.7 / WAL
Insights from insects:
what bad bugs can teach us.
Gilbert Waldbauer. 2005.
Local author Professor Emeritus Waldbauer offers
twenty vignettes on twenty insects we all know
and hate. Drawing from history, ecology, and
entomology, he offers an instructive and
entertaining look at a world we might prefer to
ignore but cannot.
- 591.51 / BAL
Pleasurable kingdom: animals and the
nature of feeling good.
Jonathan Balcombe. 2006.
Balcombe argues that the common perception of
the animal world as an ongoing eat-or-be-eaten
struggle is wrong: animals often enjoy themselves
just like humans, and this enjoyment is an
important survival mechanism in its own right.
- 551.5113 / HOL
The secret life of dust: from the cosmos to
the kitchen counter, the big consequences of
little things.
Hannah Holmes. 2001.
From exploding stars to Antarctic glaciers to the
secret recesses of your favorite armchair, dust is
a major player in the universe.
- 581.35 / HAR
Seed to seed: the secret life of plants.
Nicholas Harberd. 2006.
The story of the life of one weed over the course
of a single year may not sound particularly
exciting, but this painless introduction to plant
genetics is full of “wow!” moments as 30,000
genes rally to the challenges of obstructed roots,
marauding slugs, and the ever-freakish weather.
- 598.1568 / CHU
Songbird journeys: four seasons in the lives
of migratory birds.
Miyoko Chu. 2006.
Where do they go and what do they do when
they get there? Songbirds are night fliers and
until recently little was known about their
extraordinary autumn and spring migrations or
their life in far-flung winter habitats.
- 595.799 / ELL
Sweetness & light: the mysterious history of
the honeybee.
Hattie Ellis. 2004.
Combining social history and popular science,
philosophy and folklore, Ellis gives us the full
picture of the inter-twining lives of humans
and bees on this planet.
- 582.16 / TUD
The tree: a natural history of what trees
are, how they live, and why they matter.
Colin Tudge.
Though his opening definition of a tree as a “big
plant with a stick up the middle” may not suggest
it, Tudge’s knowledge of trees is encyclopedic and
he offers here an elegant and entertaining
synthesis from a life-time of research and
observation. His hope is to make us all tree
connoisseurs, but he may inspire you to a bit of
tree-hugging as well.
- 591.757 / BAS
Under ground: how creatures of mud and
dirt shape our world.
Yvonne Baskin. 2005.
Nematodes, slime molds, and fungi are just a few
of the fascinating denizens of the vast ecosystems
beneath our feet. Baskin illuminates this world
for us while at the same time broadening our
appreciation of biodiversity and the extreme
complexity of our natural world.
- 551.518 / DEB
Wind: how the flow of air has shaped life,
myth, and the land.
Jan Deblieu. 1998.
From the refreshing gentle breeze to the raging
gale, the wind touches every aspect of life on
Earth and has figured prominently in mythology
and folklore as well.
- 595.44 / MAS
The world of the spider.
Adrienne Mason. 1999.
Did you know that you are never more than 3
feet from a spider? That the average “clean”
house is home to 250 spiders? That spiders have
adapted to every habitat, except for the Ocean
and Antarctica, including Mt. Everest and your
computer? There are
close to 38,000 known
species of spiders; with
this book you can get to
know at least a few.
