Avian Illuminations

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Avian Illuminations

Author : Boria Sax
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 417 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2021-10-13
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781789144314

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Avian Illuminations by Boria Sax Pdf

An exquisitely illustrated journey through the complex and crucial relationship between humans and birds. Avian Illuminations examines the many roles birds have played in human society, from food, messengers, deities, and pets, to omens, muses, timekeepers, custodians, hunting companions, decorative motifs, and, most importantly, embodiments of our aspirations. Boria Sax narrates the history of our relationships with a host of bird species, including crows, owls, parrots, falcons, eagles, nightingales, hummingbirds, and many more. Along the way, Sax describes how birds’ nesting has symbolized human romance, how their flight has inspired inventors throughout history, and he concludes by showing that the interconnections between birds and humans are so manifold that a world without birds would effectively mean an end to human culture itself. Beautifully illustrated, Avian Illuminations is a superb overview of humanity’s long and rich association with our avian companions.

Winged Worlds

Author : Olga Petri,Michael Guida
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 263 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2023-06-26
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781000885859

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Winged Worlds by Olga Petri,Michael Guida Pdf

This edited collection explores our often-surprising modes of co-inhabiting the cultural and aerial worlds of birds. It focuses on our encounters with non-captive birds and the cultural geographies of feathered flight. This book offers a timely contribution to the more-than-human geographies of flight, space and territory. The chapters support an ethics of attention as a new basis for the conservation and cultivation of aerial habitats. Contributions adopt an interdisciplinary approach to the patterns of intrusion and escape that shape our encounters with birds and unsettle our traditionally terrestrial concepts of space. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of our shared lives with birds, ranging from scientific observation to the social media-enabled spectacle of co-habitation and spatial competition. Written in a thought-provoking style, this book seeks to address a dearth of critical perspectives on the cultural geographies of flight and its implications for the ways in which we understand common spaces around and above us in the context of any effort at conservation.

Ten Birds That Changed the World

Author : Stephen Moss
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2023-02-28
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781783352432

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Ten Birds That Changed the World by Stephen Moss Pdf

For the whole of human history, we have lived alongside birds. We have hunted and domesticated them for food; venerated them in our mythologies, religion and rituals; exploited them for their natural resources; and been inspired by them for our music, art and poetry. In Ten Birds that Changed the World, naturalist and author Stephen Moss tells the gripping story of this long and eventful relationship through ten key species from all seven of the world's continents. From Odin's faithful raven companions to Darwin's finches, and from the wild turkey of the Americas to the emperor penguin as potent symbol of the climate crisis, this is a fascinating, eye-opening and endlessly engaging work of natural history.

Illuminations

Author : Alan Moore
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 465 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2022-10-11
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781635578812

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Illuminations by Alan Moore Pdf

From New York Times bestselling author Alan Moore-one of the most influential writers in the history of comics-"a wonderful collection, brilliant and often moving" (Neil Gaiman) which takes us to the fantastical underside of reality. In his first-ever short story collection, which spans forty years of work, Alan Moore presents a series of wildly different and equally unforgettable characters who discover--and in some cases even make and unmake--the various uncharted parts of existence. In "A Hypothetical Lizard," two concubines in a brothel of fantastical specialists fall in love with tragic ramifications. In "Not Even Legend," a paranormal study group is infiltrated by one of the otherworldly beings they seek to investigate. In "Illuminations," a nostalgic older man decides to visit a seaside resort from his youth and finds the past all too close at hand. And in the monumental novella "What We Can Know About Thunderman," which charts the surreal and Kafkaesque history of the comics industry's major players over the last seventy-five years, Moore reveals the dark, beating heart of the superhero business. From ghosts and otherworldly creatures to theoretical Boltzmann brains fashioning the universe at the big bang, Illuminations is exactly that--a series of bright, startling tales from a contemporary legend that reveal the full power of imagination and magic.

Posthumanist Perspectives on Literary and Cultural Animals

Author : Krishanu Maiti
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2021-09-11
Category : Education
ISBN : 9783030761592

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Posthumanist Perspectives on Literary and Cultural Animals by Krishanu Maiti Pdf

This book offers Posthumanist readings of animal-centric literary and cultural texts. The contributors put the precepts and premises of humanism into question by seriously considering the animal presence in texts. The essays collected here focus primarily on literary and cultural texts from varied theoretically informed interdisciplinary perspectives advanced by critical approaches such as Critical Animal Studies and Posthumanism. Contributors select texts that cut across geographical and period boundaries and demonstrate how practices of close reading give rise to new ways of thinking about animals. By implicating the “animal turn” in the field of literary and cultural studies, this book urges us to problematize the separation of the human from other animals and rethink the hierarchical order of beings through close readings of select texts. It offers fresh perspectives on Posthumanist theory, inviting readers to revisit those criteria that created species’ difference from the early ages of human civilization. This book constitutes a rich and thorough scholarly resource on the politics of representation of animals in literature and culture. The essays in this book are empirically and theoretically informed and explore a range of dynamic, captivating, and highly relevant topics. Comprising over 15 chapters by a team of international contributors, this book is divided into four parts: Contestation over Species Hierarchy and CategorizationAnimal (Re)constructionsInterspecies RelationalitiesIntersectionality- Animal and Gender This book will be essential reading for students and researchers of Critical Animal Studies and Environmental Studies.

Religion and Nature Conservation

Author : Radhika Borde,Alison A Ormsby,Stephen M Awoyemi,Andrew G Gosler
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 349 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2022-10-31
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781000771893

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Religion and Nature Conservation by Radhika Borde,Alison A Ormsby,Stephen M Awoyemi,Andrew G Gosler Pdf

This book presents a broad array of global case studies exploring the interaction between religion and the conservation of nature, from the viewpoints of the religious practitioners themselves. With conservation and religion often being championed as allies in the quest for a sustainable world where humans and nature flourish, this book provides a much-needed compendium of detailed examples where religion and conservation science have been brought together. Case studies cover a variety of religions, faiths and practices, including traditional, Indigenous, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto and Zoroastrianism. Importantly, this volume gives voice to the religious practitioners and adherents themselves. Beyond an exercise in anthropology, ethnobiology and comparative religion, the book is an applied work, seeking the answer to how in a world of nearly eight billion people, we might help our own species to prevent the extinction of life. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of nature conservation, environment and religion, cultural geography and ethnobiology, as well as practitioners and professionals working in conservation.

Between Light and Storm

Author : Esther Woolfson
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2022-12-06
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781639362776

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Between Light and Storm by Esther Woolfson Pdf

A landmark examination of the fraught relationship between humans and animals, taking the reader from Genesis to climate change. Beginning with the very origins of life on Earth, Woolfson considers prehistoric human-animal interaction and traces the millennia-long evolution of conceptions of the soul and conscience in relation to the animal kingdom, and the consequences of our belief in human superiority. She explores our representation of animals in art, our consumption of them for food, our experiments on them for science, and our willingness to slaughter them for sport and fashion, as well as examining concepts of love and ownership. Drawing on philosophy and theology, art and history, as well as her own experience of living with animals and coming to know, love, and respect them as individuals, Woolfson examines some of the most complex ethical issues surrounding our treatment of animals and argues passionately and persuasively for a more humble, more humane, relationship with the creatures who share our world.

Animal Labor

Author : Jocelyne Porcher,Jean Estebanez
Publisher : transcript Verlag
Page : 183 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2019-08-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783839443644

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Animal Labor by Jocelyne Porcher,Jean Estebanez Pdf

Do animals work? Is it possible to work with animals without exploiting them? Might animals even be empowered through work? This provocative collection offers original answers to these questions and allows readers to think about human relationships with domestic animals beyond the well-trodden tropes of domination or animal welfare. To study animal work means to look at animals in new ways and to discover in them unsuspected skills and knowledge that open up new ethical and political horizons.

The Art and Archaeology of Human Engagements with Birds of Prey

Author : Robert J. Wallis
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2023-10-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781350268012

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The Art and Archaeology of Human Engagements with Birds of Prey by Robert J. Wallis Pdf

Of all avian groups, birds of prey in particular have long been a prominent subject of fascination in many human societies. This book demonstrates that the art and materiality of human engagements with raptors has been significant through deep time and across the world, from earliest prehistory to Indigenous thinking in the present day. Drawing on a wide range of global case studies and a plurality of complementary perspectives, it explores the varied and fluid dynamics between humans and birds of prey as evidenced in this diverse art-historical and archaeological record. From their depictions as powerful beings in visual art and their important roles in Indigenous mythologies, to the significance of their body parts as active agents in religious rituals, the intentional deposition of their faunal remains and the display of their preserved bodies in museums, there is no doubt that birds of prey have been figures of great import for the shaping of human society and culture. However, several of the chapters in this volume are particularly concerned with looking beyond the culture–nature dichotomy and human-centred accounts to explore perspectival and other post-humanist thinking on human–raptor ontologies and epistemologies. The contributors recognize that human–raptor relationships are not driven exclusively by human intentionality, and that when these species meet they relate-to and become-with one another. This 'raptor-with-human'-focused approach allows for a productive re-framing of questions about human–raptor interstices, enables fresh thinking about established evidence and offers signposts for present and future intra-actions with birds of prey.

Albatross

Author : Graham Barwell
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2013-10-15
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781780232140

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Albatross by Graham Barwell Pdf

“At length did cross an Albatross, / Through the fog it came; / As if it had been a Christian soul, / We hailed it in God’s name.” The introduction of the albatross in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” remains one of the most well-known references to this majestic seabird in Western culture. In Albatross, Graham Barwell goes beyond Coleridge to examine the role the bird plays in the lives of a wide variety of peoples and societies, from the early views of north Atlantic mariners to modern encounters by writers, artists, and filmmakers. Exploring how the bird has been celebrated in proverbs, folk stories, art, and ceremonies, Barwell shows how people marvel at the way the albatross soars through the air, covering awe-inspiring distances with little effort thanks to its impressive wingspan. He surveys the many approaches people have taken to thinking about the albatross over the past two hundred years—from those who devoted their lives to these birds to those who hunted them for food and sport—and discusses its place in the human imagination. Concluding with a reflection on the bird’s changing significance in the modern world, Barwell considers threats to its continued existence and its prospects for the future. With one hundred illustrations from nature, film, and popular culture, Albatross is an absorbing look at these beautiful birds.

Ten Thousand Birds

Author : Tim Birkhead,Jo Wimpenny,Bob Montgomerie
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 545 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2014-03-01
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781400848836

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Ten Thousand Birds by Tim Birkhead,Jo Wimpenny,Bob Montgomerie Pdf

Ten Thousand Birds provides a thoroughly engaging and authoritative history of modern ornithology, tracing how the study of birds has been shaped by a succession of visionary and often-controversial personalities, and by the unique social and scientific contexts in which these extraordinary individuals worked. This beautifully illustrated book opens in the middle of the nineteenth century when ornithology was a museum-based discipline focused almost exclusively on the anatomy, taxonomy, and classification of dead birds. It describes how in the early 1900s pioneering individuals such as Erwin Stresemann, Ernst Mayr, and Julian Huxley recognized the importance of studying live birds in the field, and how this shift thrust ornithology into the mainstream of the biological sciences. The book tells the stories of eccentrics like Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, a pathological liar who stole specimens from museums and quite likely murdered his wife, and describes the breathtaking insights and discoveries of ambitious and influential figures such as David Lack, Niko Tinbergen, Robert MacArthur, and others who through their studies of birds transformed entire fields of biology. Ten Thousand Birds brings this history vividly to life through the work and achievements of those who advanced the field. Drawing on a wealth of archival material and in-depth interviews, this fascinating book reveals how research on birds has contributed more to our understanding of animal biology than the study of just about any other group of organisms.

Leopard

Author : Desmond Morris
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2014-06-15
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781780233185

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Leopard by Desmond Morris Pdf

The sleek, spotted leopard may be the smallest of the big cats, but its ferocity and solitary style makes lions and tigers seem puny in comparison. Lacking the social mentality of other animals, the leopard is stealthy and selfish, ambushing its prey and carrying it high into a tree where it can dine alone. Humans call leopards the “perfect predator." In Leopard, renowned zoologist Desmond Morris seeks to show all sides of the cat, delving into the fascinating history of these incredible animals. Morris examines the leopard’s athletic elegance, predatory skill, wary shyness, and cunning intelligence while also exploring the animal’s parental devotion, preference for solitude, and capacity for revenge. In addition to tracing the evolution of leopards, he considers how humans have related to the animal throughout history. Leopards, he shows, have long featured in the art, mythology, and folklore of ancient Greece, Persia, Rome, and even England, where they have not lived for several millennia. But humans and leopards do not always coexist peacefully; as Morris explains, leopards have been known to attack humans when their food is scarce or they are injured. He reveals how humans have exploited the cats, attempting to train them for circus roles, and how today some people are now making strides toward the leopard’s conservation. He also describes their rich symbolism, appearances in literature and film, and the use of the leopard print in both haute couture and down-market fashion. Packed with compelling images of this amazing animal in action, Leopard sheds new light on these gorgeous cats.

Eradication

Author : Nancy Leys Stepan
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2013-02-15
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9781861899675

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Eradication by Nancy Leys Stepan Pdf

The dream of a world completely free of disease may seem utopian, but eradication—used in its modern sense to mean the reduction of the number of cases of a disease to zero by deliberate public health interventions—has been pursued repeatedly. Campaigns against yellow fever, malaria, and smallpox have been among the largest, most costly programs ever undertaken in international public health. But only one so far has been successful—that against smallpox. And yet in 2007 Bill and Melinda Gates surprised the world with the announcement that they were committing their foundation to eradicating malaria. Polio eradication is another of their priorities. Are such costly programs really justifiable? The first comprehensive account of the major disease-eradication campaigns from the early twentieth century right up to the present, Eradication places these ambitious goals in their broad historical and contemporary contexts. From the life and times of the American arch-eradicationist Dr. Fred Lowe Soper (1893-1977), who was at the center of many of the campaigns and controversies surrounding eradication in his lifetime, to debates between proponents of primary health care approaches to ill health versus the eradicationists, Nancy Leys Stepan’s narrative suggests that today these differing public health approaches may be complementary rather than in conflict. Enlightening for general readers and specialists alike, Eradication is an illuminating look at some of the most urgent problems of health and disease around the world.

The Avian Pineal Gland

Author : Valér Csernus,Béla Mess
Publisher : Akademiai Kiads
Page : 98 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Medical
ISBN : UOM:39015061421924

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The Avian Pineal Gland by Valér Csernus,Béla Mess Pdf

It was only in the past few decades that we realized life is basically a coordinated interplay between cyclic biochemical processes in widely different forms and period of times. This recognition greatly altered our understanding on how living organisms function. The Avian Pineal Gland discusses one specific aspect of biological cycles: the mechanism of the circadian melatonin secretion from the chicken pineal gland. The plineal gland plays a key role in controlling circadian and seasonal rhythmic processes in virtually all vertebrate species. Also, the avian pineal gland is an excellent model for studying the mechanism of the circadian processes, since this organ is relatively simple in structure and it possesses all the known features of a fully functioning circadian biological clock.

Hyena

Author : Mikita Brottman
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 170 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2013-02-15
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781861899415

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Hyena by Mikita Brottman Pdf

Hyenas are almost universally regarded as nasty, scheming charlatans that skulk in the back alleyways of the animal kingdom. They have been scorned for centuries as little more than scavenging carrion-eaters, vandals, and thieves. Here to restore the Hyena’s reputation is Mikita Brottman, who offers an alternate view of these mistreated and misunderstood creatures and proves that they are complex, intelligent, and highly sociable animals. Investigating representations of the hyena throughout history, Brottman divulges that the hyena, though shrouded in taboo, has been the source of talismanic objects since the ancient Greek and Roman empires. She discovers that many cultures use parts of the hyena—from excrement and blood to genitalia and hair—to make charms that both avert evil and promote fertility. Brottman also considers representations of hyenas in today’s popular fiction, including The Lion King and The Life of Pi,where they are often depicted as villains, cowardly henchmen, or clowns, while ignoring their more noble qualities. Rightly returning hyenas to their proper place in the animal pantheon, this richly illustrated book will be enjoyed by any animal lover with an interest in the unusual and offbeat.