Living in a Zoo?


Book Description

This zany, new study from God's Word, broken into two six-week sessions, will help equip women of all ages to be the women, wives, and moms they were intended to be. Author Brenda Lancaster invites women to take a break from their "zoo" of a life and learn how to apply godly truths in a practical manner. Lancaster's study encourages daily Bible reading, thought-provoking questions and insight into scripture written specifically for women. The daily action assignments guarantee you will not be bored! For the past 19 years, Lancaster has been sharing the lessons God has taught her as she struggled to be the woman God wanted her to be. As a member of Life Community Church (formerly known as Hunter Hills Baptist Church) she has served with enthusiasm as Bible Study coordinator, Sunday School Teacher, and a variety of leadership positions in Ladies Ministry. After answering God's specific call on her life, she founded ZooKeepers Ministries in 2002, a Titus 2 based ministry dedicated to teaching and ministering to young women. She also partners and teaches with Life Renewal Ministries and Center Cross Creative Ministries Conferences in the area of leadership and discipleship training. She is a graduate of the Proverbs 31 Ministries' 2003 She Speaks, speakers and writers conference. Since 1999 Brenda has been guest speaker for various ladies conferences, retreats, and special events. As Brenda Lancaster's pastor and friend it gives me great joy to recommend Brenda as a gifted writer, creative teacher, and captivating speaker who conveys truth, forged in the fires of every day life in a humorous, relevant, and memorable way. I've known Brenda for many years and found her to be a good steward ofall God has given her, a faithful servant who is determined to build God's Kingdom, and a serious soul winner, sharing her faith and leading many into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Brenda is an active, faithful member of Life Community Church. God has given her a unique and very effective Bible study that was not only offered here, but was one of the most effective, life-changing Bible studies our ladies have experienced in some time. Not only was there enthusiasm, excitement, and a record attendance, but numerous testimonies of the life-changing power of Jesus Christ. Brenda has encouraged, inspired, and mentored many young ladies in our church family through small group Bible studies, seminars, and various ladies ministries. I highly recommend Brenda and the ministry God has given her. She will honor our Lord and build His Kingdom. --Jake Thornhill, Jr. Senior Pastor Life Community Church Greensboro, NC "Brenda Lancaster has produced some powerful, lucid, and remarkable insightful material for families and women in particular. Her teachings are biblical, relevant, and desperately needed in today's families. Not only should every woman, mother, husband, and father study Brenda's material, but so should every pastor. A pastor's ministry would be far richer if he preached the content of these study guides to his people. This teaching on the family and womanhood is not like so much on the market today. This is not a gushy mess of sentimental fluffy filler. It is solid biblical meat with spiritual depth. It is some of the best material on the subject I have seen in over forty years of ministry." --Dr Michael K. Moore Founder - Life Renewal Ministries, Inc. Kure Beach, NC




We Bought a Zoo


Book Description

The remarkable true story of a family who move into a rundown zoo-already a BBC documentary miniseries and excerpted in The Guardian. In the market for a house and an adventure, Benjamin Mee moved his family to an unlikely new home: a dilapidated zoo in the English countryside. Mee had a dream to refurbish the zoo and run it as a family business. His friends and colleagues thought he was crazy. But in 2006, Mee and his wife with their two children, his brother, and his 76-year-old mother moved into the Dartmoor Wildlife Park. Their extended family now included: Solomon, an African lion and scourge of the local golf course; Zak, the rickety Alpha wolf, a broadly benevolent dictator clinging to power; Ronnie, a Brazilian tapir, easily capable of killing a man, but hopelessly soppy; and Sovereign, a jaguar and would-be ninja, who has devised a long term escape plan and implemented it. Nothing was easy, given the family's lack of experience as zookeepers, and what follows is a magical exploration of the mysteries of the animal kingdom, the power of family, and the triumph of hope over tragedy. We Bought a Zoo is a profoundly moving portrait of an unforgettable family living in the most extraordinary circumstances.




Zoo Story


Book Description

"This story, told by a master teller of such things, does more than take you inside the cages, fences, and walls of a zoo. It takes you inside the human heart, and an elephant's, and a primate's, and on and on. Tom French did in this book what he always does. He took real life and wrote it down for us, with eloquence and feeling and aching detail." -Rick Bragg, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author "An insightful and detailed look at the complex life of a zoo and its denizens, both animal and human." -Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi and Beatrice and Virgil Welcome to the savage and surprising world of Zoo Story, an unprecedented account of the secret life of a zoo and its inhabitants. Based on six years of research, the book follows a handful of unforgettable characters at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo: an alpha chimp with a weakness for blondes, a ferocious tiger who revels in Obsession perfume, and a brilliant but tyrannical CEO known as El Diablo Blanco. The sweeping narrative takes the reader from the African savannah to the forests of Panama and deep into the inner workings of a place some describe as a sanctuary and others condemn as a prison. Zoo Story shows us how these remarkable individuals live, how some die, and what their experiences reveal about the human desire to both exalt and control nature.




The Zoo Story


Book Description

A collection of some of Edward Albee's earliest and most acclaimed works.




It's a Wild Life: How My Life Became a Zoo


Book Description

Pursuing your passion includes a whole lot of crap. For Bud DeYoung, that’s about two hundred pounds a day! Since childhood, Bud had a passion for animals. As an adult, that passion led to the rescue of a bear who lived in his family’s house, then more animals crowding for space, until Bud eventually built an entire private zoo around his home in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Along the way, a regular visitor named Carrie joined her passion for animals with Bud’s. Together they now educate the public about animal conservation, battle the harsh winters and blazing summers, and daily dole out love to the hundreds of rescued animals in their care. Meanwhile, they teach by example how to make the world a better place while pursuing their passion. Welcome to the fascinating, heartwarming journey of one man, one woman, and an amazing cast of critters, whose stories will warm your soul. Welcome to the wild life of the DeYoung Family Zoo.




Colo's Story


Book Description

Follows the life of Colo, the first gorilla born in captivity, from her birth at the Columbus Zoo to her development into an adult, her progeny, and her distinction as the oldest living gorilla in the world.




The Cosmic Zoo


Book Description

Are humans a galactic oddity, or will complex life with human abilities develop on planets with environments that remain habitable for long enough? In a clear, jargon-free style, two leading researchers in the burgeoning field of astrobiology critically examine the major evolutionary steps that led us from the distant origins of life to the technologically advanced species we are today. Are the key events that took life from simple cells to astronauts unique occurrences that would be unlikely to occur on other planets? By focusing on what life does - it's functional abilities - rather than specific biochemistry or anatomy, the authors provide plausible answers to this question. Systematically exploring the various pathways that led to the complex biosphere we experience on planet Earth, they show that most of the steps along that path are likely to occur on any world hosting life, with only two exceptions: One is the origin of life itself – if this is a highly improbable event, then we live in a rather “empty universe”. However, if this isn’t the case, we inevitably live in a universe containing a myriad of planets hosting complex as well as microbial life - a “cosmic zoo”. The other unknown is the rise of technologically advanced beings, as exemplified on Earth by humans. Only one technological species has emerged in the roughly 4 billion years life has existed on Earth, and we don’t know of any other technological species elsewhere. If technological intelligence is a rare, almost unique feature of Earth's history, then there can be no visitors to the cosmic zoo other than ourselves. Schulze-Makuch and Bains take the reader through the history of life on Earth, laying out a consistent and straightforward framework for understanding why we should think that advanced, complex life exists on planets other than Earth. They provide a unique perspective on the question that puzzled the human species for centuries: are we alone?




Put Me In the Zoo


Book Description

They say a leopard can’t change his spots–but Spot sure can! Babies and toddlers will love pointing out the colors of his changing spots in this delightful, rhyming adaptation of Robert Lopshire’s classic Bright and Early Book.




Methuselah's Zoo


Book Description

Stories of long-lived animal species—from thousand-year-old tubeworms to 400-year-old sharks—and what they might teach us about human health and longevity. Opossums in the wild don’t make it to the age of three; our pet cats can live for a decade and a half; cicadas live for seventeen years (spending most of them underground). Whales, however, can live for two centuries and tubeworms for several millennia. Meanwhile, human life expectancy tops out around the mid-eighties, with some outliers living past 100 or even 110. Is there anything humans can learn from the exceptional longevity of some animals in the wild? In Methusaleh’s Zoo, Steven Austad tells the stories of some extraordinary animals, considering why, for example, animal species that fly live longer than earthbound species and why animals found in the ocean live longest of all. Austad—the leading authority on longevity in animals—argues that the best way we will learn from these long-lived animals is by studying them in the wild. Accordingly, he proceeds habitat by habitat, examining animals that spend most of their lives in the air, comparing insects, birds, and bats; animals that live on, and under, the ground—from mole rats to elephants; and animals that live in the sea, including quahogs, carp, and dolphins. Humans have dramatically increased their lifespan with only a limited increase in healthspan; we’re more and more prone to diseases as we grow older. By contrast, these species have successfully avoided both environmental hazards and the depredations of aging. Can we be more like them?




The Zoo on the Road to Nablus


Book Description

The last Palestinian zoo stands on a dusty, dead-end street in the once prosperous farming town of Qalqilya, on the very edge of the West Bank. The zoo's bars are rusting; peacocks wander quiet avenues shaded by broad plane trees; a teenage baboon broods in solitary confinement; walls bear the pockmarks of gunfire. And yet the zoo is an extraordinary place, with a bizarre, troubling and inspiring story to tell. At the center of this story is Dr. Sami Khader, the only zoo veterinarian in the Palestinian territories. Family man, amateur inventor, and dedicated taxidermist, he is fiercely independent, apolitical, and resourceful in times of crisis. Dr. Sami dreams of transforming the zoo into one of an international caliber. In The Zoo on the Road to Nablus, Amelia Thomas brings the reader into a world rarely glimpsed from the outside, weaving the stories of the zoo's animals, its staff, and its visitors into a rich, colorful chronicle of the indomitability of the human -- and animal -- spirit.