Early American Naturalists


Book Description

This historical work chronicles the lives, adventures, and discoveries of America's great explorer/naturalists--Lewis & Clark, Martha Maxwell, John James Audubon, John Muir, William Gambel, Thomas Say, Robert Kennicott and John Townsend. Regardless of the formidable obstacles and travails, these naturalist-explorers provided an invaluable scientific foundation as to how the plants, animals, and environment of the American West coexist. From identifying new species to discovering prehistoric fossils, this book celebrates these intrepid trailblazers who boldly navigated and documented the untrammeled, awe-inspiring frontier west of the Mississippi.




Henry Adams and the American Naturalist Tradition


Book Description

The naturalist tradition in American fiction was a product of the tremendous changes wrought in late nineteenth-century America by the development of science and technology and by the intellectual upheavals associated with the ideas of Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. This book is an account of naturalism, perhaps the strongest and most influential intellectual tradition or, as Harold Kaplan would argue, mythology to affect modern American literature and culture.Kaplan approaches the naturalist writers through a study of Henry Adams. He sees in Adams the paradigmatic intelligence of his time a prophetic mind, though not a seminal one and a man absorbed with the twin notions of power and order. Adams's major work illustrates the joining of a literary imagination and moral temperament with an almost obsessive response to the science, economic life, and politics of his world. Adams's work exemplifies what Kaplan calls the myth of metapolitics a view of human struggle and fate profoundly dominated by naturalist concepts of power.Kaplan then turns to the fascination that power in its various manifestations material, moral, social, political held for writers such as Dreiser, Norris, Crane, and others. Their dramatic plots, characters, and allegorical images are examined in detail. In wider reference, this book should concern those who are interested in problems of modern ethics and politics in the effort to harmonize concepts of value with images of power and natural order.




John Burroughs


Book Description

Him a real originality, and his sketches have a delightful oddity, vivacity, and freshness." Burroughs was born in 1837, the same year that Henry Thoreau graduated from Harvard. Along with Thoreau and John Muir, he was one of the nineteenth century's most popular and preeminent nature writers. In the course of his long life, Burroughs authored more than twenty-eight books on natural history and literature. Writing during the increasingly industrial decades of the late.




The Next War Zone


Book Description

You Can't See It, but it's there, hidden in your home PC. A threat so potent it could destroy massive amounts of data and shut down power plants, fuel supplies, space satellites, the armed forces, millions of computers, and even parts of the Internet. A virtually undetectable but devastating new weapon is cyberwarfare, the next wave of terrorism, and it could be launched from your very own computer. Thousands of computer super-viruses, monster worms, and zombies created by terrorists and rogue governments are the new tools of war with the potential for catastrophic results. In this chilling account, military expert and on-air analyst James F. Dunnigan sounds the alarm on what could be the nation's next surprise attack -- a cyber Pearl Harbor just waiting to happen. Every day, there are warnings of computer viruses and Internet weaknesses with the potential to disrupt society. Most are the work of amateur hackers. But consider also the super zombies, military-grade computer weapons being created by government cyberwar units. Virtually undetectable, they have the power to destroy everything, lethally spread via the Internet, and hide on home computers, waiting to be unleashed. Despite constant warnings about our cyber vulnerability and billions of dollars spent defending our networks, the risk of catastrophic cyber attacks continues to grow. Now, Dunnigan explains the rules of cyberwar -- what it is, what could happen, and how to protect yourself from becoming a pawn. From real-life attack scenarios to explanations of monster viruses, from cyberwarriors to what forces pose the most dangerous threats, Dunnigan offers clear, concise information for fighting back against a phantom enemy that may be the deadliest we've ever known. Book jacket.




Songbirds, Truffles, and Wolves


Book Description

THE AMERICAN NATURALIST TELLS OF HIS TRAVELS IN ITALY AS HE WALKED THE FRANCISCAN WAY TO "READ" THE TUSCAN AND UMBRIAN LANDSCAPE.




The Midland Naturalist


Book Description




Game Theory in Biology


Book Description

This novel reassessment of the field presents the central concepts in evolutionary game theory and provides an authoritative and up-to-date account. The focus is on concepts that are important for biologists in their attempts to explain observations. This strong connection between concepts and applications is a recurrent theme throughout the book.







The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution


Book Description

Coevolution—reciprocal evolutionary change in interacting species driven by natural selection—is one of the most important ecological and genetic processes organizing the earth's biodiversity: most plants and animals require coevolved interactions with other species to survive and reproduce. The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution analyzes how the biology of species provides the raw material for long-term coevolution, evaluates how local coadaptation forms the basic module of coevolutionary change, and explores how the coevolutionary process reshapes locally coevolving interactions across the earth's constantly changing landscapes. Picking up where his influential The Coevolutionary Process left off, John N. Thompsonsynthesizes the state of a rapidly developing science that integrates approaches from evolutionary ecology, population genetics, phylogeography, systematics, evolutionary biochemistry and physiology, and molecular biology. Using models, data, and hypotheses to develop a complete conceptual framework, Thompson also draws on examples from a wide range of taxa and environments, illustrating the expanding breadth and depth of research in coevolutionary biology.




Henry David Thoreau


Book Description

Presents the life and career of famed American naturalist and author, Henry David Thoreau, and discusses the legacy of his work.