Author: Philip Marsden File Type: pdf In 2010, Philip Marsden, whom Giles Foden has called one of our most thoughtful travel writers, moved with his family to a rundown farmhouse in the countryside in Cornwall. From the moment he arrived, Marsden found himself fascinated by the landscape around him, and, in particular, by the traces of human historyand of the human relationship to the landthat could be seen all around him. Wanting to experience the idea more fully, he set out to walk across Cornwall, to the evocatively named Lands End. Rising Ground is a record of that journey, but it is also so much more a beautifully written meditation on place, nature, and human life that encompasses history, archaeology, geography, and the love of place that suffuses us when we finally find home. Firmly in a storied tradition of English nature writing that stretches from Gilbert White to Helen MacDonald, Rising Ground reveals the ways that places and peoples have interacted over time, from standing stones to footpaths, ancient habitations to modern highways. What does it mean to truly live in a place, and what does it take to understand, and honor, those who lived and died there long before we arrived? Like the best travel and nature writing, Rising Ground is written with the pace of a contemplative walk, and is rich with insight and a powerful sense of the long skein of years that links us to our ancestors. Marsdens close, loving look at the small patch of earth around him is sure to help you see your own placeand your own homeanew. **Review Fascinating and hauntingly evocative. . . . A truly wonderful and enjoyable book. (Jan Morris Literary Review) Superb. (Robert MacFarlane Guardian, Books of the Year) Intriguing. (Tom Robbins Financial Times, Books of the Year) A fascinating study of place and its meaning. (Justin Cartwright Observer, Book of the Year) Pitch-perfect prose. (Tom Adair Scotsman, Books of the Year) The more Marsden traverses the surrounding landscape, he becomes engrossed in the relationship between humans and place, and his research on Cornish history starts to embody a character of its own. Marsden forms poetic descriptions that pay tribute to the Cornish land and this human link of mythology and sanctity. Anglophiles will be captivated by this beautifully written book, as will those with an interest in an illustrative history. (Library Journal) Travel writer Marsden returns home to walk the length of the Cornwall region in the southwest corner of Great Britain. Marsden is erudite and brings his knowledge of geology, etymology, history, and philosophy, as well as the voices of Cornwalls past and current inhabitants, to his long peregrination. The writing is seamless and elegant. (Publishers Weekly) A thoughtful and well-written meditation on place and myth, and finding meaning in the places that we call home. (Chicago Tribune) About the Author Philip Marsden is the award-winning author of a number of works of fiction, nonfiction, and travel writing, including The Levelling Sea, The Spirit-Wrestlers, and The Bronski House.

Author: Leslie Brunetta File Type: pdf Spiders, objects of eternal human fascination, are found in many places on the ground, in the air, and even under water.Leslie Brunetta and Catherine Craig have teamed up to produce a substantive yet entertaining book for anyone who has ever wondered, as a spider rappelled out of reach on a line of silk, How do they do that? The orb web, that iconic wheel-shaped web most of us associate with spiders, contains at least four different silk proteins, each performing a different function and all meshing together to create a fly-catching machine that has amazed and inspired humans through the ages.Brunetta and Craig tell the intriguing story of how spiders evolved over 400 million years to add new silks and new uses for silk to their survival toolkit and, in the telling, take readers far beyond the orb. The authors describe the trials and triumphs of spiders as they use silk to negotiate an ever-changing environment, and they show how natural selection acts at the genetic level and as individuals struggle for survival. **Review . . . [a] remarkable history of evolutionary innovations in silk spinning by spiders. . . effective and entertaining.--Quarterly Review of Biology (Quarterly Review of Biology) . . . an ideal introduction to spiders and a tempting peek at the field of silk research that. . . will leave the reader forever fascinated and enthused by these wonderful web weavers.--BioScience (BioScience) Spider Silka wonderful, charismatic natural history of spiderswill truly inspire all readers who may never before have appreciated this unique group of organisms.Margaret Lowman, author of Life in the Treetops Adventures of a Woman in Field Biology and of Its a Jungle Up There More Tales from the Treetops (Meg Lowman) This is a compelling and immensely readable account that engages the reader from start to finish and that I found difficult to put down. Tim R. New, Journal of Insect Conservation (Tim R. New Journal of Insect Conservation) Recipient of the 2011 Highly Recommended Book Award presented by the Boston Authors Club (Boston Authors Club Highly Recommended Book Boston Authors Club 2011-01-01) Named theSilver Winnerfor the 2010 ForeWord Book of the Year Award in the Nature category (2010 Book of the Year Award in Nature ForeWord Magazine 2010-01-01) Selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2011 in the Zoology category. (Choice Outstanding Academic Title Choice 2012-03-12) About the Author Leslie Brunetta is a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, Technology Review, and the Sewanee Review on NPR and elsewhere. Catherine L. Craig is an internationally recognized evolutionary biologist, arachnologist, and authority on silk.