A field guide to imaginary animals from North American folklore for campers, hikers, hunters, and all who love the northwoods.

Out of Control chronicles the dawn of a new era in which the machines and systems that drive our economy are so complex and autonomous as to be indistinguishable from living things.

Four Upstate New York researchers have compiled a book of Bigfoot sightings primarily in the Adirondacks. Witnesses include police officers, farmers, and prominent business people.

“A witty, scientifically accurate, and often intensely creepy exploration of sanguivorous creatures.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Bill Schutt turns whatever fear and disgust you may feel towards nature’s vampires into a healthy respect for evolution’s power to fill every conceivable niche.”—Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex and Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life For centuries, blood feeders have inhabited our nightmares and horror stories, as well as the shadowy realms of scientific knowledge. In Dark Banquet, zoologist Bill Schutt takes us on a fascinating voyage into the world of some of nature’s strangest creatures—the sanguivores. Using a sharp eye and mordant wit, Schutt makes a remarkably persuasive case that blood feeders, from bats to bedbugs, are as deserving of our curiosity as warmer and fuzzier species are—and that many of them are even worthy of conservation. Examining the substance that sustains nature’s vampires, Schutt reveals just how little we actually knew about blood until well into the twentieth century. We revisit George Washington on his deathbed to learn how ideas about blood and the supposedly therapeutic value of bloodletting, first devised by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, survived into relatively modern times. Dark Banquet details our dangerous and sometimes deadly encounters with ticks, chiggers, and mites (the ­latter implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder—currently devastating honey bees worldwide). Then there are the truly weird—vampire finches. And if you thought piranha were scary, some people believe that the candiru (or willy fish) is the best reason to avoid swimming in the Amazon. Enlightening and alarming, Dark Banquet peers into a part of the natural world to which we are, through our blood, inextricably linked.

A Midwestern physician is forced to give up his profession due to the ignorance, corruption, and greed of society.

Hannah spots a light in the old abandoned Sampson place, the only other house on the island.

Author's expedition 1905-1906 from Hamilton Inlet to Lake Michikaman along the route followed by Leonidas Hubbard, Jr. in 1903. Botanical, geological, and meteorological appendix with tables.