While surrounded by a two-acre property, garden, and wooded thicket that contains over a hundred species of trees, William Moldwin has been pondering the ethics of simplicity, ecology, aging, growth, and time. Moldwin entwines fascinating facts about trees with inspiring historical and personal stories of their significance to him, an amateur botanist and son of Hungarian immigrants. While exploring the connections and roles trees play within our natural world, including their medicinal uses, Moldwin reflects on how these trees sustain each other by communicating in various ways through pheromones such as chemical agents, fungi, and root systems—all while his own family tree has sustained many generations, each providing unique contributions to the world. Throughout his presentation, Moldwin’s essays inspire tranquility and harmony while encouraging others to walk among the trees and to bathe in their physical and psychological health benefits as you remember to fight for the green revolution. One Hundred Species and One Family Tree blends a fascinating exploration of the history of trees with a retired pastor’s reflections on his family legacy.

The classic easy-reference field guide with more than 1500 photographs: “An almost foolproof practical reference book.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) This useful book for botanists, horticulturists, and nature lovers is made up of two parts: Pictorial Keys and Master Pages. The Keys are designed for easy visual comparison of details that look alike, narrowing the identification of a tree to one of a small group—the family or genus. Then, in the Master Pages, the species of the tree is determined, with similar details placed together to highlight differences within the family group, thus eliminating all other possibilities. All of the more than 1500 photographs were made specifically for use in this book and were taken either in the field or of carefully collected specimens. Where possible, details such as leaves, fruit, etc., appear in actual size, or in the same scale.

The author of What on Earth Happened? offers a radical new look at the story of Earth, seen through the prism of the living things that have had the greatest impacts on the planet.

"Why are male birds often so brightly colored? Why do some birds lay more eggs than others? Will bird species adapt to climate change? In How Birds Evolve, Douglas Futuyma invites readers into the amazing world of bird evolution to answer these and other questions. Futuyma's goal in this book is not to offer a comprehensive evolutionary history of birds, but to explore how the processes of evolution produced the distinctive features and behaviors we observe in birds today as well as their impressive diversity. Using one or two birds per chapters as a lens into broader questions, Futuyma explores how a bird's evolutionary history helps us understand the diversity of species and the bird tree of life and how natural selection explains most of the characteristics of birds from how populations adapt to sexual selection and birds' amazing social behavior. Futuyma concludes by discussing the future of birds, particularly patterns of extinction and whether they can adapt to a changing climate. Ultimately, Futuyman wants readers to see that evolutionary biology helps us to better understand birds, and that the reverse is also true: studies of birds have informed almost every aspect of evolutionary biology, from Darwin to today"--