For the first time ever, Victor M Cassidy brings to life the world of Henry Chandler Cowles, internationally renowned ecologist, botanist, university teacher and conservationist. The book also rescues and reprints the best of his writings from forgotten journals and contains previously unpublished family and expedition photographs. At the end of the 19th century, Cowles made hundreds of field observations of the sand dune landscape that rings the southern and eastern shores of Lake Michigan. His studies demonstrated that the outdoor environment is a dynamic system in which plants, soil, moisture, climate, and topography interact. Cowles was the first to make sense of plant succession, which denotes the way that communities of plants come into a landscape, flourish, and create conditions for their replacement by other plant communities. He later expanded his plant succession studies into different Chicago-area ecosystems. Starting from a blank sheet of paper, Cowles created the entire ecology curriculum at the University of Chicago and taught it for more than thirty years.

Miller Beach became a popular tourist destination in the early 1900s thanks to its windswept sand dunes and Lake Michigan shoreline. Early aviator and Chicagoan Octave Chanute glided his aircraft over the dunes; botanist Henry Chandler Cowles studied plant succession in Miller Woods. Miller Beach's architecture is diverse, with historic park buildings designed by George W. Maher: the Marquette Park Pavilion and the Gary Bathing Beach Bathhouse. Miller Beach is now a part of Gary, Indiana, and the draw of the beach remains a timeless part of its past, present, and future.

Assembled here for the first time in one volume are forty classic papers that have laid the foundations of modern ecology. Whether by posing new problems, demonstrating important effects, or stimulating new research, these papers have made substantial contributions to an understanding of ecological processes, and they continue to influence the field today. The papers span nearly nine decades of ecological research, from 1887 on, and are organized in six sections: foundational papers, theoretical advances, synthetic statements, methodological developments, field studies, and ecological experiments. Selections range from Connell's elegant account of experiments with barnacles to Watt's encyclopedic natural history, from a visionary exposition by Grinnell of the concept of niche to a seminal essay by Hutchinson on diversity. Six original essays by contemporary ecologists and a historian of ecology place the selections in context and discuss their continued relevance to current research. This combination of classic papers and fresh commentaries makes Foundations of Ecology both a convenient reference to papers often cited today and an essential guide to the intellectual and conceptual roots of the field. Published with the Ecological Society of America.

The papers in this volume represent original work to celebrate the centenary of the American Society of Zoologists. They illustrate the impressive nature of historical scholarship that has subsequently focused on the development of biology in the United States.

This book was a revelation. I was simply enthralled by Joel Hagen's brilliance in reviewing the emergence of the discipline of ecosystem ecology (the study of biotic-abiotic interaction and nutrient flows in ecological systems). He does a magnificent job of introducing the personalities that midwived the new science. He explains their intellectual struggles, philosophical cross-currents, and different academic milieux. He also expertly illuminates sociopolitical context. Through his in-depth research he is able to dispel some misconceptions and truismsm, arriving at the heart of what made each scientist tick. Even when exploring some of the arcane figures and dead-end developments, he is so compelling that they become integral to the story, not sidetracks. His breadth of knowledge, his discerning inclusiveness, his clarity of thought, all make _An Entangled Bank_ a stimulating read. Very often in science courses we are presented only with the canonical "state of the science," having to swallow its agglomerated whole free of context. Hagen reveals the wisdom of understanding intellectual foundations. Through study of the origins and development of a science, we may better grasp the received tenets of current scientific understanding. As a young science, ecosystem ecology has a historical context that is relatively accessible to us, if less romantic than a tale of the origins of astronomy might be. A peek into the labs and offices of botanists, limnologists, and biogeochemists might not seem like the acme of excitement. Hagen inspires us with his insights. He makes his subject meaningful to us. Though it is not pleasure reading by any stretch, its clear-sighted intellectual vigor makes _An Entangled Bank_ pure enjoyment.