Martine Wexler is a writer who runs a secret bookmaking operation on the side, with the help of her son’s best friend. Martine, her son Tingo and her daughter Amelie (“Email”) are all in various stages of figuring out that life in an ordinary American city is only as ordinary as you make it. The world of this little family crosses orbits with a middle-aged Russian graffiti artist, a hopelessly smitten road musician, a heavily-tattooed foot fetishist, a psychic conversant in gear ratios, an atheist youth minister, and a longtime family friend who carries a lucky spray-painted quarter in her purse. It takes awhile, but Martine finally figures out that no matter when you hear the music, that's when it's time to dance.

A comprehensive travelogue and guidebook exploring island adventures on many of the 135 islands accessible by ferry or bridge in the Great Lakes Basin.

The World of the Salt Marsh is a wide-ranging exploration of the southeastern coast--its natural history, its people and their way of life, and the historic and ongoing threats to its ecological survival. Focusing on areas from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to Cape Canaveral, Florida, Charles Seabrook examines the ecological importance of the salt marsh, calling it "a biological factory without equal." Twice-daily tides carry in a supply of nutrients that nourish vast meadows of spartina ( Spartina alterniflora )--a crucial habitat for creatures ranging from tiny marine invertebrates to wading birds. The meadows provide vital nurseries for 80 percent of the seafood species, including oysters, crabs, shrimp, and a variety of finfish, and they are invaluable for storm protection, erosion prevention, and pollution filtration. Seabrook is also concerned with the plight of the people who make their living from the coast's bounty and who carry on its unique culture. Among them are Charlie Phillips, a fishmonger whose livelihood is threatened by development in McIntosh County, Georgia, and Vera Manigault of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, a basket maker of Gullah-Geechee descent, who says that the sweetgrass needed to make her culturally significant wares is becoming scarcer. For all of the biodiversity and cultural history of the salt marshes, many still view them as vast wastelands to be drained, diked, or "improved" for development into highways and subdivisions. If people can better understand and appreciate these ecosystems, Seabrook contends, they are more likely to join the growing chorus of scientists, conservationists, fishermen, and coastal visitors and residents calling for protection of these truly amazing places.

During 1867 Darwin intensified lines of research on human expression and sexual selection.