Known for his exquisite images of birds and landscape, Eliot Porter (American, 1901–1990) was a pioneer in the use of color photography. His work also became a powerful visual argument for environmental conservation. Trained as a medical doctor and possessing a scientist's gift for close observation, Porter explored new ways of depicting nature, building blinds in trees so he could study his avian subjects at closer vantage, and producing landscape images that capture both pristine forest and ragged river canyons with equal force and brilliance. Initially encouraged by the groundbreaking photographers Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz, Porter went on to produce a body of work all his own. His 1962 Sierra Club book In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World, with its images grouped by season and accompanied by quotations from Henry David Thoreau, transformed the concept of nature photography books. Ultimately, Porter's photographs came to the attention of Congress and led to the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, the foundational law in wilderness management today. Eliot Porter: In the Realm of Nature contains 110 images from the collections of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser; the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; and of the J. Paul Getty Museum, along with an essay by Paul Martineau that discusses Porter's life and the innovations he brought to the practice of photography.

Originally published in 1913, this book was intended for the younger reader and provides an introduction to the ways in which weeds grow and spread, also showing how 'the function of different parts of plants, and indeed all the lessons of elementary botany, can be studied to full advantage among our common weeds'.

Structural colorations originate from self-organized microstructures, which interact with light in a complex way to produce brilliant colors seen everywhere in nature. Research in this field is extremely new and has been rapidly growing in the last 10 years, because the elaborate structures created in nature can now be fabricated through various types of nanotechnologies. Indeed, a fundamental book covering this field from biological, physical, and engineering viewpoints has long been expected.Coloring in nature comes mostly from inherent colors of materials, though it sometimes has a purely physical origin such as diffraction or interference of light. The latter, called structural color or iridescence, has long been a problem of scientific interest. Recently, structural colors have attracted great interest because various photonic architectures, now developing in modern technologies, have been spontaneously created in the self-organization process and have been extensively used as one of the important visual functions. In this book, the fundamental optical properties underlying structural colors are explained, and these mysteries of nature are surveyed from the viewpoint of biological diversity and according to their sophisticated structures. The book proposes a general principle of structural colors based on the structural hierarchy and presents up-to-date applications.

Originally published in 1937, this book examines the applications and implications of psychology on a variety of topics.

A manual for opening the doors of perception and directly engaging the intelligence of the Natural World • Provides exercises to directly perceive and interact with the complex, living, self-organizing being that is Gaia • Reveals that every life form on Earth is highly intelligent and communicative • Examines the ecological function of invasive plants, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, psychotropic plants and fungi, and the human species In Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm, Stephen Harrod Buhner reveals that all life forms on Earth possess intelligence, language, a sense of I and not I, and the capacity to dream. He shows that by consciously opening the doors of perception, we can reconnect with the living intelligences in Nature as kindred beings, become again wild scientists, nondomesticated explorers of a Gaian world just as Goethe, Barbara McClintock, James Lovelock, and others have done. For as Einstein commented, “We cannot solve the problems facing us by using the same kind of thinking that created them.” Buhner explains how to use analogical thinking and imaginal perception to directly experience the inherent meanings that flow through the world, that are expressed from each living form that surrounds us, and to directly initiate communication in return. He delves deeply into the ecological function of invasive plants, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, psychotropic plants and fungi, and, most importantly, the human species itself. He shows that human beings are not a plague on the planet, they have a specific ecological function as important to Gaia as that of plants and bacteria. Buhner shows that the capacity for depth connection and meaning-filled communication with the living world is inherent in every human being. It is as natural as breathing, as the beating of our own hearts, as our own desire for intimacy and love. We can change how we think and in so doing begin to address the difficulties of our times.

No modern astronomer made a more profound contribution to our understanding of the cosmos than did Edwin Hubble, who first conclusively demonstrated that the universe is expanding. Basing his theory on the observation of the change in distanct galaxies, called red shift, Hubble showed that this is a Doppler effect, or alteration in the wavelength of light, resulting from the rapid motion of celestial objects away from Earth. In 1935, Hubble described his principal observations and conclusions in the Silliman lectures at Yale University. These lectures were published the following year as "The Realm of the Nebulae," which quickly became a classic work.

Forests, lakes, mountains, caves-even your garden-are alive with nature''s spirits. "Enchantment of the Faerie Realm" can help you commune with elves, devas, nymphs, gnomes, and other faerie folk. With just a little patience and persistence you can learn to recognize the presence of these mysterious, magical creatures. New interior design