Ask a dozen talking heads about the course of action we should take to right the economy and you’ll get thirteen different answers. But what if we possessed a handful of basic principles that could guide our decisions—both the personal ones about how to save and spend but also those national ones that have been capturing the headlines?Robert H. Frank has been illustrating these principles longer and more clearly than anyone else. InThe Economic Naturalist’s Field Guide, he reveals how they play out in Washington, on Wall Street, and in our own lives, covering everything from healthcare to tax policy to everyday decisions about what we do with our money.In today’s uncertain economic climate,The Economic Naturalist’s Field Guide’s insights have more bearing than ever on our pocketbooks, policies, and personal happiness.

Why do the keypads on drive-up cash machines have Braille dots? Why are round-trip fares from Orlando to Kansas City higher than those from Kansas City to Orlando? For decades, Robert Frank has been asking his economics students to pose and answer questions like these as a way of learning how economic principles operate in the real world-which they do everywhere, all the time. Once you learn to think like an economist, all kinds of puzzling observations start to make sense. Drive-up ATM keypads have Braille dots because it's cheaper to make the same machine for both drive-up and walk-up locations. Travelers from Kansas City to Orlando pay less because they are usually price-sensitive tourists with many choices of destination, whereas travelers originating from Orlando typically choose Kansas City for specific family or business reasons. The Economic Naturalist employs basic economic principles to answer scores of intriguing questions from everyday life, and, along the way, introduces key ideas such as the cost-benefit principle, the "no cash on the table" principle, and the law of one price. This is as delightful and painless a way to learn fundamental economics as there is.

This book is the first user-friendly regional guide devoted to ants—the “little things that run the world.” Lavishly illustrated with more than 500 line drawings, 300-plus photographs, and regional distribution maps as composite illustrations for every species, this guide will introduce amateur and professional naturalists and biologists, teachers and students, and environmental managers and pest-control professionals to more than 140 ant species found in the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. The detailed drawings and species descriptions, together with the high-magnification photographs, will allow anyone to identify and learn about ants and their diversity, ecology, life histories, and beauty. In addition, the book includes sections on collecting ants, ant ecology and evolution, natural history, and patterns of geographic distribution and diversity to help readers gain a greater understanding and appreciation of ants.

This award-winning naturalists's guide to San Diego's intertidal zones and harbors was written and produced by eleventh-grade science, math, and humanities classes at a public charter school close to San Diego Bay.

This book is designed to bring a few green shoots into what are quite dull, gray times. The natural world is on your doorstep whether you live in the heart of a concrete jungle, by the sea, on top of a mountain, or in a cottage in the woods. The Practical Naturalist is about giving you the wherewithal to explore that natural world. It will be inspirational, informative, and educational-it aims to inspire you to get out there and experience the wonders of the world around you, inform you by showing you what you can discover in each habitat and also give you tips on how to conserve it. Each section (habitat) will have three strands: 1 Informative section will tell you all you need to know about that particular habitat, bringing it to life in an evocative way. These spreads will also have boxes on the science and ecology of the habitat, and key practical aspects (such as how to read tide tables). The accompanying artwork style will retain that personal feel-not cold and clinical, but as if newly sketched (while still showing and telling you what you need to know). 2 Catalog section will show you what you'll see in that habitat-snapshots of groups of species belonging to a particular place to help you identify what you might see. For example, this section might show a collection of objects you'd find on a beach in New England. However, while it's specific, it's also generic, since you'd find similar things on any beach from Reykyavik to Rio. 3 The practical part: These are the elements that show you what to do in each habitat-a selection of projects that allow you to engage with the environment, without intruding. This section is specially photographed for the book, and might show a pond or sea water sample, a mask that allows you to view the underwater world, or a simple birdhouse for your backyard.

This user-friendly and authoritative book will serve scientists, growers, and sightseers as a guide to the 67 genra and 550 species of naturally occurring palms found in the Americas. Its purpose is to give an introduction to the diversity of palms and allow almost anyone to identify a palm from this part of the world. Andrew Henderson is Assistant Scientist at the New York Botanical Garden. Gloria Galeano and Rodrigo Bernal are Assistant Professors at the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota. Originally published in 1995. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.