Charles Darwin struggled to explain how forty thousand bees working in the dark, seemingly by instinct alone, could organize themselves to construct something as perfect as a honey comb. How do bees accomplish such incredible tasks? Synthesizing the findings of decades of experiments, The Spirit of the Hive presents a comprehensive picture of the genetic and physiological mechanisms underlying the division of labor in honey bee colonies and explains how bees’ complex social behavior has evolved over millions of years. Robert Page, one of the foremost honey bee geneticists in the world, sheds light on how the coordinated activity of hives arises naturally when worker bees respond to stimuli in their environment. The actions they take in turn alter the environment and so change the stimuli for their nestmates. For example, a bee detecting ample stores of pollen in the hive is inhibited from foraging for more, whereas detecting the presence of hungry young larvae will stimulate pollen gathering. Division of labor, Page shows, is an inevitable product of group living, because individual bees vary genetically and physiologically in their sensitivities to stimuli and have different probabilities of encountering and responding to them. A fascinating window into self-organizing regulatory networks of honey bees, The Spirit of the Hive applies genomics, evolution, and behavior to elucidate the details of social structure and advance our understanding of complex adaptive systems in nature.

How can 40,000 bees working in the dark, by instinct alone, construct a honey comb? Synthesizing decades of experiments, The Spirit of the Hive presents the genetic and physiological mechanisms underlying the division of labor in honey bee colonies and explains how it is an inevitable product of group living, evolving over millions of years.

The most joyful emanation produced by a colony of bees is known as the “song of increase”—declaring that the hive is flourishing and the bees are happy in its abundance. Song of Increase takes us inside the world of the honeybee to glean the wisdom of these fascinating creatures with whom humanity has shared a sacred bond for millennia. Within these pages is a bee-centric approach to living with honeybees, rather than advice for simply maximizing the products they provide. Jacqueline Freeman takes us beyond traditional beekeeping and offers a way to work in harmony with honeybees for both their good and ours. “Our way is one of kind observation,” she explains, “where we create supportive homes and fields for bees to live in, as well as tend the heartfelt relationships we form by being together.” Song of Increase focuses on hidden aspects of apiculture that lead us naturally to more sustainable practices. Freeman illuminates the unity consciousness that guides every action in the colony and how this profound awareness can influence the way we see both the natural world and ourselves. Each chapter presents a wealth of information about the life of bees, including Freeman’s personal insights and direct teachings received from the bees themselves.

A passionate meditation on the consolations and disappointments of religion and poetry

Scientific management: Technology spawned it, Frederick Winslow Taylor championed it, Thorstein Veblen dissected it, Henry Ford implemented it. By the turn of the century, practical visionaries prided themselves on having arrived at "the one best way" both to increase industrial productivity and to regulate the vagaries of human behavior. Nothing escaped the efficiency craze, and in this vivid, wide-ranging book, Martha Banta explores its effect on the culture at large. To the Taylorists, everthing needed tidying up: government, business, warfare, households, and, most of all, the workplace, with its unruly influx of strangers into the native scenes. Taylored Lives gives us a striking sense of what it was like to live, work, love, and die when time, motion, and emotions were checked off on worksheets and management charts. Canvasing the culture, Banta shows how the cause of efficiency was taken up in narratives, of every sort - in mail-order catalogs, popular romances, newspaper stories, and personal testimonials "from below", as well as in the canonical works of writers from Henry Adams and William James, to Sinclair Lewis, Nathanael West, and William Faulkner. The strategies of impassioned theorists and hands-on practitioners affected the kinds-of narratives produced in the controversy over the pros and cons of the management culture; they bear an eerie resemblance to the means by which we today, storytellers all, keep trying to make sense of our own chaotic times. This interdisciplinary work charts the development of a managerial culture from its start in the steel mills of Pennsylvania through its spread across the American experience in an interlocking series of social systems andeveryday practices. Banta scrutinizes narrative strategies employed by "inscribers" as diverse as Josephine Goldmark, Theodore Roosevelt, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anzia Yezierska, Richard Harding Davis, Booker T. Washington, and Theodore Dreiser; by Taylor himself, as well as Veblen and Ford; by women who toiled on the factory floor; by writers of dream-copy for ready-made houses; and by Buster Keaton in his silent treatment of the dysfuntional honeymoon home. With its historical scope and its provocative readings of assorted narratives, this richly illustrated book offers a complex and disturbing picture of a period, as well as invaluable insights into the way theory-making continually makes and breaks cultures. A remarkable work, Taylored Lives confirms Martha Banta's place as one of our leading cultural and literary critics.

“Mesmerizing—another wonderful novel etched by the hand of a master storyteller.”—Michael Connelly Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, have stirred the wrath of a murderous secret organization bent on infiltrating the government. Now they are separated and on the run, wanted by the police, and pursued across the Continent by a ruthless enemy with limitless resources and powerful connections. Unstoppable together, Russell and Holmes will have to survive this time apart, maintaining contact only by means of coded messages and cryptic notes. But has the couple made a fatal mistake by separating, making themselves easier targets for the shadowy government agents sent to silence them? A hermit with a mysterious past and a beautiful young female doctor with a secret, a cruelly scarred flyer and an obsessed man of the cloth: Everyone Russell and Holmes meet could either speed their safe reunion or betray them to their enemies—in the most complex, shocking, and deeply personal case of their career. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Laurie R. King's Pirate King.