Adrian accomplished the almost impossible when he skateboarded across the world. He left his teaching job in Singapore to pursue his adventurous goal in 2017. For 2 years, he skated on a longboard for 24,000 km, across 33 countries in 4 continents. He documents this arduous journey with amazingly truthful reflections and a dash of humour. Through his journey, we ride pillion as he skates from Vancouver, Canada, down to the USA Pacific Coast, Mexico’s Baja California, Mainland Mexico and finally, Central America, before completing his North America leg in Panama. Candidly written and filled with surprises, Adrian shares his countless mishaps, magical connections and encounters of compassion bestowed upon him by locals he met along the way. More than a travelogue, this account gives a deeper insight into the profound beauty of travel in its raw sense; we catch a glimpse of what motivates the man – that even in his darkest, lowest moments, Adrian finds hidden reserves and dig his dark humour to keep himself emotionally afloat and accomplish what no others had done before. It is the kind of travel story that transports you to a place and moment like no mainstream travel books could.

This volume, aimed at the general reader, presents life and times of the amazing animals that inhabited Earth more than 500 million years ago. The Cambrian Period was a critical time in Earth's history. During this immense span of time nearly every modern group of animals appeared. Although life had been around for more than 2 million millennia, Cambrian rocks preserve the record of the first appearance of complex animals with eyes, protective skeletons, antennae, and complex ecologies. Grazing, predation, and multi-tiered ecosystems with animals living in, on, or above the sea floor became common. The cascade of interaction led to an ever-increasing diversification of animal body types. By the end of the period, the ancestors of sponges, corals, jellyfish, worms, mollusks, brachiopods, arthropods, echinoderms, and vertebrates were all in place. The evidence of this Cambrian "explosion" is preserved in rocks all over the world, including North America, where the seemingly strange animals of the period are preserved in exquisite detail in deposits such as the Burgess Shale in British Columbia. Cambrian Ocean World tells the story of what is, for us, the most important period in our planet's long history.

This is a collection of interviews of twenty-one actors from Shakespeare theaters and festivals across North America, from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland to the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario. The interviews celebrate the variety in education, training, and approaches to acting conducted by recognized performance scholars. Thus, this book combines scholarly expertise with actors' insights to produce unique views on contemporary Shakespearean performances in the United States and Canada, and fills an important niche in performance criticism. Michael W. Shurgot is Professor of Humanities at South Puget Sound Community College.

Pollinators-insects, birds, bats, and other animals that carry pollen from the male to the female parts of flowers for plant reproduction-are an essential part of natural and agricultural ecosystems throughout North America. For example, most fruit, vegetable, and seed crops and some crops that provide fiber, drugs, and fuel depend on animals for pollination. This report provides evidence for the decline of some pollinator species in North America, including America's most important managed pollinator, the honey bee, as well as some butterflies, bats, and hummingbirds. For most managed and wild pollinator species, however, population trends have not been assessed because populations have not been monitored over time. In addition, for wild species with demonstrated declines, it is often difficult to determine the causes or consequences of their decline. This report outlines priorities for research and monitoring that are needed to improve information on the status of pollinators and establishes a framework for conservation and restoration of pollinator species and communities.