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• Introduction. Wonderful Relationships: Darwinian Stories of Origins
• 1. "Curtiosity's" Child: Bobby Darwin's Impertinent Early Years
• 2. Darwin and the Pampas Pirates: Adventure in Search of Treasure
• 3. Fossils, Fools & Faults: Rounding South America
• 4. Irritating Worms: The Elderly Darwin Fascinated by the Intelligence of Worms
• 5. A Lungfish Walked into the Zoo: On the Origin of Limbs from Lobe-Fins
• 6. Out on a Limb: Sketching Bone by Bone from Joint to Joint at the Zoo
• 7. Nosey Elephants: A Tale of Trunks and Tusks
• 8. The Bearduck of Baleen: On the Origin of New Traits from Existing Ones
• 9. The Saga of Mooshmael: The Logic of Family Relationships
• 10. The Higgledy-Piggledy Whale: Leviathan's Walk, Paddle, and Gallop to the Sea
• 11. Archaic Chickengators: Amniotic Archosaur Ancestors of Dinosaurs and Birds
• 12. Coral Pigs and Tide Pool Sheep: Novel Selections of Behavior and Anatomy Epilogue. Femurs and Footprints: On the Trail of Megabeasts.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Thinking whimsically makes serious science accessible. That's a message that should be taken to heart by all readers who want to learn about evolution. Do Elephants Have Knees? invites readers into serious appreciation of Darwinian histories by deploying the playful thinking found in children's books. Charles R. Ault Jr. weds children's literature to recent research in paleontology and evolutionary biology. Inquiring into the origin of origins stories, Ault presents three portraits of Charles Darwin-curious child, twentysomething adventurer, and elderly worm scientist. Essays focusing on the origins of tetrapods, elephants, whales, and birds explain fundamental Darwinian concepts (natural selection, for example) with examples of fossil history and comparative anatomy.The imagery of the children's story offers a way to remember and recreate scientific discoveries. By juxtaposing Darwin's science with tales for children, Do Elephants Have Knees? underscores the importance of whimsical storytelling to the accomplishment of serious thinking. Charles Darwin mused about duck beaks and swimming bears as he imagined a pathway for the origin of baleen. A "bearduck" chimera may be a stretch, but the science linking not just cows but also whales to moose through shared ancestry has great merit. Teaching about shared ancestry may begin with attention to Bernard Wiseman's Morris the Moose. Morris believes that cows and deer are fine examples of moose because they all have four legs and things on their heads. No whale antlers are known, but fossils of four-legged whales are. By calling attention to surprising and serendipitous echoes between children's stories and challenging science, Ault demonstrates how playful thinking opens the doors to an understanding of evolutionary thought.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• First contact
• the 19th century
• "Shark!"
• an evolving modern perspective
• White shark captures in Tasmanian waters
• Shark attacks in Tasmanian waters
• Encounters with White sharks in Tasmanian waters
• Hidden lives revealed
• Predatory brethren
• Sources and chapter notes
• Index.

Susan Casey was in her living room when she first saw the great white sharks of the Farallon Islands, their dark fins swirling around a small motorboat in a documentary. These sharks were the alphas among alphas, some longer than twenty feet, and there were too many to count; even more incredible, this congregation was taking place just twenty-seven miles off the coast of San Francisco. In a matter of months, Casey was being hoisted out of the early-winter swells on a crane, up a cliff face to the barren surface of Southeast Farallon Island - dubbed by sailors in the 1850s the "devil's teeth." There she joined Scot Anderson and Peter Pyle, the two biologists who bunk down during shark season each fall in the Island's ori:e habitable building, a haunted, 135-year-old house spackled with lichen and gull guano. Two days later, she got her first glimpse of the famous, terrifying jaws up close, and she was instantly hooked; her fascination soon yielded to obsession-and an invitation to return for a full season. But as Casey readied herself for the eight-week stint, she had no way of preparing for what she would find among the dangerous, forgotten islands that have banished every campaign for civilization in the past two hundred years. "The Devil's Teeth" is a vivid dispatch from an otherworldly out-post, a story of crossing the boundary between society and an untamed place where humans are neither wanted nor needed. In a world where very little is known for certain, we knew that below us a great white shark was orbiting, waiting for the seal to bleed some more, and that this shark would soon be returning for breakfast. It might be Betty or Mama or the Gadillac, one of the huge females that patrolled the east side of the island. These big girls, all of them over 18 feet long, were known as the sisterhood. Or it might be a "smaller" male (say, 14 or 15 feet) like Two Spot or T-Nose or the sneaky Gal Ripfin. These sharks were called the rat pack. It might be any number of great whites. At this time of the year there were scores of them cruising this 120-acre patch of sea, swimming close to the shoreline of Southeast Farallon Island as hapless seals washed out of finger gulleys at high tide and into the danger zone. In any given year more than a thousand people will be maimed by toilet bowl cleaning products or killed by cattle. Less than a dozen will be attacked by a great white shark. In this neighbourhood, however, odds do not count. At the Farallon Islands in autumn, your chance of meeting a great white face-to-face is better than even money, should you be crazy enough or unlucky enough to end up in the water.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Orcas are the most controversial display animal in history. But how did we come to care about them in the first place? Drawing upon previously unavailable documents and interviews, this book explores our love affair with killer whales, and its impact on science, the marine park industry, and modern environmentalism.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• The world-famous shark caller
• An ancient fish
• A demon fish
• Dried seafood street
• The shark sleuths
• Shark trackers
• Living with sharks
• Fish fight
• Gawking at Jaws
• Conclusion : shark nirvana.

How to Snog a Hagfish! explores the most bizarre, the most disgusting and the most fascinating creatures that inhabit the oceans. When attacked, the hagfish (also known as the slime eel) ties itself in a knot that travels the length of its body, squeezing out mucus by the bucketful and making it impossible for a predator to keep hold. To eat, a starfish regurgitates its stomach, digests its food then swallows its stomach back down again. Pearlfish stick close to sea cucumbers, whose bowels they swim into when danger's near. And with shark attacks and jellyfish encounters, the oceans take on another level of repulsiveness when man dips his toes in the water. We know more about the surface of the moon than we do the underwater world, but some of the species covered in this book are beyond even the imagination of science fiction writers. Entertaining yet informative, the idea of this book is not to wallow in grossness with the intention of putting people off their dinner, but to explore just how fascinating and 'alien' our own planet can be. Highly illustrated, and with stories and anecdotes that help bring a human perspective, this book demystifies the natural world beneath the waves, and shows how it's not quite so shocking when you understand why these creatures have developed the way they have.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A startling new book, his most personal to date, from Philip Hoare, co-curator of 'Moby Dick: Big Read and winner of the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize for 'Leviathan'. The sea surrounds us. It gives us life, provides us with the air we breathe and the food we eat. It is ceaseless change and constant presence. It covers two-thirds of our planet. Yet caught up in our everyday lives, we barely notice it. In 'The Sea Inside', Philip Hoare sets out to rediscover the sea, its islands, birds and beasts. He begins on the south coast where he grew up, a place of almost monastic escape. From there he travels to the other side of the world - the Azores, Sri Lanka, New Zealand - in search of encounters with animals and people. Navigating between human and natural history, he asks what these stories mean for us now. Along the way we meet an amazing cast; from scientists to tattooed warriors; from ravens to whales and bizarre creatures that may, or may not, be extinct. Part memoir, part fantastical travelogue, 'The Sea Inside' takes us on an astounding journey of discovery.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Selected by "The New York Times Book Review" as a Notable Book of the Year A revelatory tale of science, adventure, and modern myth. When the writer Donovan Hohn heard of the mysterious loss of thousands of bath toys at sea, he figured he would interview a few oceanographers, talk to a few beachcombers, and read up on Arctic science and geography. But questions can be like ocean currents: wade in too far, and they carry you away. Hohn's accidental odyssey pulls him into the secretive world of shipping conglomerates, the daring work of Arctic researchers, the lunatic risks of maverick sailors, and the shadowy world of Chinese toy factories. "Moby-Duck" is a journey into the heart of the sea and an adventure through science, myth, the global economy, and some of the worst weather imaginable. With each new discovery, Hohn learns of another loose thread, and with each successive chase, he comes closer to understanding where his castaway quarry comes from and where it goes. In the grand tradition of Tony Horwitz and David Quammen, "Moby-Duck" is a compulsively readable narrative of whimsy and curiosity.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Preface: What Is a Marine Biologist? vii Acknowledgments ix Apologia xi Prologue: The Perils of Teaching 1
• Chapter 1. Deadly Darts 3
• Chapter 2. The Great Jade Green Octopus Hunt 9
• Chapter 3. Bedtime Stories 20
• Chapter 4. Garden of Eden: The Death Apple and the Tree of Life 29
• Chapter 5. A True Romance Story 36
• Chapter 6. Elixir of Love 46
• Chapter 7. Skinny South Sea Sausages 52
• Chapter 8. The Only Male Reproductive Organ with a Name 59
• Chapter 9. Living Lance 66
• Chapter 10. Role Reversal 74
• Chapter 11. Super Male 83
• Chapter 12. Miracle Fish 89
• Chapter 13. Fugu 99
• Chapter 14. Bunnies of the Sea 107
• Chapter 15. Passion for Purple 116
• Chapter 16. Size Does Count 122
• Chapter 17. Fiddler on the Root 131
• Chapter 18. Beware the Duppy 138
• Chapter 19. The Secret of an Improved Sex Life 145
• Chapter 20. How to Court a Female 152
• Chapter 21. The Anti-BLB Club 159
• Chapter 22. Sea Pussy 166
• Chapter 23. Debunking the Big Lie 176
• Chapter 24. A Peek into the Anus of a Sea Cucumber 183
• Chapter 25. The Yellow Submarine 190
• Chapter 26. The Perils of Vanity 200
• Chapter 27. Sexually Repressed Victorian Taxonomists 206
• Chapter 28. Random Ramblings on Relationships 214
• Chapter 29. Penile Bloodletting 222
• Chapter 30. Death and Confusion 232
• Chapter 31. Eyeball to Eyeball 242 Epilogue 253 Glossary 257 Illustration Sources 264 Index 265.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Learning marine biology from a textbook is one thing. But take readers to the bottom of the sea in a submarine to discover living fossils or to coral reefs to observe a day in the life of an octopus, and the sea and its splendors come into focus, in brilliant colors and with immediacy. In Sensuous Seas, Eugene Kaplan offers readers an irresistibly irreverent voyage to the world of sea creatures, with a look at their habitats, their beauty and, yes, even their sex lives. A marine biologist who has built fish farms in Africa and established a marine laboratory in Jamaica, Kaplan takes us to oceans across the world to experience the lives of their inhabitants, from the horribly grotesque to the exquisitely beautiful. In chapters with titles such as "Fiddler on the Root" (reproductive rituals of fiddler crabs) and "Size Does Count" (why barnacles have the largest penis, comparatively, in the animal kingdom), Kaplan ventures inside coral reefs to study mating parrotfish; dives 740 feet in a submarine to find living fossils; explains what results from swallowing a piece of living octopus tentacle; and describes a shark attack on a friend. The book is a sensuous blend of sparkling prose and 150 beautiful illustrations that clarify the science. Each chapter opens with an exciting personal anecdote that leads into the scientific exploration of a distinct inhabitant of the sea world--allowing the reader to experience firsthand the incredible complexity of sea life. A one-of-a-kind memoir that unfolds in remarkable reaches of ocean few of us can ever visit for ourselves, Sensuous Seas brings the underwater world back to living room and classroom alike. Readers will be surprised at how much marine biology they have learned while being amused.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1 Asking for It--Bering Sea2 It's a Livin'--Georges Bank3 Rollers--Chignik, Alaska, 19864 Atavism--Chignik, Alaska, 19865 Encroachments6 Knee-Deep in Crude and Bullshit--The EXXON Valdez Disaster7 Turbot Warriors--The Grand Banks8 Myre Remembered--Norwegians9 Russians and Spaniards--Flemish Cap, 199610 Outporters11 Plankton Soup--Chile12 Siwashers--Chiloe Island, Chile13 Barefoot on the Java Sea14 Unseen Forces15 The Unforgiving Bar--Greymouth, New Zealand16 The Fish Habits of Japan17 Fencing the Ocean Commons--The Winners and the Anxious Dispossessed18 Mr. Bigfoot on the Raw-Bacon Circuit--Japan, 1980 and 198819 Harpooners--Ayukawa, Central Japan20 Hanging Genki with the Squidders21 Floating Cities--Bristol Bay, Alaska22 Generations--Past Meets Present23 Dividing and Protecting the Loot24 No Promises25 Changes--Count on Nothing26 Catching FishEpilogueMaps--Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, North Atlantic, Chile, Indonesia, North PacificIndexColor photographs follow page 132Black-and-white photographs appear on pages 42 - 43, 104 - 105, 162 - 163, 208 - 209, 258 - 259, 308 - 309, 354.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

An account of commercial fishermen at work in a hard profession. The author sailed with fishermen and women in all the seas of the world, from Indonesian village fishermen to a Japanese squid boat in the North Pacific, to cod fishermen on the Grand Banks in Alaska.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
"No one writing today can match William McCloskey's knowledge of fishing or the breadth of his experience at sea. He is the writer of record on world fishing." - William Warner, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of "Beautiful Swimmers and Distant Waters". What reviewers said about "Fish Decks", William McCloskey's previous book: "His achievement has been to write a paean for a way of life." - Smithsonian "His love for the fishing trade in all its aspects imbues every page of this vivid book." - "Washington Post Book World". "A gripping account of his experience among the independent, vigorous men and women with whom he hauled lines and gutted fish under hand-numbing conditions." - "Publishers Weekly". "His vivid descriptions of maritime fishing might well be placed beside Peter Matthiessen's Men's Lives for anyone interested in understanding the hard price these people pay for their chosen way of life." - "Library Journal".
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

In this authentic account of a seafaring life, Captain George Moskovita offers a highly personal and often humorous look at the career of a commercial fisherman. George Moskovita was sixteen when he graduated from high school in Bellingham, Washington, and went to sea. Fishing would take him crabbing off Alaska, seining for sardines off California and for tuna off Mexico, and catching soupfin sharks for their livers (a vital source of Vitamin A during World War II). He came to Astoria, Oregon, in 1939, where he was a pioneer of the Oregon ocean perch fishery. In a career that spanned more than sixty years, George Moskovita met with many maritime adventures, recounted for the reader in a clear, direct, and unsentimental style. He saw the fishery he had helped build devastated by foreign factory processing ships. He bought, repaired, traded, and sank more boats than most fishermen would work on in a lifetime. Along the way, he managed to raise four daughters with his wife, June. The name of one of his last boats, the Four Daughters, reflects the central importance of family life to a man who was often at sea. Moskovita's memoir provides a unique glimpse of Pacific maritime life in the 20th century, small-town coastal life after World War II, and the early days of fishery development in Oregon. With an introduction and textual notes by Carmel Finley, an historian of science, and Mary Hunsicker, an aquatic and fisheries scientist, this book will be invaluable to fishery students and professionals interested in the biology, ecology, and history of oceans and commercial fishing. It will also have broad appeal to readers of Oregon history and maritime adventure, and anyone else who has ever stood at the western edge of the continent and wondered what life was like at sea.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Foreword, by Sylvia A. EarleAcknowledgments1. Underwater Thoughts2. Marineland of the Pacific3. A First Look at Realism4. The Road to Gonzaga Bay5. The Steinhart Aquarium6. Adventure in the Sea of Cortez7. Sea World8. Carnival in Mazatlan9. The Lure of Sharks10. Tanner Bank and Mexico Expo11. The Revillagigedo Islands12. Roundabout to Steinhart Aquarium13. Search for a Living Fossil14. To Chile, Easter Island, and Rarotonga15. Monterey Bay Aquarium16. Creating the Exhibits17. Aquarists at Work18.Collecting the Fish19. Always Something New20. The Open Ocean21. Pelagic Fishes22. A Million-Gallon Fishbowl23. A New DirectionSelected ReadingIndex.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This engaging memoir presents one man's lifelong love of the ocean and gives a highly personal, behind-the-scenes look at California's magnificent and innovative aquariums. David Powell, for many years curator of the world-renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium, tells the story of his life as a pioneering aquarist. From handling great white sharks to transporting delicate fish on bumpy airplanes to night diving for fish in the Indian Ocean. A Fascination for Fish describes many of the mind-boggling challenges that make modern aquariums possible and offers an intriguing glimpse beneath the ocean's surface. Powell's career in diving and aquarium development goes back to the beginning of modern methods in both areas. From the early techniques he devised to get fish into aquariums alive and healthy to his later exploratory dive to a depth of eleven hundred feet in a two-person submarine. Powell's action-packed narrative inspires laughter, wonder, and philosophical reflection. A Fascination for Fish also includes many stories about Powell's diving adventures on the California coast, in the Sea of Cortez, and in many remote and exotic locations around the world.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• The case of the colorblind painter
• The last hippie
• A surgeon's life
• To see and not see
• The landscape of his dreams
• Prodigies
• An anthropologist on Mars.

The author profiles seven neurological patients, including a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome and an artist whose color sense is destroyed in an accident but finds new creative power in black and white.

• pt.
• 1. Losses. The man who mistook his wife for a hat
• The lost mariner
• The disembodied lady
• The man who fell out of bed
• Hands
• Phantoms
• On the level
• Eyes right!
• The president's speech
• pt.
• 2. Excesses. Witty ticcy Ray
• Cupid's disease
• A matter of identity
• Yes, father-sister
• The possessed
• pt.
• 3. Transports. Reminiscence
• Incontinent nostalgia
• A passage to India
• The dog beneath the skin
• Murder
• The visions of Hildegard
• pt.
• 4. The world of the simple. Rebecca
• A walking grove
• The twins
• The autist artist.

In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks's splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility: "the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject."

Massive, elusive, and always deserving of respect, the walrus is one of the Arctic's most recognizable animals. For thousands of years, Arctic residents have shared the coastlines and waters of the Arctic with these huge beasts. Often misunderstood by people who have not had first-hand encounters with them, walruses are known to those who share their habitat as somewhat unpredictable creatures, always deserving of caution when encountered. From close encounters with angry walruses, bent on destroying boats and chasing off humans to witnessing the attentive care of a walrus mother with its calf, this book gives readers from outside the Arctic a first-hand look at what life alongside walruses is really like. Aiviq: Life with Walruses features stunning wildlife photography by acclaimed photographer Paul Souders accompanied by first-hand accounts from people living alongside this enormous sea mammal.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Kuchitsu, Training of a Molecular Scientist, East and West, 1995(1), 6-10.--The personal development of a scientist, Japanese style. Mackay, The Lab, 1995(1), 12-18.- How research operated in Britain and in particular around J.D. Bernal.-Hargittai, When Resonance Made Waves, 1995(1), 34-37.- Ideological struggle poisoned science in Stalin's Soviet empire.- Klotz, Wit and Wisdom of Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, 1995(1), 40-43.- The human side of a great scientist.-Blake, The Chemistry of Good Taste, 1995(2), 50-55.- Experience of the cooking chemist.-Seaborg, Gilbert Newton Lewis, 1995(3), 27-37.- Personal encounters with one of the trendsetters of modern chemistry.- Applewhite, The Naming of Buckminsterfullerene, 1995(3), 52-54.- R. Buckminster Fuller's close associate narrates what is in the name of C60.-Hargittai, Peace through Chemistry, 1995(3), 55-56.- The artist Roy Lichtenstein's meeting with chemistry.- Cram, Spherand, 1995(3), 58.-Scientists have favorite molecules.- Klotz, Water, Superwaters, and polywater, 1995(4), 34-41.- The peculiar properties of water have inspired bogus "discoveries."1996-Pauling, The Discovery of the Alpha Helix, 1996(1), 32-38.- A great chemist's posthumous paper of historical significance.Mackay, Food for Thought, 1996(1), 52-54.- Social activities facilitate scientific exchange and generating novel ideas.- Hoffmann, The Difference between Art and Science, 1996(1), 55.- The Nobel laureate chemist is also a noted poet.- Hargittai and Domenicano, System of Elements in Anagni, 1996(1), 56.A 13th century fresco depicts four element and their relationships.- Lambert, Shakespeare and Thermodynamics, 1996(2), 20-25.About communicating scientific concepts to non-scientists.-Koz'min, Quadruple Metal Metal Bond.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Includes specially selected articles that previously appeared in The Chemical Intelligencer magazine published (1995-2000). Excerpts of these Editor's choice chapters chronicle the culture and history of chemistry, featuring great chemists and discoverers. Contributors from among the best-known authors of the chemistry community, including numerous Nobel laureates. Features behind the scenes stories about pivotal discoveries, intricacies of laboratory life and interactions among scientists, favorite recipes of renowned researchers, life histories and anecdotes. Chapters detail the human side of science but also present scientific information communicated in an easy-to-perceive and entertaining way. This unique book is not only aimed at chemists but individuals who are interested in the cultural aspects of our science.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)