I’ll be honest, having read Dr. Eleanor Spicer Rice’s four books about ants and found them to be absolutely brilliant, I may have actually squealed (in a manly, dignified way, of course) with glee upon learning of the publication by University of Chicago Press of her new “Dr. Eleanor’s Book of Common Spiders.”
Rather than his own review of a book this week, Mark has dedicated his Sunday book review to the winner of his recently concluded book reviewing contest. The challenge: review George Monbiot’s book “Feral; Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life.” The submitted reviews were then read, critiqued, and scored by a most eminent and distinguished panel of judges. The one with the best marks was then declared to be the winner.
Deep in the Peruvian rain forest, a helicopter descends into a clearing. Moving quickly, its passengers emerge from its open side doors and spring nimbly to the ground the moment its skids touch the surface. They have to move fast to get their equipment unloaded and operational. Time is of the essence. The rest of […]
My dear Galileo,
Each evening for weeks now I have carried my telescope to the top of a nearby hill and pointed its 70mm objective lens toward the clearly visible bright dot in the sky that I have learned to identify as Jupiter. Bringing it into focus, its 17.5x magnification – more than your early 8x model but less than your eventual 20x one – shows me clearly that what I am seeing is not a star but a planet; a planet with tiny illuminated dots seemingly nearby it.