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  Fifty Bales of Hay

  Roger Evans

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  Roger Evans faces each day on his dairy farm in Shropshire with a wonderful mixture of dry humour, sharp observation and a delight in the natural world and the animals around him.
  
   This latest book of his popular diary entries takes his fans through the weeks of the past two years and covers his beloved farm dogs, his cattle, his friends at the pub.  He struggles through all weather, survives the ups and (mainly) downs facing everyone in the dairy industry and he encounters several unexpected events along the way.
  
  Very funny, uplifting and a joy to read.

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  Close Encounters with Humankind...

  Sang-Hee Lee, Shin-Young Yoon

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  What can fossilized teeth tell us about our ancient life expectancy? What can big data on fossils reveal about farming's problematic role in human evolution? How can simple geometric comparisons of skull and pelvic fossils suggest an origin to our social nature? 
  In Close Encounters with Humankind, paleoanthropologist Sang-Hee Lee explores some of our biggest evolutionary questions from unexpected new angles. Through a series of entertaining, bite-sized chapters, we gain new perspectives into our first hominin ancestors, our first steps on two feet, our first forays into toolmaking and hunting, and of course our continuing evolution.

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  This Playful Universe

  Stephan Martin

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  Stephan Martin tells us that ninety-six percent of the universe is dark matter we can't see and don't understand. He sat down with leading physicists, spiritual leaders, and cultural creatives to get their insights on what we do know-and what we believe. In this riveting conversation he shares insights from every perspective-the questions that arise from the creativity of the universe itself.

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  Broadsides from the Other Orders...

  Sue Hubbell

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  Most of us think of bugs as pesky creatures we squish under our shoes or bat away with our hands. Under the microscope of Sue Hubbell's keen eye emerges an exciting world we rarely take the time to see. Author of A Country Year, Hubbell writes regularly for The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and Discover magazines, bringing to her delightful essays the practical veracity of a gentlewoman farmer, and the style and Elan of an eccentric who has found her bliss.

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  The Women's Royal Army Corps

  Shelford Bidwell

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  When the history of the Twentieth Century is written let us hope that the few nobel ideals of our era are not entirely submerged by the scientific miracles and horrors which increasingly dominate our lives.  High among such ideas must rank the recognition of women in more and more walks of life as equal partners with men, and in no area was the battle for recognition fought with greater determination then or more evident ultimate justification in the righteousness of their course then in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, later to become the WRAC.  As Brigadier Bidwell puts it: At the heart of the question was not so much doubt about the ability or reliability of women, but an unformulated but powerful fear of the consequences of their intrusion in strength into an entity so exclusively and aggressively male as an army in the field'.  He goes on to demonstrate how they managed not only to dispel that fear but but to replace it with admiration and respect which few could have dared to envisage at the outset.  The Corps must be warmly congratulated upon their decision to ask Brigadier Bidwell to write their history.  As an experienced military historian but nevertheless a detached observer, he brings to his task an objectivity and balance of judgement which exonerates his book from any taints of hagiography but nevertheless constitutes a record of which even the oldest regiments would be proud.

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  The Secret Life of Sharks - A...

  A. Peter Klimley

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  Marine biologist Pete Klimley swims with the sharks. He was one of the first scientists to free-dive among sharks, and he has spent nearly thirty years studying shark behavior, sometimes swimming in schools of several hundred sharks. From his firsthand observations he has learned that sharks are not the vicious man-eaters that we imagine, but fascinating animals with complex behaviors.Most people who think of sharks at all think immediately of great white sharks. But there are more than four hundred species of shark. Dr. Klimley has studied several species, most notably the great white and the hammerhead. (He describes the great white as the athlete among sharks, and the hammerhead as the Ph.D. of the shark world.) In The Secret Life of Sharks Dr. Klimley reveals the significant discoveries he made about hammerhead navigation and great white eating habits. By studying hammerheads gathered around underwater seamounts, Dr. Klimley learned that hammerheads rely on sophisticated tracking of ocean-floor magnetism to navigate. His long-term study of great white sharks off the California coast demonstrated that these huge sharks prefer to eat seals and sea lions because of the energy contained in their fatty bodies. They are selective eaters, not the man-eaters we expect, and they sometimes go weeks between meals. But Dr. Klimley did observe a ritualized behavior that great whites practice in order to avoid deadly disputes over prey that one shark has captured and another wants.Although we have learned a great deal about shark behavior, says Dr. Klimley, there is much that we do not know. Unfortunately we are destroying these magnificent creatures of the deep through overfishing and degradation of the oceans. Already some populations of sharks have declined steeply.Vividly written by one of the foremost authorities on sharks, The Secret Life of Sharks is a fascinating account of some of the world's most magnificent animals.

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