Science Nature Books

I find this product very useful and it was delivered in a timely manner

I'm currently a student enrolled in a class that is using this book. I bought it over the summer to prepare for the course and found it very confusing. The book is very illogical and not well written at all. The writers seem to try to find the most complicated way to express even the simplest idea. For example Newton's first law of motion is stated as "An object at rest and an object in motion maintains its velocity unless it experiences an unbalanced force." How much wordier can it get?

The entire textbook is this way and jumps from one subject to another with almost no logical order. I would strongly suggest that anyone thinking of buying this book reconsider. There are many superior books out there than this one.

I started reading this book to learn more about Florida's environmental issues and never expected to learn so much or enjoy it so much. Living in a place that has few water issues I was shocked to realize what has been and is going on in much of the rest of the country. The sad thing about this wonderfully researched and well written book is it shows another area in which out government is failing to protect the people and environment of the US. It also shows the difficult balance between quick and easy economic stimulus and the high cost in other areas.

Outstanding book. It shows us how we let our environment get downgraded and is an important weapon for preventing further damage. Amazon price was good and service great.

Mirage is a work of science and passion. The writer has focused on that most important, scarce, and necessary resource: fresh water. She explores the political decisions and the business decisions that have affected the water supply in Florida and the rest of the East Coast of the United States. Her research is extensive; her prose is crisp; and her cause is sanity in the management of growth. I recommend this book for any reader who has an interest in science, nature, or business.

A very thoughtful, well-written book that delves into the science, history and politics of water in Florida and manages to do so in an interesting and readable manner. Cynthia Barnett clearly indentifies the problems and offers reasonable solutions without becoming judgemental or dogmatic. A must read for anyone living in the State of Florida or planning to do so and highly recommended for everyone else!

Discussions of America's water problems usually are limited to the West, so it's eye-opening to view a title which is the first to call attention to the disappearance of fresh water from Florida to the Great Lakes. From the high demands of newly-sprawling Florida subdivisions to freshwater aquifers which are disappearing elsewhere, MIRAGE blends investigative journalism with environmental and science history to prove an essential survey of problems and solutions. A 'must' not just for Eastern U.S. libraries, but for any collection on environmental issues and challenges.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I like it very much especialy for the story of each texture, but I prefer a larger version of this book with more textures!

Thanks for the good service. I love all my books boght at Amazon. Congratulatios Amazon!

It is a very nice short account of different forms in nature, I enjoyed the interpretation given to the different natural expressions.

A wonderful little book that shows the remarkable complexity and inner structure of natural patterns. Loaded with black and white illustrations, Wade presents the reader with a variety of amazing, self-similar shapes that occur in nature. Anyone interested in fractals, nature, sacred geometry, and mathematics is sure to be attracted to this book. The reader will gain an appreciation of the simple, yet amazing intelligence built into natural life-forms, landscapes, and objects.
(Simeon Hein, Ph.D., is the author of Opening Minds: A Journey of Extraordinary Encounters, Crop Circles, and Resonance. (Mount Baldy Press, Inc., 2002))

This book is a thoughtful look at patterns of all sorts. The text accompanying the picture is concise and helpful, but not overwhelming.
This is a book one can open to any page and just let the mind wander. The world of Li is more complex and beautiful than I had imagined.

This is a birthday gift for my eleven year old son who recently got a digital microscope. He loves it, as does his seven year old brother. Great photographs. Also, it feels like a hardcover, not a flimsy paperback. Web addresses given for additional microscope learning. Very happy with purchase!

We have a set of educational books that have the same learning structure as this book. It is very well laid out and I love the experiments and web links that go with each chapter. It's very easy to use and easy on the eyes.

For some time now, we have been pounded with the bad news about Darwin. Life was shaped by a war of all against all. Evolution is survival of the fittest. People are incurably violent "killer apes" because Darwin made us killing machines.

This is all alot of nonsense, and always has been. It is important for a number of reasons, however. Among other things, many of the opponents of Darwin in the academic world are motivated by an understandable distaste for the "killer ape" school of thought. If Darwin says that people are no damm good, and that is built into our genes, then we reject Darwin.

But Darwin never said any of that stuff. Evolution by natural selection favors whatever promotes survival, under the conditions a species finds itself. It promotes being big and heavy, for whales in the ocean; it promotes being light and thin, for hummingbirds. It does not promote any one thing, in all circumstances.

It particularly does not promote unlimited aggressiveness, particularly among social animals. A very more useful strategy for survival is cooperation. De Waal makes the case that cooperation is built into us, by natural selection. He uses eminently Darwinian logic, and he knows the science.

Good Natured is a book focusing on morality in the animal kingdom, specifically primates. Overall, I thought this was definitely a fairy easy and engrossing read. The book deals with the structure of primate societies and how they enforce morality, how deeply it extends through the primate family (de Waal primarily researches chimpanzees), and instances of love, guilt, aggression, deception from his own research and those of other primatologists. He also describes other philosophies and research into moral systems.

I like de Waals style: the studies he talked about were fascinating and he really keeps your interest. I guess the only negative is that the book is a little disjointed in places. For example, in the chapter on sympathy there is a section on deception. In the end he makes his own speculation on morality stretching across human boundaries and what he makes of the implications for treatment of primates and other animals. It's definitely a great read for anyone interested in the evolution of morality and primatology.

I must say that this book has really helped me understand how monkeys, bonobos, and chimps live in both captivity and in the wild. In the same token it has also help understand how they all interact with each other, and sometimes I must admit that they seem to treat each other like humans treat one another.

Chapter Two in the book to me seemed to be the most interesting. De Waal with great detail writes about relationships within the species. How they accept handicap within the species and how they deal with an offspring's death.

Overall this book is outstanding and clearly understood. All chapters of this book even though this book is about primates, monkeys, etc., have a tie to human beings. I recommend this book to those individuals interested in learning the behavior and the nature of primates, monkeys, etc., but most of all those interested in learning the behavior and nature of humans, after all we did evolve from old world primates.

I found the book to be highly readable and subject matter to be fascinating. This subject is no where near my field (which is history) but found that De Waal presents the material in way that is very accessible to anyone. De Waal has an entertaining writing style that keeps you absorbed in the reading without the effort I have found in other books on the subject.

It's very important for us to really look at where we come from and why we are what we are, and taking a look at our closest relatives is a good window into our minds. I found the analysis and the conclusions to be well formed and fairly presented. The evidence he gives for his conclusions is well documented and explained.

While I did have a few problems here and there, these did not detract from the overall readability and the pure enjoyment of the book. This was just a very enjoyable book that I would recommend to anyone, whether you have a deep interest in the topic or you're just looking for an interesting book to use up a few hours in the day.

De Waal is brilliant, objective, careful in reaching conclusions, ethical, a good writer, and has a lot to say. He is very much aware of research in related fields, such as developmental psychology. He and others place great store on observation of animals in natural settings, but also use controlled experimentation, analogous to the type of studies psychologists are always performing on college students. While I think this was an outstanding book, I would acknowledge that the beginning is slower reading than the end: more focused on the necessary vocabulary, some of the controversies, more argumentative, a little redundant.

De Waal contrasts "lower" primates and chimpanzees so that we can better understand the evolution of morality, and such distinctions as that between learned adjustment and true empathy. Chimps will mourn, console, deceive; the alpha male will intervene in disputes where the only objective can be restoration of harmony. As all animals, their adaptive potential exceeds the range of behavior observed in natural settings. For example, in the wild, females do not usually spend much time with other adult females, whereas in captivity they do. In captivity, they may use their friendships/alliances to control overly aggressive males, and even influence who becomes the alpha male. While morality has a genetic basis, even in monkeys there is a cultural component. In one experiment, aggressive rhesus adolescents learned to be more tolerant after living with more peaceful stump tailed macaques for 6 months.

The adaptive potential of morality is that it fosters group cohesion, which for many species is essential for defense against predators, or to find or protect resources. This is not to deny that one basis of morality is the selfish gene: by helping kin, you are helping some of your own genes to survive, so "altruistic genes" tend to perpetuate themselves.

The delivery was fast, and the condition is very good as mentioned in the post

not bad, i need it for class. otherwise the book is good.

This book is not the BEST that ought be found on the topic, but it is the best I have seen...especially in recent years. The editor, however, has many degrees from the BEST universities in America -- so he knows what he is doing. A sufficient book for introductory reading.

Hungry Plants
Author: Mary Batten
Reviewed By:Brianna - a Stockbridge Central School 3rd Grader
****
Did you know that some plants can actually eat bugs!?
It's true! There are more than 600 kinds of bug eating plants in the word. In this book Hungry Plants you will learn about all kinds of insect- eating plants. Did you know Borneo is home to the biggest pitcher plants in the world!? Insect -eating plants don't have eyes so how does a Venus fly trap know when a bug is in there mouth? When a fly or any other small insect, crawls on to a Venus fly trap's leaf, it touches a tiny hair. Then the fly touches another hair these little hairs are triggers that signals to the plants that dinner is here!! There is not a lot of text and through out the book there is narration it's easy to read and interesting. The illustrations are very detailed and are interesting. They're almost like photographs. I recommend this book to people who love plants that eat bugs or any body who would like to learn about hungry plants. So read the book or you'll be missing out!!!

My daughter loved every page of the book. It is a learning book and does so in a very interesting way. My daughter couldn't stop saying how good this book was. I would recommend it to anyone!

This is one entralling book! I knew there were meat eating plants, but I never thought of them as "passive" and "active". The book is broken up in cute sections, "Gulp!" and "Slurp!" being my favorite, but the entire book keeps your interest. The drawings are quite excellent and you learn a lot just by looking at the pictures. I really enjoyed it and my little brother just loves it. A hit.

This is an excellent first book to fire up the interest of children in carnivorous plants. This is a hobby of mine, and I have an extensive collection, and am interested in conservation of their habitats.

The book talks about the major genera of carnivorous plants (although it completely skips Pinguicula, the butterworts). The full-color illustrations are beautiful and accurate. The information in the book is all factually accurate. It even briefly covers conservation.

I bought this book along with Plants Bite Back. We had already read our library copy of the Plants Bite Back and I actually was not sure I needed another book on carniverous plants. To my surprise, this little book offers other very important and interesting details on plants that are not in the other book (which is an excellent book also).

I am glad we got this book (e.g.it explained why we shouldn't keep touching the Venus Flytrap--it probably saved the plant's life from inquisitive little hands).

Teachers should be advised to identify to students the possibility of environmental hyperbole in Chapter 7, "Saving the Rain Forests". Absence of scientific attribution to deforestation rates make it difficult to know whether the authors are using reliable scientific sources for their data or simply repeating hyperbole found in radical environmental materials. Scientific documentation used by Dr. Bjorn Lomborg in "The Skeptical Environmentalist" appears to be contrary to the deforestation issue information as portrayed by Will Osborne and Mary Pope Osborne. I cannot recommend the use of Chapter 7 in this book in elementary school classrooms.

Our girls read this after a trip to the Amazon, and found lots that they recognized & enjoyed. The standard of information is rather higher than that in the Magic Tree house books, which is reasonable, given that they don't have to worry about plot & characters as well!

If your child enjoys Magic Tree house, and would like to know more about the Amazon this is fine, but I would also recommend One Small Square: Tropical Rainforests (by Donald Silver). We took this with us to the rainforest (see review) and found it to be excellent.

This book was very interesting. It tells you how a frog can jump twenty times it's body length and how far you could jump if you could hop like a frog. It also tells you how much weight you could lift if you were as strong as an ant. And much more.

I read this book with my mom and did the math calculations with my dad. It was a fun way to learn about insects, reptiles and animals.

I think teachers should use this book to help their students learn about math.

This book offers a look at the wonders of the natural world by comparing the capabilities of many different animals and birds in human terms. The concept, together with the large and vivid illustrations hooked me from the beginning. This book really challenges a child to think and causes an adult to marvel at God's creations. "If you hopped like a frog...you could jump from home plate to first base in one mighty leap!...If you grew as fast in your first nine months as you did in the nine months before you were born...you would have been...heavier than 2 1/2 million elephants!" Just imagine that!

I am a high school math teacher and I use this book to help my freshmen learn about ratios and proportions. They use the proportions to calculate how much they could swallow, how far they could jump, etc. They're astonished at the results!

This book was so enjoyable! The pictures were great!It gave you facts, and then expanded on those facts to give you information how it would affect you. As a teacher, I could use this book as an introduction and then have my students make a spin-off class book.