Biological Sciences in The Books Store

Excerpts from Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America
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Colorful songbirds with heavy, seed-crushing bills, cardinals and grosbeaks are popular at feeders.

In North America, the Orchard and Baltimore Orioles are fairly widespread in the East; Bullock's is widespread in the West; and the Spot-breasted Oriole is limited to South Florida.

Peterson sometimes painted over figures on a plate and sometimes even cut them out. Canyon Wren was missing from the original art. Michael O'Brien painted a new Canyon Wren for inclusion in the new field guide.

The Orange Bishop is native to Africa but has been introduced in California. Peterson had not painted this bird for his field guides, so Michael O’Brien painted this one.

In a world without wood, we might not be here at all. Without wood, we wouldn't have had the fire, heat, and shelter that allowed us to expand into the colder regions of the planet. If civilization somehow did develop, our daily lives still would be vastly different: there would be no violins, baseball bats, chopsticks, or wine corks. The book you are now holding wouldn't exist.

At the same time, many of us are removed from the world where wood is shaped and celebrated every day. That world is inhabited by a unique assortment of eccentric craftsmen and passionate enthusiasts who have created some of the world's most beloved musical instruments, feared weapons, dazzling architecture, sacred relics, and bizarre forms of transportation. In A Splintered History of Wood, Spike Carlsen has uncovered the most outlandish characters and examples, from world-champion chainsaw carvers to blind woodworkers, the Miraculous Staircase to the Lindbergh kidnapping case, and many more, in a passionate and personal exploration of nature's greatest gift.

I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence.

The title of this 1986 work, Dawkins's second book, refers to the Rev. William Paley's 1802 work, Natural Theology, which argued that just as finding a watch would lead you to conclude that a watchmaker must exist, the complexity of living organisms proves that a Creator exists. Not so, says Dawkins: "All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way... it is the blind watchmaker."