A latest collection of 10 high-seas and "dark continent" adventures by the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of The Caprices is inspired by the ambitions and controversies surrounding some of history's most intrepid pioneers, including Ferdinand Magellan and Zimri Coffin. Original.
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award. A collection of stories artfully told across the theatre of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. An Anglo-Indian cavalryman, his homeland on the brink of revolution, finds himself in Malaysia fighting to protect British interests. Two soldiers lost in the jungle with a Japanese prisoner confront their prejudices toward each other, and the nature of being American. An island witnesses the passing of history from Magellan, to Amelia Earhart, to the dropping of the atomic bomb. With exquisite lyricism tempered by a journalist’s eye for detail, Murray shines light on the tangle of battles created by that conflict, the violent reach across the generations, the shattering reverberations in memory. With this collection, Sabina Murray established herself as a passionate and wise voice of literary fiction. “In this sobering book, [Murray] turns the bombed-out and broken setting of World War II into a theater for humankind, where both weakness and grace are writ large.” —The Washington Post
A New York Times Notable Book from the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author. “An imaginative exploration of the tragedy of lost friendship” (Los Angeles Times). In prose that is darkly humorous and alive with detail, Valiant Gentlemen reimagines the lives and intimate friendships of humanitarian and Irish patriot Roger Casement; his closest friend, Herbert Ward; and Ward’s extraordinary wife, the Argentinian American heiress Sarita Sanford. Valiant Gentlemen takes the reader on an intimate journey, from Ward and Casement’s misadventurous youth in the Congo—where, among other things, they bore witness to an Irish whiskey heir’s taste for cannibalism—to Ward’s marriage to Sarita and their flourishing family life in France, to Casement’s covert homosexuality and enduring nomadic lifestyle floating between his work across the African continent and involvement in Irish politics. When World War I breaks out, Casement and Ward’s longstanding political differences finally come to a head and when Ward and his teenage sons leave to fight on the frontlines for England, Casement begins to work alongside the Germans to help free Ireland from British rule. What results is tragic and riveting, as both men are forced to confront notions of love and betrayal in the face of the vastly different tracks their lives have taken. Reminiscent of the work of Peter Carey and Michael Ondaatje, Valiant Gentlemen is a uniquely human account of some of early twentieth century’s larger historical figures from a “ravishing” (O, The Oprah Magazine) and “brilliant” voice in fiction today (The Boston Globe).
A novel of deception, political intrigue, and desire from the author of the PEN/Faulkner Award winner, The Caprices. In the summer of 1963, American Rupert Brigg travels to Greece to collect classical pieces for his Uncle William’s art collection. Rupert’s first discovery, however, is that Athens is a shadowy place that hides a tangle of fork-tongued diplomacy and duplicitous women, a city of replicas and composites that, like a hall of mirrors, calls to question what is real and what is false. Journeying to the secluded island of Aspros, among a circle of artists and aristocrats, each with their own secrets, Rupert finds the very pieces he’s searching for, but can he escape the tragedy that ended his brief marriage? As beautiful as Rupert’s discoveries are, beneath the surface lurk rumors of insurrection, fabrication, and even murder. Seductive, compelling, and sly, Forgery is a sophisticated book about the value and meaning of art, love, and the corrosive power of grief. “Forgery is as flavorsome as a summer month in the Greek isles.” —Richard Lipez, The Washington Post
“I binge-read this book, savoring the gothic creepiness at the heart of each tale. Packed with compelling, nuanced lives and the deaths that haunt them, each story is a séance—an invitation for unsettled spirits to let their presence be known, ‘desperate for someone to supply the narrative.’ Murray supplies it with great style and an uncanny knowingness, leaving room for our imagination to fill in the suggestive spaces with our own dark dread.”—Mona Awad, author of All’s Well Sabina Murray has long been celebrated for her mastery of the gothic. Now in Muckross Abbey and Other Stories, she returns to the genre, bringing readers to haunted sites from a West Australian convent school to the moors of England to the shores of Cape Cod in ten strange tales that are layered, meta, and unforgettable. From a twisted recasting of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, to an actor who dies for his art only to haunt his mother’s house, to the titular “Muckross Abbey,” an Irish chieftain burial site cursed by the specter of a flesh-eating groom—in this collection Murray gives us painters, writers, historians, and nuns all confronting the otherworldly in fantastically creepy ways. With notes of Wharton and James, Stoker and Shelley, now drawn into the present, these macabre stories are sure to captivate and chill.
From a PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author, The Caprices, seduces readers with a thriller praised as “dazzling . . . lovely, literate and deeply unnerving” (The New York Times Book Review). When we meet Katherine, the winning—and rather disturbing—twenty-three-year-old narrator, she has just left Italy and arrived in New York City, but what has propelled her there is a mystery. She soon strikes up an affair with a middle-aged Russian émigré novelist she meets on the subway, and almost immediately moves into his apartment. Katherine’s occasional allusions to a frighteningly eccentric mother and tyrannical father suggest a somberness at the center of her otherwise flippant and sardonic demeanor. Soon restless, she begins journeying across the continent, trailed, everywhere she goes, by a string of murders. As the ritualistic killings begin to pile up, Katherine takes to meditating on cannibalism in literature, art, and history. The story races toward a hair-raising conclusion, while Katherine and the reader close in on the reasons for both her and her mother’s fascination with aberrant, violent behavior. A brilliantly subtle commentary on twenty-first-century consumerism and Western culture’s obsession with new frontiers, A Carnivore’s Inquiry is an unsettling exploration of the questionable appetites that lurk beneath the veneer of civilization. “Murray paces her psychological thriller with consummate control, keeping the reader enthralled through subtle suggestion and a scattering of grisly details . . . Readers will be hooked by Murray’s classy treatment of her sexy-sinister subject matter.” —Publishers Weekly
A blistering new novel that follows a Filipino American journalist’s return to dictatorship-ruled Manila to research her book on tribes from a “cracklingly original” (Elle) and “singular” (New York Times Book Review) author, PEN Faulkner award-winner, Sabina Murray. Filipino-American Christina “Ting” Klein has just travelled from New York to Manila, both to escape her imminent divorce, and to begin research for a biography of Timicheg, an indigenous Filipino brought to America at the start of 20th century to be exhibited as part of a "human zoo." It has been a year since Ting’s last visit, and one year since Procopio “Copo” Gumboc swept the elections in an upset and took power as president. Arriving unannounced at her aging Aunt’s aristocratic home, Ting quickly falls into upper class Manila life—family gatherings at her cousin’s compound; spending time with her best friend Inchoy, a gay socialist professor of philosophy; and a flirtation with her ex-boyfriend Chet, a wealthy businessman with questionable ties to the regime. All the while, family duty dictates that Ting be responsible for Laird, a cousin’s fiancé, who has come from the States to rediscover his roots. As days pass, Ting witnesses modern Filipino society languishing under Gumboc’s terrifying reign. To make her way, she must balance the aristocratic traditions of her extended family, seemingly at odds with both situation and circumstance, as well temper her stance towards a regime her loved ones are struggling to survive. Yet Ting cannot extricate herself from the increasingly repressive regime, and soon finds herself personally confronted by the horrifying realities of Gumboc’s power. At once a propulsive look at contemporary Filipino politics and the history that impacted the country, The Human Zoo is a thrilling and provocative story from one of our most celebrated and important writers of literary fiction.
As the ritualistic killings begin to pile up, Katherine comforts and inspires herself by meditating on cannibalism in literature, art, and history, and examines subjects as diverse as the Donnor Party, the fall of Dante's Count Ugolino, and the story behind Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa. Slowly Katherine realizes that at the center of the mysterious deaths lies a bloody truth - that in the beam of a flashlight in the woods, in the scrabbling claws in the cupboard, something is making itself known. As the story races towards its frightening conclusion, Katherine, and the reader, close in on the true reason for her fascination with aberrant, violent behavior."--BOOK JACKET.
“I binge-read this book, savoring the gothic creepiness at the heart of each tale. Packed with compelling, nuanced lives and the deaths that haunt them, each story is a séance—an invitation for unsettled spirits to let their presence be known, ‘desperate for someone to supply the narrative.’ Murray supplies it with great style and an uncanny knowingness, leaving room for our imagination to fill in the suggestive spaces with our own dark dread.”—Mona Awad, author of All’s Well Sabina Murray has long been celebrated for her mastery of the gothic. Now in Muckross Abbey and Other Stories, she returns to the genre, bringing readers to haunted sites from a West Australian convent school to the moors of England to the shores of Cape Cod in ten strange tales that are layered, meta, and unforgettable. From a twisted recasting of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, to an actor who dies for his art only to haunt his mother’s house, to the titular “Muckross Abbey,” an Irish chieftain burial site cursed by the specter of a flesh-eating groom—in this collection Murray gives us painters, writers, historians, and nuns all confronting the otherworldly in fantastically creepy ways. With notes of Wharton and James, Stoker and Shelley, now drawn into the present, these macabre stories are sure to captivate and chill.
A novel of deception, political intrigue, and desire from the author of the PEN/Faulkner Award winner, The Caprices. In the summer of 1963, American Rupert Brigg travels to Greece to collect classical pieces for his Uncle William’s art collection. Rupert’s first discovery, however, is that Athens is a shadowy place that hides a tangle of fork-tongued diplomacy and duplicitous women, a city of replicas and composites that, like a hall of mirrors, calls to question what is real and what is false. Journeying to the secluded island of Aspros, among a circle of artists and aristocrats, each with their own secrets, Rupert finds the very pieces he’s searching for, but can he escape the tragedy that ended his brief marriage? As beautiful as Rupert’s discoveries are, beneath the surface lurk rumors of insurrection, fabrication, and even murder. Seductive, compelling, and sly, Forgery is a sophisticated book about the value and meaning of art, love, and the corrosive power of grief. “Forgery is as flavorsome as a summer month in the Greek isles.” —Richard Lipez, The Washington Post
Revolving around the Pacific campaigns of World War II, this collection of short stories captures the events, personalities, and harsh realities of war.
A New York Times Notable Book from the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author. “An imaginative exploration of the tragedy of lost friendship” (Los Angeles Times). In prose that is darkly humorous and alive with detail, Valiant Gentlemen reimagines the lives and intimate friendships of humanitarian and Irish patriot Roger Casement; his closest friend, Herbert Ward; and Ward’s extraordinary wife, the Argentinian American heiress Sarita Sanford. Valiant Gentlemen takes the reader on an intimate journey, from Ward and Casement’s misadventurous youth in the Congo—where, among other things, they bore witness to an Irish whiskey heir’s taste for cannibalism—to Ward’s marriage to Sarita and their flourishing family life in France, to Casement’s covert homosexuality and enduring nomadic lifestyle floating between his work across the African continent and involvement in Irish politics. When World War I breaks out, Casement and Ward’s longstanding political differences finally come to a head and when Ward and his teenage sons leave to fight on the frontlines for England, Casement begins to work alongside the Germans to help free Ireland from British rule. What results is tragic and riveting, as both men are forced to confront notions of love and betrayal in the face of the vastly different tracks their lives have taken. Reminiscent of the work of Peter Carey and Michael Ondaatje, Valiant Gentlemen is a uniquely human account of some of early twentieth century’s larger historical figures from a “ravishing” (O, The Oprah Magazine) and “brilliant” voice in fiction today (The Boston Globe).
A blistering new novel that follows a Filipino American journalist’s return to dictatorship-ruled Manila to research her book on tribes from a “cracklingly original” (Elle) and “singular” (New York Times Book Review) author, PEN Faulkner award-winner, Sabina Murray. Filipino-American Christina “Ting” Klein has just travelled from New York to Manila, both to escape her imminent divorce, and to begin research for a biography of Timicheg, an indigenous Filipino brought to America at the start of 20th century to be exhibited as part of a "human zoo." It has been a year since Ting’s last visit, and one year since Procopio “Copo” Gumboc swept the elections in an upset and took power as president. Arriving unannounced at her aging Aunt’s aristocratic home, Ting quickly falls into upper class Manila life—family gatherings at her cousin’s compound; spending time with her best friend Inchoy, a gay socialist professor of philosophy; and a flirtation with her ex-boyfriend Chet, a wealthy businessman with questionable ties to the regime. All the while, family duty dictates that Ting be responsible for Laird, a cousin’s fiancé, who has come from the States to rediscover his roots. As days pass, Ting witnesses modern Filipino society languishing under Gumboc’s terrifying reign. To make her way, she must balance the aristocratic traditions of her extended family, seemingly at odds with both situation and circumstance, as well temper her stance towards a regime her loved ones are struggling to survive. Yet Ting cannot extricate herself from the increasingly repressive regime, and soon finds herself personally confronted by the horrifying realities of Gumboc’s power. At once a propulsive look at contemporary Filipino politics and the history that impacted the country, The Human Zoo is a thrilling and provocative story from one of our most celebrated and important writers of literary fiction.
From a PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author, The Caprices, seduces readers with a thriller praised as “dazzling . . . lovely, literate and deeply unnerving” (The New York Times Book Review). When we meet Katherine, the winning—and rather disturbing—twenty-three-year-old narrator, she has just left Italy and arrived in New York City, but what has propelled her there is a mystery. She soon strikes up an affair with a middle-aged Russian émigré novelist she meets on the subway, and almost immediately moves into his apartment. Katherine’s occasional allusions to a frighteningly eccentric mother and tyrannical father suggest a somberness at the center of her otherwise flippant and sardonic demeanor. Soon restless, she begins journeying across the continent, trailed, everywhere she goes, by a string of murders. As the ritualistic killings begin to pile up, Katherine takes to meditating on cannibalism in literature, art, and history. The story races toward a hair-raising conclusion, while Katherine and the reader close in on the reasons for both her and her mother’s fascination with aberrant, violent behavior. A brilliantly subtle commentary on twenty-first-century consumerism and Western culture’s obsession with new frontiers, A Carnivore’s Inquiry is an unsettling exploration of the questionable appetites that lurk beneath the veneer of civilization. “Murray paces her psychological thriller with consummate control, keeping the reader enthralled through subtle suggestion and a scattering of grisly details . . . Readers will be hooked by Murray’s classy treatment of her sexy-sinister subject matter.” —Publishers Weekly
Taking the reader into the heart of one of the fastest-growing religious movements in North America, Sabina Magliocco reveals how the disciplines of anthropology and folklore were fundamental to the early development of Neo-Paganism and the revival of witchcraft. Magliocco examines the roots that this religious movement has in a Western spiritual tradition of mysticism disavowed by the Enlightenment. She explores, too, how modern Pagans and Witches are imaginatively reclaiming discarded practices and beliefs to create religions more in keeping with their personal experience of the world as sacred and filled with meaning. Neo-Pagan religions focus on experience, rather than belief, and many contemporary practitioners have had mystical experiences. They seek a context that normalizes them and creates in them new spiritual dimensions that involve change in ordinary consciousness. Magliocco analyzes magical practices and rituals of Neo-Paganism as art forms that reanimate the cosmos and stimulate the imagination of its practitioners. She discusses rituals that are put together using materials from a variety of cultural and historical sources, and examines the cultural politics surrounding the movement—how the Neo-Pagan movement creates identity by contrasting itself against the dominant culture and how it can be understood in the context of early twenty-first-century identity politics. Witching Culture is the first ethnography of this religious movement to focus specifically on the role of anthropology and folklore in its formation, on experiences that are central to its practice, and on what it reveals about identity and belief in twenty-first-century North America.
Part II proposes an alternative participatory method for systematically identifying valued changes in participants' capability sets. Three case studies of women's income generation activities in Pakistan - goat-rearing, adult literacy, and rose cultivation - contrast economic cost-benefit analysis of each activity with capable analysis."--BOOK JACKET.
A latest collection of 10 high-seas and "dark continent" adventures by the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of The Caprices is inspired by the ambitions and controversies surrounding some of history's most intrepid pioneers, including Ferdinand Magellan and Zimri Coffin. Original.
Scientific contributions authored by distinguished experts from the field of early education are published periodically within the framework of the series Scientific Studies on the Work of the “Haus der kleinen Forscher” Foundation. This publication series serves to foster informed dialogue between the Foundation, scientists, and practitioners with the aim of giving all early childhood education and care centres, after-school centres, and primary schools in Germany scientifically sound support in fulfilling their early education mandate. This fifth volume in the series focuses on goals of science education at the level of the children, the early childhood professionals, and the pedagogical staff at after-school centres and primary schools, and on process-related quality criteria for science teaching at pre-primary and primary level. In their expert reports, Yvonne Anders, Ilonca Hardy, Sabina Pauen, Beate Sodian, and Mirjam Steffensky specify pedagogical content dimensions of the goals of early science education at pre-primary and primary school age. In addition to theoretically underpinning these goals, the authors present instruments for their assessment. In his expert report, Jörg Ramseger formulates ten quality criteria for science teaching. Early childhood professionals and pedagogical staff at after-school centres and primary schools can draw on these process-related criteria when planning lessons and conducting self-evaluations of science learning opportunities at pre-primary and primary level. The concluding chapter of the volume describes the implementation of these expert recommendations in the substantive offerings of, and the accompanying research on, the “Haus der kleinen Forscher“ Foundation.
The corpus-based approach to humor offers innovative and more than plausible objectives, supported by sound arguments, which underline the need to analyze humor both verbally and non-verbally. The cognitive linguistic account of humor sets to analyze a corpus of humorous meanings in interaction and to present the elements that help to create the humorous effects: common ground, intersubjectivity, facial expressions, speakers' attitude, etc. The large corpus of examples annotated in ELAN offers a much-needed multimodal perspective of humor, which encompasses all the different techniques used by speakers. The present analysis offers inspiring insight for future research, in different fields of study: multimodality, humor, and psycholinguistics. The study reveals the need of analyzing both verbal and non-verbal elements in discourse in general and humor in particular as co-speech gestures are essential for the understanding of the message as intended by the speakers.
Life Changes provides those who are undergoing significant changes in their lives with an easy to follow road map of the normal ups and downs in the adjustment process. The seven stages of any transition process are described with clear advice about what to expect and, more importantly, what can be learned from each stage. Whatever the transition might be - the death of a loved one, a new job, a divorce or a marriage - the authors point out that people can either "go" through change or they can "grow" through change. It's up to the individual. The book also provides additional support for people making life changes, as the authors give advice on clarifying life purpose, protecting health, and maintaining balance during and after these major transitions.
Now a classic in its field, the fourth edition of Change Management: A Guide to Effective Implementation continues to offer readers highly practical strategies and step-by-step guidance for applying different models of change in different organizational scenarios. New to the Fourth Edition: A third expert author, Sabina Siebert, bringing a background in sociology and cultural studies An improved structure that consolidates all the existing strengths of the previous editions and separates the book into three parts, beginning with chapters assessing ‘The Impact and Definition of Change’, ‘Implementation and Evaluation of Change’ and ending with a critical outlook in ‘Change Management – A Critical Perspective’ A wealth of new and richly detailed case studies with an international and cross-cultural scope that draw upon different organization types, environments and perspectives for a diverse and global understanding of the current field of change management Two additional chapters on leading change and organisational culture, offering unparalleled coverage of managing systems and processes, combined with increased emphasis on managing human issues. For students taking Change Management courses on Business and Management degrees, MBA′s, specialist masters and healthcare subjects.
In recent decades, there has been a major shift in the way researchers process and understand scientific data. Digital access to data has revolutionized ways of doing science in the biological and biomedical fields, leading to a data-intensive approach to research that uses innovative methods to produce, store, distribute, and interpret huge amounts of data. In Data-Centric Biology, Sabina Leonelli probes the implications of these advancements and confronts the questions they pose. Are we witnessing the rise of an entirely new scientific epistemology? If so, how does that alter the way we study and understand life—including ourselves? Leonelli is the first scholar to use a study of contemporary data-intensive science to provide a philosophical analysis of the epistemology of data. In analyzing the rise, internal dynamics, and potential impact of data-centric biology, she draws on scholarship across diverse fields of science and the humanities—as well as her own original empirical material—to pinpoint the conditions under which digitally available data can further our understanding of life. Bridging the divide between historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science, Data-Centric Biology offers a nuanced account of an issue that is of fundamental importance to our understanding of contemporary scientific practices.
By examining how narrative strategies reinforce or contest deterministic paradigms, this work describes modern Chinese fiction’s unique contribution to ethical and literary debates over the possibility for meaningful moral action. How does Chinese fiction express the desire for freedom as well as fears of attendant responsibilities and abuses? How does it depict struggles for and against freedom? How do the texts allow for or deny the possibility of freedom and agency? By analyzing discourses of agency and fatalism and the ethical import of narrative structures, the author explores how representations of determinism and moral responsibility changed over the twentieth century. She links these changes to representations of time and to enduring commitments to human-heartedness and social justice.Although Chinese fiction may contain some of the most disconsolate pages in the twentieth century’s long literature of disenchantment, it also bespeaks, Knight argues, a passion for freedom and moral responsibility. Responding to ongoing conflicts between the claims of modernity and the resources of past traditions, these stories and novels are often dominated by challenges to human agency. Yet read with sensitivity to traditional Chinese conceptions of moral experience, their testimony to both the promises of freedom and the failure of such promises opens new perspectives on moral agency.
This book starts with a consideration of a 1997 issue of the New Yorker that celebrated fifty years of Indian independence, and goes on to explore the development of a pattern of performance and performativity in contemporary Indian fiction in English (Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Vikram Chandra). Such fiction, which constructs identity through performative acts, is built around a nomadic understanding of the self and implies an evolution of narrative language towards performativity whereby the text itself becomes nomadic. A comparison with theatrical performance (Peter Brook’s Mahabharata and Girish Karnad’s ‘theatre of roots’) serves to support the argument that in both theatre and fiction the concepts of performance and performativity transform classical Indian mythic poetics. In the mythic symbiosis of performance and storytelling in Indian tradition within a cyclical pattern of estrangement from and return to the motherland and/or its traditions, myth becomes a liberating space of consciousness, where rigid categories and boundaries are transcended.
The structural engineer responsible for Chicago's John Hancock Center and Sears Tower, Fazlur R. Khan (1929-1982) pioneered structural systems for high-rise design that broadened the palette of building forms and expressions available to design professionals today.
The book examines the early history of music theatre in Romania in the nineteenth century and how it was instrumentalised as a vehicle for the overall modernization and Europeanization of the country. It deals with the complex interaction between the aristocrats, who imported the opera, the local public, the foreign power holders in the time of the Russian Protectorate and the opera companies and musicians who came to Romania and shaped the musical life of the country.
Camille Saint-Sa ns 1835-1921: A Thematic Catalogue of his Complete Works defines the achievement of this great French composer. All his musical works are presented: the well-recognized masterpieces, the childhood sketches, the unpublished compositions, and the previously unknown pieces now revealed for the first time. This comprehensive collection fully documents the composer's extraordinary contribution to the musical world. Volume 1 concentrates specifically on his Instrumental output, while the two later volumes will cover Dramatic Works and Choral & Vocal Works respectively.
The book describes the experience of Rafael Calderón-Almendros (the first person with Down syndrome to obtain a professional music degree in Spain) and his family. A confrontation arose with his school at the end of his compulsory secondary education stage. After Rafael had been a student in the centre from the start of his education, the institution lost its vision and denied the student his rights. The school used concealed segregation strategies, legitimized by the institution and its professionals, which were almost insurmountable. However, Rafael’s family embarked on a process of Action Research, began to fight for the recognition of the right for all students to obtain a formal education. This research shows how critical analyses were born from the experiences of a representative of one of the most disadvantaged groups (disabled people), which have been rigorously recorded and evidenced. From an inclusive, engaged and radical perspective, the text presents a solid case of someone outside the able-dominated average completing his education to a high professional standard. His success is endorsed by subsequent events: Rafael passed his compulsory secondary education, the equivalent of the English Baccalaureate and his Elementary and Professional Grades of Music (ten years). He obtained the Gold Medal of Merit in Education of Andalusia and the World Down Syndrome Day Award. He was admitted to the prestigious Academy of Orchestral Studies Barenboim-Said. Rafael has nothing else to prove. Today, his example challenges many of the usual school practices and urges us to rethink the commitment of educators in stimulating the participation of the entire school community, in promoting student autonomy and the recognition of others in their human and social rights. English translation provided by Baker & McKenzie Barcelona, S.L.P. (http://www.bakermckenzie.com/Spain/Barcelona/) and Julian Thomas (www.textos-academicos.com).
This uniquely interdisciplinary textbook explores the exciting and complex relationship between Earth’s geological history and the biodiversity of life. Its innovative design provides a seamless learning experience, clarifying major concepts step by step with detailed textual explanations complemented by detailed figures, diagrams and vibrant pictures. Thanks to its layout, the respective concepts can be studied individually, as part of the broader framework of each chapter, or as they relate to the book as a whole. It provides in-depth coverage of: - Earth’s formation and subsequent geological history, including patterns of climate change and atmospheric evolution; - The early stages of life, from microbial ‘primordial soup’ theories to the fossil record’s most valuable contributions; - Mechanisms of mutual influence between living organisms and the environment: how life changed Earth’s history whilst, at the same time, environmental pressures continue to shape the evolution of species; - Basic ideas in biodiversity studies: species concepts, measurement techniques, and global distribution patterns; - Biological systematics, from their historical origins in Greek philosophy and Biblical stories to Darwinian evolution by natural selection, and to phylogenetics based on cutting-edge molecular techniques. This book’s four major sections offer a fresh cross-disciplinary overview of biodiversity and the Earth’s history. Among many other concepts, they reveal the massive diversity of eukaryotes, explain the geological processes behind fossilisation, and provide an eye-opening account of the relatively short period of human evolution in the context of Earth’s 4.6 billion-year history. Employing a combination of proven didactic tools, the book is simultaneously a reading reference, illustrated guide, and encyclopaedia of organismal biology and geology. It is aimed at school- and university-level students, as well as members of the public fascinated by the intricate interrelationship of living organisms and their environment.
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