Secrets of the Ocean Realm

Book Description

A photographic celebration of the spectacular drama of exotic marine creatures' lives and the otherworldly beauty of the deep-sea ecosystems that shelter them.

Written and photographed by Emmy award-winning couple Michele and Howard Hall, Secrets of the Ocean Realm is more than just a collection of stunning photographs: it is a revelation of the sea creatures' complex and mysterious cycles and patterns of behavior. The reader is presented with striking images of all manner of marine life--sharks, opalescent squid, molting lobsters, dolphins, giant whales--engaged in the vital activities of mating, threat displays, hunting and feeding.

Based on a five-part series of public television specials, the remarkable photographs of Secrets of the Ocean Realm are complemented with fascinating and engaging stories that take the reader behind the scenes and reveal the state-of-the-art equipment and techniques used to capture these exquisite scenes of underwater life.

Customer Reviews:

10 stars for this book.......2004-08-16

This is one of the best books I have ever read about the underwater world. Incredibly beautiful underwater photography of high quality. The photos do not only depict animals swimming around but, for example, sarcastic fringehead males in a showy territorial "fight," close up.

I also like the authors' sensible view about animals and diving in the ocean. No show-off accounts of near-shark-escapes but an honest experience, mostly good but sometimes scary, of working under water. The authors recount some extraordinary events, such as a ride on a manta after freeing him from entangling fishing nets, or unexpectedly finding themselves surrounded by a school of fish that is being slaughtered by marlins.

With this book we get a wonderful view into the ocean world but also a fascinating account of what it is like spending many hours a day waiting, scouting, decompressing, refilling tanks and back to waiting so one can capture a never seen one-minute event on film that made it worth all the work.

A poetic underwater journey!.......2000-08-30

Stare at the beautiful underwater photographs. Sitback, relax and gently discover the Ocean Realm with the still images of Howard Hall and his wife Michele, images that, as Peter Benchley (Jaws, The Deep) writes in the foreword, are among the finest in the world. Dive. Wander through the Kelp forests of the northern Pacific. Get a close-up of sharks and squids in magic detail. Enjoy the vivid colors of the reef and watch lobsters and sea turtles, dolphins and whales in an exciting photographic journey! Since this book is not a reference work, you will also enjoy reading it slowly and in the direction of your choice, diving at pleasure through the light text that describes the Hall's adventures as filmmakers and marine photographers. And then you will also find some information about the sea-life captured in the images and poetic hints about scuba-diving and underwater photography. A nice dive, a pleasant reading and, at the price that Amazon.com is offering it, a real gift. Buy the book!

A Must Read for Fin Fans!.......1999-12-04

For those of us who read everything we can on underwater photography, this book provides an added dimension and delightful reprieve from the technical how-to's of most underwater photography books. This book is a series of fascinating stories about the adventures and mis-adventures Howard and Michelle and their staff encountered when shooting different subjects. A fascinating and stimulating book, it provides anecdotal insight into how they approach certain projects without dwelling on the technical "how to's" found in most underwater photography books. Everyone studying underwater photography or just enjoying the sport of diving should surface long enough to give themselves this present. It sure made me want to grab my fins and camera and head off to points all around the world. Thanks to Howard and Michelle for putting together such a compelling read. And of course, it has beautiful photographs.

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Mosses from tropical America (Contributions from the New York Botanical Garden)
R. S Williams
Manufacturer: [Torrey Botanical Club]
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0008AKZEI

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Mosses of Guatemala (Chicago Natural History Museum. Publication)
Edwin B Bartram
Manufacturer: Chicago National History Museum
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Plants | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
General | Botany | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006ARU6Q

Book Description

Revised and updated, this guide covers the myriad boulders that provide convenient climbing from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

Customer Reviews:

Great, But A Little Out of Date.......1998-06-10

This guide is extremely comprehensive and has excellent information, decent maps and topos. However, new bouldering developments in the last several years have rendered the book a bit dated. A must to own if you plan a visit.

Book Description

The dictionary is a compilation of clear, concise and informative definitions of the characteristic vocabulary commonly encountered and used by herpetologists when discussing, reading, or writing about reptiles and amphibians. It is intended for all those who have an interest in these animals, from the amateur hobbyist who may find himself faced with what can be a rather intimidating scientific term or technical expression, to the trained zoologist who may sometimes have doubts over the exact meaning of a particular term. It will, it is hoped, not only be a useful source of reference to all who are either actively or passively involved in some aspects of herpetology whether they be keepers, curators, breeders, researchers, teachers or students, but an interesting read as well.

ELSEVIER'S DICTIONARY OF HERPETOLOGICAL AND RELATED TERMINOLOGY

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ELSEVIER'S DICTIONARY OF HERPETOLOGICAL AND RELATED TERMINOLOGY
D.C Wareham
Manufacturer: Elsevier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N5JEBI

Book Description

Hardbound. Within this volume is a thorough coverage of the fundamental principles embracing modern theories of colloid chemistry applied to mineral processing. It is written in respect for Dr. J.A. Kitchener, distinguished Reader in the Science of Mineral Processing in the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College, University of London (recently retired). Dr. Kitchener's expertise in colloid chemistry has led to numerous fundamental insights and practical advances in flotation, selective flocculation, and the treatment of slimes.

Book Description

This monograph examines and develops the Global Smoothness Preservation Property (GSPP) and the Shape Preservation Property (SPP) in the field of interpolation of functions. The study is developed for the univariate and bivariate cases using well-known classical interpolation operators of Lagrange, Grünwald, Hermite-Fejér and Shepard type. One of the first books on the subject, it presents interesting new results alongwith an excellent survey of past research.

Key features include:

- potential applications to data fitting, fluid dynamics, curves and surfaces, engineering, and computer-aided geometric design

- presents recent work featuring many new interesting results as well as an excellent survey of past research

- many interesting open problems for future research presented throughout the text

- includes 20 very suggestive figures of nine types of Shepard surfaces concerning their shape preservation property

- generic techniques of the proofs allow for easy application to obtaining similar results for other interpolation operators

This unique, well-written text is best suited to graduate students and researchers in mathematical analysis, interpolation of functions, pure and applied mathematicians in numerical analysis, approximation theory, data fitting, computer-aided geometric design, fluid mechanics, and engineering researchers.

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Thoughts and the Times From 1850

Delightful

Glad to see this back in print ...

Astounding that this book is out of print....

A delightful essay on life, love, assorted topics

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Manufacturer: Echo Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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Inferno: The Longfellow Translation

The Common Law

The Dante Club: A Novel

ASIN: 1406813176

Book Description

An enduring American classic.

Download Description

I WAS JUST going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an extension or variation of the following arithmetical formula: 2 2=4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression A B=C. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead of figures.

Customer Reviews:

Thoughts and the Times From 1850.......2004-04-16

An interesting range of thoughtful opinions, imbedded in a look at American life in the 1850s, by the father of a future Supreme Court Associate Justice. Part of the charm of this book is in the fact that at that time horses had been the only means of human-assisted transportation for the last few thousand years (with the exception of the new-fangled railroad which was changing the world). Electronics were not even imagined. Automobiles were 50 years into the future.

Delightful.......2002-05-19

Two oral practices flourished in antebellum America: the lecture (or sermon) and the conversation. Lectures, such as Emerson's "The American Scholar" and sermons, such as the abolitionist sermons of Henry Ward Beecher, are well-known examples of this era. But it was also known as the Golden Age of Conversation, and its greatest practitioner was generally agreed to be Oliver Wendell Holmes, Senior.

Holmes was considered an important American writer until the 1920s when he was excised from the American canon by the modernists. They depicted him as willfully provincial, and elitist. What those critics failed to understand was that the Autocrat is also a comic pose, and that Holmes is making sport of everyone, including elitists. Holmes' democratic view of conversation as an open, free-wheeling discourse where anyone could join the Autocrat at his table, as long as they enlivened the conversation, ran counter to the views of his more elitist friends in Boston's Saturday Club in Boston. Holmes loved to talk, and his love for talk made him a democrat, or perhaps a true republican.

His Autocrat is a many sided character: stern and foolish, admonitory and celebratory, a polymorph who will don any temporaty mask necessary to keep the conversation alive. Holmes' playful metaphorical imagination is also a revelation. His gift for translating complex ideas into homey metaphors, aphorisms, and similes is nothing short of miraculous. In the words of another seriously comic American whom I'm sure Holmes would have delighted in, the Autocrat "floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee."

The Autocrat of the Breakfast table begins "in media res," in the middle of a conversation, with the Autocrat attempting to set the rules for conversation at his table. They are generous rules, but even they are open to sabotage by his tablemates at the boarding house. He begins by banning "facts" from his table as impediments to conversation, (a condition that should prevail on today's too numerous current event talking head shows. But I, like the Autocrat, digress).

Here's how the Autocrat starts: "I was just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many ways of classifying minds is under the head of arithmetical and algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an extension of the following arithmetical formula: 2 + 2 = 4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression a + b = c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egoists, until we learn to think in letters instead of figures." "They all stared. There is a divinity student lately come among us to whom I commonly address remarks like this. "

In other words, as Gibian says in his marvelous OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES AND THE CULTURE OF CONVERSATION: [The Autocrat] only asks us to study his beliefs the way a pragmatist would study the doctrines of any religion: "I don't want you to believe anything I say; I only want you to to try to see what makes me believe it." How refreshing in this age of factoids and statisticoids recited with rancor and ideological certitude, to hear the Autocrat and his tablemates at the boarding house attempting to fashion a democracy through and by their conversation. Nowadays all we have are the unironic Autocrats, control freaks like John McLaughlin, Ted Koppel, Rush Limbaugh, and that guy on FOX whose name I have, pleasantly, forgotten.

Listening to the Autocrat you can almost hear American singing. It's not exactly Walt Whitman's America, but it's still America in the hopeful, experimental antebellum era, and thus a good antidote to the cold technocratic chatter and lukewarm public relations cant we are showered with in this hypermediated century.

Glad to see this back in print ..........2002-02-28

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table is a demonstration of New England civility in the 1850s. I believe it went through more than 50 editions by the end of the nineteenth century, so it must have been very widely read at one time. The book is packed with amazing observations. Holmes takes the time to wonder why the sense of smell is the quickest path to memory. He rails against puns in a way that is better than punning. He points out human flaws and praises examples of good living. Trees come alive, through prosaic description and poetic flights. Would you like to go back to the 1850s and have a conversation with a Boston intellectual? Here's your chance. There are many old copies of this book sitting around, but it's nice that it's come back into print (again).... (it's also a quiet love story, by the way)

Astounding that this book is out of print...........2001-10-11

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table is a demonstration of New England civility in the 1850s. I believe it went through more than 50 editions by the end of the nineteenth century, so it must have been very widely read at one time. The book is packed with amazing observations. Holmes takes the time to wonder why the sense of smell is the quickest path to memory. He rails against puns in a way that is better than punning. He points out human flaws and praises examples of good living. Trees come alive, through prosaic description and poetic flights. Would you like to go back to the 1850s and have a conversation with a Boston intellectual? Here's your chance. There are many old copies of this book sitting around, but it would be nice if it came back into print.... (it's also a quiet love story, by the way)

A delightful essay on life, love, assorted topics.......1998-12-23

The imaginary scene is a boarding house breakfast. Conversation is dominated by a lively gent who's seen it all. He holds forth on women, school, philosophy, rowing, interrupted from time to time with verses such as the Deacon's Masterpiece. It's witty, poignant, and rightfully a classic.

Oliver Wendell Holmes in Paris: Medicine, Theology, and The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (Becoming Modern: New Nineteenth-Century Studies)

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Oliver Wendell Holmes in Paris: Medicine, Theology, and The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (Becoming Modern: New Nineteenth-Century Studies)
William C. Dowling
Manufacturer: New Hampshire
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Medical | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1584655798

Book Description

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.'s Breakfast Table Trilogy was a series of extremely popular essays published in The Atlantic Monthly from its first issue in 1857 to 1870. Speaking to the cultural and religious concerns of the period, these essays made Holmes famous on both sides of the Atlantic.

Author William C. Dowling brings together literary criticism, philosophy, and the history of science to re-examine the Breakfast Table Trilogy through the lens of what Holmes learned as a medical student in Paris in the 1830s--during the Paris revolution in clinical teaching that laid the foundations of modern medicine. There, the young Holmes gained the experience that would eventually manifest so richly in the Breakfast Table Trilogy, which Dowling argues was the major American contribution to the literature of Victorian religious anxiety, keeping company with the works of Tennyson and Carlyle.

Though based on the uncompromising philosophical materialism of such works as La Mettrie's L'Homme machine, his experiences in Paris would ultimately suggest to Holmes an alternative view of the bleak physical universe brought into view by Lyell's Principles of Geology and Darwin's Origin of Species. In the Breakfast Table Trilogy, as well as in the writings he produced during his career at Harvard Medical School, Holmes would argue that science, as much as art, music, or literature, was the creation of a human consciousness existing outside or beyond purely physical laws. Holmes's metaphysics of consciousness, Dowling maintains, accounts for his enormous impact on readers on both sides of the Atlantic during the later nineteenth century. In his Paris medical studies lie the hidden origins of that religio medici, or "physician's religion," that would subsequently permit Holmes, in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly, to emerge as spiritual physician to an age of religious doubt.

"In Dowling's narrative, one can virtually see Holmes developing into the great physician, anatomist, teacher and thinker he would eventually become, all written . . . from the perspective not only of medical theory but also the atmosphere and worldview born out of the zeitgeist to which he was exposed during his time in Paris. This is as much a philosophy book as it is a biography, a study of a distinctive period in medical history or a panoramic and yet intimate survey of early nineteenth-century Paris. This book is a wonder." --Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D., author of How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter, winner of the National Book Award

A Christian in big business;: The life story of Henry Parsons Crowell, the breakfast table autocrat

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A Christian in big business;: The life story of Henry Parsons Crowell, the breakfast table autocrat
Richard Ellsworth Day
Manufacturer: Moody Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0007DTPY2

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The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
O. W. Holmes
Manufacturer: Donohue Brothers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000EHLGK2

The Atlantic Monthly Volume II (Chesuncook; the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table)

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The Atlantic Monthly Volume II (Chesuncook; the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table)
Henry David; Holmes, Oliver Wendell Thoreau
Manufacturer: Phillips, Sampson and Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Leather Bound
ASIN: B000IXQT7W

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The Autocrat At the Breakfast Table
Oliver Wendell [Introduction By Van Wyck Brooks] Holmes
Manufacturer: The Heritage Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000JNK5TY

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The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Manufacturer: Phillips Sampson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000K00LR2

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The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table
Oliver, Wendell Holmes
Manufacturer: Cosimo Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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The Essential Holmes: Selections from the Letters, Speeches, Judicial Opinions, and Other Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

ASIN: 1596053070

Book Description

You may set it down as a truth which admits of few exceptions, that those who ask your opinion really want your praise, and will be contented with nothing else. -from The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table A superb example of a literary form that has long since fallen into disuse, this seriocomic one-sided conversation with the dictatorial "autocrat" was originally published in segments in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in 1857 and 1858. The unnamed speaker offers an entertainingly rambling series of observations on everything from the odd things that children believe to the unexpected benefits of old age, from the divide between the creative and the scholarly to a recommendation for drinking as a vice. An insightful and frequently hilarious discourse on American civic life, this is a forgotten classic of playful liberal intellectualism. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1809-1894) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard. Though he trained as a physician, he is best known for his verse, and was one of the most beloved poets of the 19th century. A regular contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, he also wrote novels. After his death, his son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table Everyman's Library No. 66

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The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table Everyman's Library No. 66
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Manufacturer: J M Dent & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KVACQG

The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table Every Man His Own Boswell

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The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table Every Man His Own Boswell
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Manufacturer: West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company (Westvaco)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000M0968U

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