Shares the discovery stories of some of Harvard University's rarest natural history specimens, recounting the origins of such items as Nabokov's butterflies, George Washington's pheasants, a sand dollar collected by Darwin during his Beagle voyage, and the only stuffed bird remaining from the Lewis and Clark expedition. 25,000 first printing.

The Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History

History

Sloan, Mark

Pick, Nancy

Americas

Harper

Do Plants Know Math?: Unwinding the Story of Plant Spirals, from Leonardo da Vinci to Now

Computers & Technology

Golé, Christophe

Douady, Stéphane

Dumais, Jacques

Computer Science

Princeton University Press

Book Description Curious Footprints: Professor Hitchcock's Dinosaur Tracks &amp; Other Natural History Treasures at Amherst College tells the personal story of Edward Hitchcock, the college's third president, an evangelical minister who amassed the world's largest collection of dinosaur tracks. In a fascinating twist, he tried to prove that the footprints were made not by dinosaurs, but by gigantic ancient birds. 
The second half of the book presents the luminous color photographs of Frank Ward, who was the Amherst College Photographer for 22 years. His photo essay captures the college's natural history artifacts in all their charm, discovering in them grace, humor, and mystery.

Curious Footprints: Professor Hitchcock's Dinosaur Tracks & Other Natural History Treasures at Amherst College

Ward, Frank

Amherst College Pr

Sometimes life presents a mystery. An innocuous email from a stranger sets off a passionate journey of discovery. Why did Stig Dagerman, Swedish literary wunderkind (and Lo's father) write a shockingly cruel play based on Nancy Pick's relative, Etta Federn, the once eminent Austro-Jewish refugee he encountered in postwar Paris? What happened when Stig and Etta met? Nancy is determined to reclaim Etta [feminist, writer, single mother, radical - the relative nobody ever spoke about] from the shadows. Lo is searching for the father she never knew. Each simply has to know. Stockholm 1947. Stig Dagerman was the new-generation writer on everybody's lips. Over the previous two years, at breakneck speed, he had written two novels and a much-praised short-story collection; made a spectacular debut as a playwright; and reported from the ruins of postwar Germany in a book titled German Autumn, destined to become a classic. Now, he was being sent to France to pen a sequel. He will indeed write about postwar France, but in an entirely unexpected way. Instead of a journalistic account, he feverishly writes a new play, Marty's Shadow . The play was modeled on people he'd met in a dank refugee hotel in Paris: The Austro-Jewish writer Etta Federn and Michel, her younger son. When Stig meets Etta she is old and ailing. Her elder son, Jean, had died a hero in the French Resistance. She had been on the run from Nazis and fascists since 1932, when as a fifty-year old single mother, a Jew and a radical, she had fled Berlin for Barcelona, taking her two young sons with her. In Berlin, she had been widely recognized as a writer (most notable are her biographies of Walther Rathenau and Christiane von Goethe, the wife of Goethe); as an accomplished translator working in sixteen languages; and as a radical feminist and anarcho-syndicalist in the vein of Emma Goldman. In her new life in Barcelona she builds a reputation as someone with the power to interpret character by looking into your hands. (Paul Federn, her brother, was a well-known psychoanalyst who had worked with Freud.) In 2011, I am astounded to receive an email from Nancy Pick, an American relative of Etta's. Nancy has heard of Stig's play about Etta and her sons, and wants to know more. Anxious, but also intrigued, I search for a way to break the bad news to her: Stig's play is brutal, a punch to the solar plexus: a monstrous mother murdered by a son. Marty's Shadow brings Nancy and me together. It confronts us with a shared question - but one which we initially want to answer in different ways: What could have driven my father, the young writer Stig Dagerman, to paint such a cruel portrait of the brilliant, heroic refugee, Etta Federn? This book lays out our search for answers. Lo Dagerman

The Writer and the Refugee: Paris 1947. Stig Dagerman and Etta Federn. Their encounter sparks a brilliant play - but why is it so cruel?

Biographies & Memoirs

Dagerman, Lo

Historical

Independently published

Where do you find Nabokov's butterflies, George Washington's pheasants, and the only stuffed bird remaining from the Lewis and Clark expedition? The vast collections of animals, minerals, and plants at the Harvard Museum of Natural History are among the oldest in the country, dating back to the 1700s. In the words of Edward O. Wilson, the museum stands as both "cabinet of wonder and temple of science." Its rich and unlikely history involves literary figures, creationists, millionaires, and visionary scientists from Asa Gray to Stephen Jay Gould. Its mastodon skeleton--still on display--is even linked to one of the nineteenth century's most bizarre and notorious murders. The Rarest of the Rare tells the fascinating stories behind the extinct butterflies, rare birds, lost plants, dazzling meteorites, and other scientific and historic specimens that fill the museum's halls. The book describes the painting that catches Audubon in a shameful lie, the sand dollar collected by Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle, and dozens of other treasures in this surprising, informative, and often amusing tour of the natural world.

Rarest of the Rare: The Stories Behind the Harvard Museum of Natural History

Science & Math

WILSON, EDWARD O.

History & Philosophy

Scala Arts Publishers, Inc.

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Books by Pick, Nancy