Pp. xxii, 420; 56 color plates, 163 back-and-white text-figures, photos and maps. Publisher's original blue cloth, lettered in silver on the spine, color pictorial dust jacket, sm 4to. This comprehensive and heavily illustrated treatment of the Antennariidae, or frogfishes represents 15 years of original work on the ecology, behavior, distribution, and biosystematics of these remarkable animals. No ownership marks.

Frogfishes of the World: Systematics, Zoogeography, and Behavioral Ecology

Pietsch, Theodore W.

Grobecker, David B.

Science & Math

Stanford Univ Pr

Told through the voice of a pivotal figure in the Age of Enlightenment, this entertaining work of historical fiction explores the world of old Amsterdam and the mysterious death of a young scientist. When Peter Artedi and Carl Linnaeus first meet in March 1729 as students at Uppsala University, they take an immediate liking to each other and soon form an intense intellectual bond. Sharing their revolutionary ideas about order and hierarchy in nature, the pair develop elaborate plans to classify plants and animals in ways never seen before—Linnaeus focusing on plants and Artedi concentrating on fishes. In September 1735, though, just as Artedi is set to publish his work, he drowns under puzzling circumstances. Following up on a pledge to his lost friend, Linnaeus retrieves Artedi’s manuscripts and has them published, not before he publishes his own work and makes a name for himself as a historical figure of epic proportions, while Artedi is quickly forgotten. This story about a little-known event from a key point in history investigates the untold tale behind the friendship of Linnaeus and Artedi and what may have actually happened between them.

The Curious Death of Peter Artedi: A Mystery in the History of Science

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Scott & Nix, Inc.

For the past 450 years, tree-like branching diagrams have been created to show the complex and surprising interrelationships of organisms, both living and fossil, from viruses and bacteria to birds and mammals. This stunning book celebrates the manifest beauty, intrinsic interest, and human ingenuity of these exquisite trees of life. 
Theodore W. Pietsch has chosen 230 trees of life—from among thousands of possible contenders—dating from the sixteenth century to the present day. His arrangement gives readers a visual sense of the historical development of these diagrams and shows how, in Darwin’s words, "from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." 
Pietsch’s brief, accessible prose accompanies the diverse trees to fully reveal the engrossing history of human theories of evolution. Over the centuries, trees of life appeared in a wide variety of forms; some were revered as iconic while others incited intense controversy. The earliest examples were meant to portray the imagined temporal order in which God created life on Earth. More recent scientific trees represent hypothetical histories of life. 
Never before has the full spectrum of trees of life been brought together in a single volume. Pietsch has spent decades collecting and researching the origin and meaning of these evolutionary trees and presents a visually breathtaking and intellectually brilliant history of the form.

Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution

Biological Sciences

Johns Hopkins University Press

Honorable Mention, Biological Sciences, 2012 PROSE Awards
For the past 450 years, tree-like branching diagrams have been created to show the complex and surprising interrelationships of organisms, both living and fossil, from viruses and bacteria to birds and mammals. This stunning book celebrates the manifest beauty, intrinsic interest, and human ingenuity of these exquisite trees of life. 
Theodore W. Pietsch has chosen 230 trees of life―from among thousands of possible contenders―dating from the sixteenth century to the present day. His arrangement gives readers a visual sense of the historical development of these diagrams and shows how, in Darwin’s words, "from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." 
Pietsch’s brief, accessible prose accompanies the diverse trees to fully reveal the engrossing history of human theories of evolution. Over the centuries, trees of life appeared in a wide variety of forms; some were revered as iconic while others incited intense controversy. The earliest examples were meant to portray the imagined temporal order in which God created life on Earth. More recent scientific trees represent hypothetical histories of life. 
Never before has the full spectrum of trees of life been brought together in a single volume. Pietsch has spent decades collecting and researching the origin and meaning of these evolutionary trees and presents a visually breathtaking and intellectually brilliant history of the form.

The authoritative expert's guide to fascinating frogfishes and their unusual lives.
Unique among the world's fishes, frogfishes display a bizarre combination of attributes and behaviors that make them a subject of fervent study. Through cunning and trickery, they turn would-be predators into prey; they "walk" across the ocean floor and jet-propel through open water; some lay their eggs in a floating mucoid mass, while others employ complex patterns of parental care; and they are certainly among the most colorful of nature's productions. In Frogfishes, two of the world's leading anglerfish experts, Theodore W. Pietsch and Rachel J. Arnold, bring together an enormous amount of information about these incredible creatures. The only detailed exploration of frogfishes in print, the book touches on everything from their morphology and biomechanics to their diets and habitats. Enhanced with more than 500 spectacular color images, the book also includes
• a thorough look at about 5,000 preserved specimens; • an annotated synonymy for all extant taxa, as well as keys and tables to facilitate identification; • insights into frogfish feeding, locomotion, mimicry, and reproductive behavior; • descriptions of recent scientific advances, including the discovery of new species, shifts in geographic distribution, and emerging DNA sequencing techniques; and • tips for frogfish-seeking divers and aquarists that emphasize conservation.
Unmasking the mysteries of frogfish evolution and phylogenetic relationships through close examination of their fossil record, morphology, and molecular reconstruction, Frogfishes demonstrates the surprising diversity and beauty of this remarkable assemblage of marine shorefishes.

Frogfishes: Biodiversity, Zoogeography, and Behavioral Ecology

Arnold, Rachel J.

Ichthyopedia: A Biographical Dictionary of Ichthyologists (Lightning Rod Press, Volume 10)

Jr., William D. Anderson

Reference

The American Philosophical Society Press

Here, for the first time in English, is Georges Cuvier’s extraordinary History of the Natural Sciences from Its Origin to the Present Day. Based on a series of public lectures presented by Cuvier from 1829 to 1832, this third of a five-volume series, translated from the original French and heavily annotated with commentary, is a detailed chronological survey of the natural sciences spanning roughly fifty years from the close of the seventeenth century to approximately 1750. It is truly astonishing in its detail and scope: Cuvier was fluent in many languages—English, German, Spanish, and certainly Latin, in addition to French—and was therefore well prepared to investigate and interpret firsthand the scientific literature of Europe as a whole. The work is an affirmation of Cuvier’s vast encyclopedic knowledge, his complete command of the scientific and historical literature, and his incomparable memory. This history is remarkable also for providing in one place a large set of useful references to a vast ancient literature that is not easily found anywhere else. This huge body of information provides us furthermore with unique insight into Cuvier’s concept of the natural sciences, and to the vast breadth and progress of this human endeavor. With this work, Cuvier fills an important gap in philosophical thought between the time of Carl Linnaeus and Charles Darwin.

Cuvier’s History of the Natural Sciences: Twenty Lessons from the First Half of the Eighteenth Century (Derniers Titres Parus Dans a Collection Archives)

History & Philosophy

French National Museum Natural History

Swimming with the big fishes: A zenith in zoological illustration One of the first depictions of marine fauna comes from Samuel Fallours, who was in the service of the Dutch East India Company. On the island of Ambon, one of the Moluccas, he made drawings of fish and other marine organisms of the Indian Ocean and brought them back to Holland in 1712. His drawings belong to a number of sets of similar drawings, depicting hundreds of animals, mostly fish but also crustaceans, insects, a dugong, and even a mermaid. Some of these became the basis for 18th-century publications, among them Louis Renard’s Poissons, Ecrevisses et Crabes (1719) and François Valentijn’s Verhandeling der Ongemeene Visschen van Amboina, a chapter in his Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien(1724−1726). These beautiful, elaborately detailed and brilliantly colored drawings bear extraordinary witness to the marine fish fauna of the East Indies and can still be interpreted in light of present-day scientific knowledge. From an artistic and historical viewpoint, these drawings are among the finest natural history illustrations ever made. Samuel Fallours apparently born in Rotterdam, began his career as a common soldier in the service of the Dutch East India Company. On 27 April 1703, he sailed from Goeree, the Netherlands, to Batavia where he stayed until at least the close of 1705. By June 1706, he was serving as a soldier in Ambon, assigned to the main guard-house of Castle Victoria. From September 1706 to June 1712, he held the title of Associate Curate (krankbezoeker), a kind of assistant to the clergy, entrusted with consoling the sick of Ambon. He left the Indies for the Netherlands in November 1712. During his sojourn in Ambon, (1706-1712) Fallours executed the illustrations.

Tropical Fishes of the East Indies

Arts & Photography

Fallours, Samuel

Individual Artists

Taschen America, LLC

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