Animal Truth and Other Stories
Animal Truth and Other Stories

Author: Sharona Muir

Publisher: University of New Orleans Press

Published: 2022-11-22

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1608012395

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In Sharona Muir’s unique eco-fabulist tales, fantastic animals and real science lead people through adventure and crisis to metamorphoses of the heart, and surprising truths about being human in the living system. In “Menu: Extinction”, an artist obsessed with the mass extinction of species creates a “banquet” installation in which a mermaid is served as a dish, while the banquet’s imaginary, satanic chef stalks his wife. In “Animal Truth,” a fiercely independent woman researching the genome of a mysterious fish discovers that her lover-collaborator is her own son, given away at birth, and wrestles with the meanings of truth and motherhood. A time travelling billionaire escaping the complexities of contemporary life, in “The Bath of Venus,” has his heart broken by a beautiful creature in Earth’s remote past. Each of these stories spins into gold the prickling straw of contemporary anxieties about our continued life on the planet. By turns playful, terrifying, haunting, and sensuous, the stories in this collection inspire wonder at the interwoven lives of human and nonhuman beings. They are both madly inventive and scientifically literate, and (to cite Anthony Doerr’s praise for her work) “absolutely original.”

The Truth and Other Stories
The Truth and Other Stories

Author: Stanislaw Lem

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-09-14

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0262366657

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Twelve stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, nine of them never before published in English. Of these twelve short stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, only three have previously appeared in English, making this the first "new" book of fiction by Lem since the late 1980s. The stories display the full range of Lem's intense curiosity about scientific ideas as well as his sardonic approach to human nature, presenting as multifarious a collection of mad scientists as any reader could wish for. Many of these stories feature artificial intelligences or artificial life forms, long a Lem preoccupation; some feature quite insane theories of cosmology or evolution. All are thought provoking and scathingly funny. Written from 1956 to 1993, the stories are arranged in chronological order. In the title story, "The Truth," a scientist in an insane asylum theorizes that the sun is alive; "The Journal" appears to be an account by an omnipotent being describing the creation of infinite universes--until, in a classic Lem twist, it turns out to be no such thing; in "An Enigma," beings debate whether offspring can be created without advanced degrees and design templates. Other stories feature a computer that can predict the future by 137 seconds, matter-destroying spores, a hunt in which the prey is a robot, and an electronic brain eager to go on the lam. These stories are peak Lem, exploring ideas and themes that resonate throughout his writing.

The Truth About Animals
The Truth About Animals

Author: Lucy Cooke

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2018-04-17

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0465094651

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Mary Roach meets Bill Bryson in this "surefire summer winner" (Janet Maslin, New York Times), an uproarious tour of the basest instincts and biggest mysteries of the animal world Humans have gone to the Moon and discovered the Higgs boson, but when it comes to understanding animals, we've still got a long way to go. Whether we're seeing a viral video of romping baby pandas or a picture of penguins "holding hands," it's hard for us not to project our own values -- innocence, fidelity, temperance, hard work -- onto animals. So you've probably never considered if moose get drunk, penguins cheat on their mates, or worker ants lay about. They do -- and that's just for starters. In The Truth About Animals, Lucy Cooke takes us on a worldwide journey to meet everyone from a Colombian hippo castrator to a Chinese panda porn peddler, all to lay bare the secret -- and often hilarious -- habits of the animal kingdom. Charming and at times downright weird, this modern bestiary is perfect for anyone who has ever suspected that virtue might be unnatural.

The Truth About Bears
The Truth About Bears

Author: Maxwell Eaton, III

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Published: 2018-02-27

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 1250306221

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Maxwell Eaton III's The Truth About Bears is a lighthearted nonfiction picture book, filled with useful facts about bears that will make you laugh so hard you won’t even realize you’re learning something!

Snowball's Chance
Snowball's Chance

Author: John Reed

Publisher: Melville House

Published: 2012-07-31

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 1612191266

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This unauthorized companion to George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a controversial parable about September 11th by one of fiction’s most inventive and provocative writers Written in 14 days shortly after the September 11th attacks, Snowball’s Chance is an outrageous and unauthorized companion to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, in which exiled pig Snowball returns to the farm, takes charge, and implements a new world order of untrammeled capitalism. Orwell’s “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” has morphed into the new rallying cry: “All animals are born equal—what they become is their own affair.” A brilliant political satire and literary parody, John Reed’s Snowball’s Chance caused an uproar on publication in 2002, denounced by Christopher Hitchens, and barely dodging a lawsuit from the Orwell estate. Now, a decade later, with America in wars on many fronts, readers can judge anew the visionary truth of Reed’s satirical masterpiece.

The Storytelling Animal
The Storytelling Animal

Author: Jonathan Gottschall

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 0547391404

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A provocative scholar delivers the first book on the new science of storytelling: the latest thinking on why we tell stories and what stories reveal about human nature.

The Book of Telling
The Book of Telling

Author:

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780803216488

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Sharona Ben-Tov Muir discovered after the death of her father, inventor and New Age guru Itzhak Bentov, that he had created Israel’s first rocket. A secret group of scientists working in a rooftop shed, the “Science Corps,” of which he was a part, invented weapons during Israel’s war of independence and later developed Israel’s nuclear resources and other major scientific projects. Bentov, however, settled in Boston and made his fortune with such medical inventions as a cardiac catheter, which he created in his home laboratory, where Muir played as a child. Haunted by the question of why her father had never discussed his past, Muir traveled to Israel to find the Corps. Through her own memories and the memories they share, Muir comes to know the brilliant, impassioned, and creative young Bentov as he demonstrates his latest invention for her, takes her canoeing, and reveals his thoughts about consciousness and the cosmos. Muir elegantly evokes the hubbub of Jerusalem streets, the wartime adventures of her hosts, and the inner lives of Israelis. The resulting story of invention and self-invention, of the Corps’s wartime experience as told for the first time, and of a deep, abiding love between father and daughter is an incandescent memoir. The author provides a new preface for this new Bison Books edition.

Animal
Animal

Author: Lisa Taddeo

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-06-08

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1982122145

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From Lisa Taddeo, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller and global phenomenon Three Women, comes an “intoxicating” (Entertainment Weekly), “fearless” (Los Angeles Times), and “explosive” (People) novel about “what happens when women are pushed beyond the brink, and what comes after the reckoning” (Esquire). Joan has spent a lifetime enduring the cruelties of men. But when one of them commits a shocking act of violence in front of her, she flees New York City in search of Alice, the only person alive who can help her make sense of her past. In the sweltering hills above Los Angeles, Joan unravels the horrific event she witnessed as a child—that has haunted her every waking moment—while forging the power to finally strike back. Animal is a depiction of female rage at its rawest, and a visceral exploration of the fallout from a male-dominated society.

The Unexpected Truth about Animals
The Unexpected Truth about Animals

Author: Lucy Cooke

Publisher: Black Swan Books, Limited

Published: 2018-05-31

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781784161903

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Whether we're watching a viral video of romping baby pandas or looking at a picture of penguins `holding hands', we often project our own values; innocence, abstinence, hard work - onto animals. So you've probably never considered that moose get drunk and that penguins are notorious cheats. In The Unexpected Truth About Animals Zoologist Lucy unravels the many myths we humans like to believe!