"If sparrows are but a metaphor, every writer faces the challenge of reality, which is to say, how one catches this sparrow." So writes Bei Dao in his preface to Loud Sparrows, a spirited collection of ninety-one short-shorts, an exciting new form of extreme short-storytelling that has swept the creative consciousness of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The artistic and aesthetic freedoms of short-shorts enable writers to capture the tone, texture, and chaos of their rapidly changing societies in infinitely inventive ways. Written by Chinese authors over the past three decades, the stories in this anthology are culled from newspapers, magazines, literary journals, and personal collections, and their subjects range from humanist ideals and traditional virtues to the material benefits of a commercialized society.
"In this elegant narrative, celebrated naturalist Ted Floyd guides you through a year of becoming a better birder. Choosing 200 top avian species to teach key lessons, Floyd introduces a new, holistic approach to bird watching and shows how to use the tools of the 21st century to appreciate the natural world we inhabit together whether city, country or suburbs." -- From book jacket.
Sparrows are as complicated as they are common. This is an essential guide to identifying 76 kinds, along with a fascinating history of human interactions with them. What, exactly, is a sparrow? All birders (and many non-birders) have essentially the same mental image of a pelican, a duck, or a flamingo, and a guide dedicated to waxwings or kingfishers would need nothing more than a sketch and a single sentence to satisfactorily identify its subject. Sparrows are harder to pin down. This book covers one family (Passerellidae), which includes towhees and juncos, and 76 members of the sparrow clan. Birds have a human history, too, beginning with their significance to native cultures and continuing through their discovery by science, their taxonomic fortunes and misfortunes, and their prospects for survival in a world with ever less space for wild creatures. This book includes not just facts and measurements, but stories--of how birds got their names and how they were discovered--of their entanglement with human history.
Foreword by Janet Yellen Weijian Shan's Out of the Gobi is a powerful memoir and commentary that will be one of the most important books on China of our time, one with the potential to re-shape how Americans view China, and how the Chinese view life in America. Shan, a former hard laborer who is now one of Asia's best-known financiers, is thoughtful, observant, eloquent, and brutally honest, making him well-positioned to tell the story of a life that is a microcosm of modern China, and of how, improbably, that life became intertwined with America. Out of the Gobi draws a vivid picture of the raw human energy and the will to succeed against all odds. Shan only finished elementary school when Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution tore his country apart. He was a witness to the brutality and absurdity of Mao's policies during one of the most tumultuous eras in China's history. Exiled to the Gobi Desert at age 15 and denied schooling for 10 years, he endured untold hardships without ever giving up his dream for an education. Shan's improbable journey, from the Gobi to the "People's Republic of Berkeley" and far beyond, is a uniquely American success story – told with a splash of humor, deep insight and rich and engaging detail. This powerful and personal perspective on China and America will inform Americans' view of China, humanizing the country, while providing a rare view of America from the prism of a keen foreign observer who lived the American dream. Says former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen: "Shan's life provides a demonstration of what is possible when China and the United States come together, even by happenstance. It is not only Shan's personal history that makes this book so interesting but also how the stories of China and America merge in just one moment in time to create an inspired individual so unique and driven, and so representative of the true sprits of both countries."
Birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao is the essential guide for anyone traveling to those islands. It showcases the more than 280 species seen on Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao and provides descriptions of and directions to the best places to bird, from the famous white sand beaches to hidden watering holes to the majestic national parks. Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao—the "ABCs"—located in the southwestern Caribbean, not far from Venezuela, share fascinating ecological features with the West Indies as well as the South American mainland, making birding on the islands unique. The identification portion of the book features endemic subspecies such as the Brown-throated Parakeet; a wide variety of wintering North American migrants; spectacular restricted-range northern South American species such as the Yellow-shouldered Parrot, Bare-eyed Pigeon, Troupial, Ruby-topaz Hummingbird, and Yellow Oriole; and West Indian species including the Pearly-eyed Thrasher and Caribbean Elaenia. Colorful introductory sections provide readers with a brief natural history of the islands, detailing the geography, geology, and general ecology of each. In the site guide that follows, Jeffrey V. Wells and Allison Childs Wells share their more than two decades of experience in the region, providing directions to the best birding spots. Clear, easy-to-read maps accompany each site description, along with notes about the species that birders are likely to find. The identification section is arranged in classic field guide format and offers vivid descriptions of each bird, along with tips on how to identify them by sight and sound. The accounts also include current status and seasonality, if relevant, and common names in English, Dutch, and Papiamento, often inspired by the unique voices of the birds, such as the "chibichibi" (Bananaquit) and "choco" (Burrowing Owl). The accompanying color plates feature the beautiful work of illustrator Robert Dean. The final section, on conservation, raises awareness about threats facing the birds and the habitats on which they rely and summarizes conservation initiatives and needs, offering recommendations for each island.
Lee grew up in the tumultuous 60s and 70s China. As a young boy growing up in political chaos and economic poverty, Lee experienced physical suffering and emotional disturbance; yet in this barren and poverty striken land, there were happiness and a glimpse of paradise, as well as compassion and love. Exotic yet universal in the narration and description of events and characters, the novel is a showcase of the songs of innocence and experience revisited by a Chinese boy.
Example in this ebook ABOUT PARROTS. Naturalists place the parrot group at the head of bird creation. This is done, not, of course, because parrots can talk, but because they display, on the whole, a greater amount of intelligence, of cleverness and adaptability to circumstances than other birds, including even their cunning rivals, the ravens and the jackdaws. It may well be asked what are the causes of the exceptionally high intelligence in parrots. The answer which I suggest is that an intimate connection exists throughout the animal world between mental development and the power of grasping an object all round, so as to know exactly its shape and its tactile properties. The possession of an effective prehensile organ—a hand or its equivalent—seems to be the first great requisite for the evolution of a high order of intellect. Man and the monkeys, for example, have a pair of hands; and in their case one can see at a glance how dependent is their intelligence upon these grasping organs. All human arts base themselves ultimately upon the human hand; and our nearest relatives, the anthropoid apes, approach humanity to some extent by reason of their ever-active and busy little fingers. The elephant, again, has his flexible trunk, which, as we have all heard over and over again, is equally well adapted to pick up a pin or to break the great boughs of tropical forest trees. The squirrel, also, remarkable for his unusual intelligence when judged by a rodent standard, uses his little paws as hands by which he can grasp a nut or fruit all round, and so gain in his small mind a clear conception of its true shape and properties. Throughout the animal kingdom generally, indeed, this chain of causation makes itself everywhere felt; no high intelligence without a highly-developed prehensile and grasping organ. Perhaps the opossum is the best and most crucial instance that can be found of the intimate connection which exists between touch and intellect. The opossum is a marsupial; it belongs to the same group of lowly-organized, antiquated and pouch-bearing animals as the kangaroo, the wombat, and other Australian mammals. Everybody knows that the marsupials, as a class, are preternaturally dull—are perhaps the least intelligent of all existing quadrupeds. And this is reasonable when one considers the subject, for they represent a very early type, the first “rough sketch” of the mammalian idea, with brains unsharpened as yet by contact with the world in the fierce competition of the struggle for life as it displays itself on the crowded stage of the great continents. They stand, in fact, to the lions and tigers, the elephants and horses, the monkeys and squirrels of America and Europe, as the native Australian stands to the American or the Englishman. They are the last relic of the original secondary quadrupeds, stranded for centuries on a Southern island, and still keeping up among Australian forests the antique type of life that went out of fashion elsewhere a vast number of years ago. Hence they have brains of poor quality, a fact amply demonstrated by the kangaroo when one watches his behavior in the zoological gardens. To be continue in this ebook
Vol. 6 includes "40 Three-Color Half tone illustrations from photographs of stuffed birds, minerals and some landscapes. Chicago Colortype Co., Chic. & New York, identified on some plates."--Page 132.
