Writers, game designers, teachers, and students ~this is the book youve been waiting for! Written by storytellers for storytellers, this volume offers an entirely new approach to word finding. Browse the pages within to see what makes this book different:
While Human-Animal Studies is a rapidly growing field in modern history, studies on this topic that focus on the Ancient World are few. The present volume aims at closing this gap. It investigates the relation between humans, animals, gods, and things with a special focus on the structure of these categories. An improved understanding of the ancient categories themselves is a precondition for any investigation into the relation between them. The focus of the volume lies on the Ancient Near East, but it also provides studies on Ancient Greece, Asia Minor, Mesoamerica, the Far East, and Arabia.
The role of the dog in human society is the connecting thread that binds the essays in "Canis Africanis," each revealing a different part of the complex social history of southern Africa. The essays range widely from concerns over disease, bestiality, and social degradation through gambling on dogs to anxieties over social status reflected through breed classifications, and social rebellion through resisting the dog tax imposed by colonial authorities. With its focus on dogs in human history, this project is part of what has been termed the 'animal turn' in the social sciences, which investigates the spaces which animals inhabit in human society and the way in which animal and human lives interconnect, demonstrating how different human groups construct a range of identities for themselves (and for others) in terms of animals. So instead of conceiving of animals as merely constituents of ecological or agricultural systems, they can be comprehended through their role in human cultures.
David Frei’s heartwarming collection of stories about the therapy dogs in his life and the people whom they touch, Angel on a Leash celebrates the “ministry” that Frei shares with his wife, Chaplain Cherilyn Frei, the director of spiritual care at the Ronald McDonald House of New York.Frei may be the most recognizable face and name in the dog sport, as “the Voice of Westminster,” the famous New York kennel club for which he has worked for the past two decades, but his true passion in dogs is therapy work. In the book’s eighteen chapters, Frei retells the stories of the everyday miracles he’s witnessed his therapy dogs perform over hundreds of trips to their favorite places. Currently in his second generation of therapy dogs, Frei gives his Cavalier King Charles Spaniel “Angel” and Brittany “Grace” all the credit for the life-altering work they do cheering up ailing children at Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital, spending time with recovering patients at NewYork- Presbyterian Hospital, and placing a paw in the hand of world-weary veterans at the Washington DC VA Medical Center. Never sappy or sentimental, Frei’s writing style is straightforward and honest with a swiftness that keeps the reader turning pages (and wiping tears). Beyond the inspiring storytelling, the book also offers practical advice to potential therapy dog handlers about how to get a dog certified with a proper registry, the responsibilities that accompany therapy work, and the importance of community involvement. Frei’s association with Westminster yielded the formation of a nonprofit organization called Angel on a Leash (the book’s namesake), which Frei was the key founder. Although the organization is now a separate entity from its famous “parent,” Best in Show winners of Westminster have frequently retired from the show ring into the realm of therapy work, receiving Frei’s encouragement and guidance. Among the many exquisite moments captured in the book’s photography section are portraits of Rufus, the Colored Bull Terrier; James, the English Spring Spaniel; and Uno, the Beagle, all supreme victors of the famous show, spending time with children on therapy visits.
A heartening picture book about a young pup who looks different from her siblings and ultimately learns that love, rather than how you look, is what makes a family. Sutton Button has always looked different from her family. While her siblings had short, stout legs, Sutton's legs were long like noodles. And while her siblings had scruffy, yellow fur, Sutton was a tricolor puppy with soft fur. But when others don't believe that Sutton and her siblings are actually related, Sutton starts to wonder if she really belongs in her family at all--until she realizes that her and her family are the same in all the most important ways and that love, rather than what you look like, is what makes a family. With heartwarming text and adorable illustrations, A Family Looks Like Love is a story about the enduring power of love and teaches readers that family comes in all shapes and sizes.
"The Secret of the Plumed Serpent," the second book of the elusive author and healer Armando Torres follows his bestseller "Encounters with the Nagual," where he describes his friendship with Carlos Castaneda, the controversial author of twelve best-selling books recounting Castaneda's apprenticeship with don Juan Matus, a Yaqui sorcerer and custodian of ancestral knowledge that has flourished for thousands of years in what is now Mexico and parts of Central America. Here, eight years later (the original Spanish edition was published in 2010), Torres continues his account of his experiences on the path of sorcerer-healer, the account he began and then abruptly broke off in the last chapter of the "Encounters with the Nagual." His simple, functional narrative opens an astounding vista of secret ceremonies, solemn incantations and magical beings roaming the otherworld, but also of relentless discipline and of unquenchable passion for absolute freedom his teachers the healers inherited from their ancestors, the Toltecs: masterful sorcerers, artists and men of knowledge dedicated to discovering the secret of existence. It is the secret of Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, the gateway to infinity. As Torres works his way towards the final revelation, terror and wonder mingle with moments of earthy comedy, deliciously seasoned with the irony, wit and practical jokes of his friend and mentor Carlos. Somewhere in the anonymity of Mexican countryside, Armando's quest for freedom and impeccability continues.
Read along with Disney! When Bob tells the pups they're going to help out at the local pet adoption event, Adopt-a-palooza, Bingo and Rolly can't wait to go. But when an energetic little puppy runs away, Bingo and Rolly make it their mission to bring him back....and then help him find the perfect pet owner to call his own!
“Wonderfully written…Mr. Owen writes about water, but in these polarized times the lessons he shares spill into other arenas. The world of water rights and wrongs along the Colorado River offers hope for other problems.” —Wall Street Journal An eye-opening account of where our water comes from and where it all goes. The Colorado River is an essential resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. David Owen traces all that water from the Colorado’s headwaters to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. He takes readers on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the U.S.–Mexico border where the river runs dry. Water problems in the western United States can seem tantalizingly easy to solve: just turn off the fountains at the Bellagio, stop selling hay to China, ban golf, cut down the almond trees, and kill all the lawyers. But a closer look reveals a vast man-made ecosystem that is far more complex and more interesting than the headlines let on. The story Owen tells in Where the Water Goes is crucial to our future: how a patchwork of engineering marvels, byzantine legal agreements, aging infrastructure, and neighborly cooperation enables life to flourish in the desert—and the disastrous consequences we face when any part of this tenuous system fails.
The Akimel O'odham, or Pima Indians, of the northern Sonoran Desert continue to make their home along Arizona's Gila River despite the alarming degradation of their habitat that has occurred over the past century. The oldest living Pimas can recall a lush riparian ecosystem and still recite more than two hundred names for plants in their environment, but they are the last generation who grew up subsisting on cultivated native crops or wild-foraged plants. Ethnobiologist Amadeo M. Rea has written the first complete ethnobotany of the Gila River Pima and has done so from the perspective of the Pimas themselves. At the Desert's Green Edge weaves the Pima view of the plants found in their environment with memories of their own history and culture, creating a monumental testament to their traditions and way of life. Rea first discusses the Piman people, environment, and language, then proceeds to share their botanical knowledge in entries for 240 plants that systematically cover information on economic botany, folk taxonomy, and linguistics. The entries are organized according to Pima life-form categories such as plants growing in water, eaten greens, and planted fruit trees. All are anecdotal, conveying the author's long personal involvement with the Pimas, whether teaching in their schools or learning from them in conversations and interviews. At the Desert's Green Edge is an archive of otherwise unavailable plant lore that will become a benchmark for botanists and anthropologists. Enhanced by more than one hundred brush paintings of plants, it is written to be equally useful to nonspecialists so that the Pimas themselves can turn to it as a resource regarding their former lifeways. More than an encyclopedia of facts, it is the Pimas' own story, a witness to a changing way of life in the Sonoran Desert.
There is a common but often unspoken arrogance on the part of outside observers that folk science and traditional knowledge—the type developed by Native communities and tribal groups—is inferior to the “formal science” practiced by Westerners. In this lucidly written and humanistic account of the O’odham tribes of Arizona and Northwest Mexico, ethnobiologist Amadeo M. Rea exposes the limitations of this assumption by exploring the rich ornithology that these tribes have generated about the birds that are native to their region. He shows how these peoples’ observational knowledge provides insights into the behaviors, mating habits, migratory patterns, and distribution of local bird species, and he uncovers the various ways that this knowledge is incorporated into the communities’ traditions and esoteric belief systems. Drawing on more than four decades of field and textual research along with hundreds of interviews with tribe members, Rea identifies how birds are incorporated, both symbolically and practically, into Piman legends, songs, art, religion, and ceremonies. Through highly detailed descriptions and accounts loaded with Native voice, this book is the definitive study of folk ornithology. It also provides valuable data for scholars of linguistics and North American Native studies, and it makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how humans make sense of their world. It will be of interest to historians of science, anthropologists, and scholars of indigenous cultures and folk taxonomy.