The Life of a Leaf
The Life of a Leaf

Author: Steven Vogel

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2012-10-17

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 0226859398

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In its essence, science is a way of looking at and thinking about the world. In The Life of a Leaf, Steven Vogel illuminates this approach, using the humble leaf as a model. Whether plant or person, every organism must contend with its immediate physical environment, a world that both limits what organisms can do and offers innumerable opportunities for evolving fascinating ways of challenging those limits. Here, Vogel explains these interactions, examining through the example of the leaf the extraordinary designs that enable life to adapt to its physical world. In Vogel’s account, the leaf serves as a biological everyman, an ordinary and ubiquitous living thing that nonetheless speaks volumes about our environment as well as its own. Thus in exploring the leaf’s world, Vogel simultaneously explores our own. A companion website with demonstrations and teaching tools can be found here: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/sites/vogel/index.html

Fallen Leaves
Fallen Leaves

Author: Will Durant

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2014-12-09

Total Pages: 3

ISBN-13: 1476771561

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Praised as a “revelatory” book by The Wall Street Journal, this is the last and most personal work of Pulitzer Prize–winning author and historian Will Durant, discovered thirty-two years after his death. The culmination of Will Durant’s sixty-plus years spent researching the philosophies, religions, arts, sciences, and civilizations from across the world, Fallen Leaves is the distilled wisdom of one of the world’s greatest minds, a man with a renowned talent for rendering the insights of the past accessible. Over the course of Durant’s career he received numerous letters from “curious readers who have challenged me to speak my mind on the timeless questions of human life and fate.” With Fallen Leaves, his final book, he at last accepted their challenge. In twenty-two short chapters, Durant addresses everything from youth and old age to religion, morals, sex, war, politics, and art. Fallen Leaves is “a thought-provoking array of opinions” (Publishers Weekly), offering elegant prose, deep insights, and Durant’s revealing conclusions about the perennial problems and greatest joys we face as a species. In Durant’s singular voice, here is a message of insight for everyone who has ever sought meaning in life or the counsel of a learned friend while navigating life’s journey.

Leaves Falling Gently
Leaves Falling Gently

Author: Susan Bauer-Wu

Publisher: New Harbinger Publications

Published: 2011-09-01

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1608820009

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A life-limiting illness may have taken hold of your body, but you can still live more fully and openly than ever before. You can enrich your life by exploring ways to make peace with yourself and deepen connections with friends and family. This book will help you reap the benefits of mindfulness and acceptance, one day at a time. Leaves Falling Gently is a comforting guide to the mindfulness and compassion practices that will help you embrace the present moment, despite your illness. With each simple practice, you’ll deepen your appreciation for the experiences that bring you joy and enhance your capacity for gratitude, generosity, and love. As you work through each personal reflection and guided meditation, you’ll regain the strength to live fully, regardless of the changes and challenges that come.

House of Leaves
House of Leaves

Author: Mark Z. Danielewski

Publisher: Pantheon

Published: 2000-03-07

Total Pages: 738

ISBN-13: 0375420525

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“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices. The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

Green Leaves for Later Years
Green Leaves for Later Years

Author: Emilie Griffin

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2012-08-02

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0830863370

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Calling on seventy-five years of memories and lessons learned, Emilie Griffin reflects on the beauty and struggle of aging. Hers is a deceptively simple spiritual path--motivated only by a desire to be close to the Lord. Ideal for both individuals and discussion groups.

A Trail Through Leaves
A Trail Through Leaves

Author: Hannah Hinchman

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780393041019

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To artist-writer-naturalist Hannah Hinchman, the blank pages of a journal are a call to awaken the soul, to celebrate being alive in the world, to get to know both the wilderness of our inmost selves and the "unpredictable and potent" natural world. In the richly illustrated pages of this book, she unfolds a myriad of wonders — the pattern of a bee abdomen, varieties of ice forms and sky colors, the joys of a garden — and shows us how to capture them on the page. Hinchman's respect for the miracle of our five senses, and her passion for what they can tell us about the world, is contagious. "Start with a smell, like a crushed marigold leaf, the sea, coal smoke," she advises, and from such raw materials begin to "decant the stuff of life" into journal form, "where it remains fresh, still tasting of its source." Even for one who has no intention of journal-keeping, to delve into Hinchman's own work is to see with new eyes. A Trail Through Leaves is a true gift and inspiration, a treasure-box of ways to write, draw, and be alive to the world. * "This is an important book, brilliantly produced. Its light will linger a long, long time." — John R. Stilgoe, professor in the history of landscape, Harvard University * "[B]oth a rich work of performance art and a personal growth tool with many handles." — Boston Globe

Those Barren Leaves
Those Barren Leaves

Author: Aldous Huxley

Publisher: Aegitas

Published: 2021-11-22

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 0369406729

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Those Barren Leaves is a satirical novel by Aldous Huxley, published in 1925. The title is derived from the poem 'The Tables Turned' by William Wordsworth which ends with the words: Enough of Science and of Art; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives. Stripping the pretensions of those who claim a spot among the cultural elite, it is the story of Mrs. Aldwinkle and her entourage, who are gathered in an Italian palace to relive the glories of the Renaissance. For all their supposed sophistication, they are nothing but sad and superficial individuals in the final analysis.

Leaves of Life
Leaves of Life

Author: Kazembe Olugbala Bediako

Publisher:

Published: 2011-05-01

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780984571536

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Leaves of Life, Volume1: Single Plants, the author of the Behutet series and native of Guyana, posits the view that herbal medicine is becoming more popular in contemporary life and that there is a herbal remedy for any ailment. Scientists have come to recognize the capacity of the rainforest to treat or cure ailments and diseases that plague modern life, such as AIDS, cancers, venereal diseases, heart problems, diabetes, Alzheimer's, arthritis, infertility, leukemia, multiple sclerosis and more. This priceless resource of over one hundred and twenty single Plants, thought to be lost over the generations, will ever be at your finger tips. Leaves of Life, Volume1: Single Plants, cites the enormous importance of the natural world of plants at a time when plant resources are decreasing at a rapid rate. No other time in history have human beings placed such importance on the natural world of plants. Guyana, which lies at the point where the Caribbean meets South America on its North Atlantic seaboard, consists of 80% rainforest and is home to one of the richest regions of the world with expanses of untouched neotropical forests and different species of plants found nowhere else on earth. Leaves of Life, Volume1: Single Plants reveals the true secrets of its tropical vegetation which was traditionally confined to the "Bush Men," the individuals who make their living off the local plant lore. These secrets have eluded European explorers like Walter Raleigh, the first European to record the existence of curare, a paralytic, plant-derived poison used in fishing and hunting in Guyana. Curare causes death by asphyxiation through the loss of control of muscles essential in respiration and is used in modern medicine as a muscle relaxant for shock treatment of mental illness, and as an adjunct to anaesthesia in heart surgery.