Questionable Creatures

Questionable Creatures
Author: Pauline Baynes
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2006-06-30
Genre: Animals, Mythical
ISBN: 9780802852847

Bestiaries are the most gloriously entertaining books to have come from the Middle Ages. Written and illuminated by monks, they describe every creature thought to exist in the medieval world and include all manner of fish, fowl, and mythological beast, however far-fetched. Pauline Baynes, whose original line illustrations for J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are known to millions, has revived twenty medieval and mischievous beasts, basing her tongue-in-cheek descriptions on various English bestiaries. Her delightful recreations of these fabulous beasts -- from phoenix to manticore, from bonnacon to yale -- hop, swoop, and gallop through the pages in antique splendor and will charm today's readers as readily as they astounded audiences centuries ago.

A Questionable Shape

A Questionable Shape
Author: Bennett Sims
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-03-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781953387493

Mazoch discovers an unreturned movie envelope, smashed windows, and a pool of blood in his father's house: the man has gone missing. So he creates a list of his father's haunts and asks Vermaelen to help track him down. However, hurricane season looms over Baton Rouge, threatening to wipe out any undead not already contained and eliminate all hope of ever finding Mazoch's father. Bennett Sims turns typical zombie fare on its head to deliver a wise and philosophical rumination on the nature of memory and loss.

Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods

Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods
Author: William Thomas Cox
Publisher: Franklin Classics
Total Pages: 56
Release: 2018-10-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9780343384692

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Good Boy

Good Boy
Author: Jennifer Finney Boylan
Publisher: Celadon Books
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2020-04-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250261864

From bestselling author of She’s Not There, New York Times opinion columnist, and human rights activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs, a memoir of the transformative power of loving dogs. This is a book about dogs: the love we have for them, and the way that love helps us understand the people we have been. It’s in the love of dogs, and my love for them, that I can best now take the measure of the child I once was, and the bottomless, unfathomable desires that once haunted me. There are times when it is hard for me to fully remember that love, which was once so fragile, and so fierce. Sometimes it seems to fade before me, like breath on a mirror. But I remember the dogs. In her New York Times opinion column, Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about her relationship with her beloved dog Indigo, and her wise, funny, heartbreaking piece went viral. In Good Boy, Boylan explores what should be the simplest topic in the world, but never is: finding and giving love. Good Boy is a universal account of a remarkable story: showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman—accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs. “Everything I know about love,” she writes, “I learned from dogs.” Their love enables us to pull off what seem like impossible feats: to find our way home when we are lost, to live our lives with humor and courage, and above all, to best become our true selves.

What Linnaeus Saw: A Scientist's Quest to Name Every Living Thing

What Linnaeus Saw: A Scientist's Quest to Name Every Living Thing
Author: Karen Magnuson Beil
Publisher: WW Norton
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 132400469X

The globetrotting naturalists of the eighteenth century were the geeks of their day: innovators and explorers who lived at the intersection of science and commerce. Foremost among them was Carl Linnaeus, a radical thinker who revolutionized biology. In What Linnaeus Saw, Karen Magnuson Beil chronicles Linnaeus’s life and career in readable, relatable prose. As a boy, Linnaeus hated school and had little interest in taking up the religious profession his family had chosen. Though he struggled through Latin and theology classes, Linnaeus was an avid student of the natural world and explored the school’s gardens and woods, transfixed by the properties of different plants. At twenty-five, on a solo expedition to the Scandinavian Mountains, Linnaeus documented and described dozens of new species. As a medical student in Holland, he moved among leading scientific thinkers and had access to the best collections of plants and animals in Europe. What Linnaeus found was a world with no consistent system for describing and naming living things—a situation he methodically set about changing. The Linnaean system for classifying plants and animals, developed and refined over the course of his life, is the foundation of modern scientific taxonomy, and inspired and guided generations of scientists. What Linnaeus Saw is rich with biographical anecdotes—from his attempt to identify a mysterious animal given him by the king to successfully growing a rare and exotic banana plant in Amsterdam to debunking stories of dragons and phoenixes. Thoroughly researched and generously illustrated, it offers a vivid and insightful glimpse into the life of one of modern science’s founding thinkers.

Ancient Greek Beliefs

Ancient Greek Beliefs
Author: Perry L. Westmoreland
Publisher: LEE AND VANCE PUBLISHING CO
Total Pages: 829
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 0979324815

Ancient Greek Beliefs explores the mysteries of the ancient myths and religious beliefs of a great people. The text is divided into three sections, Greek mythology, the ancient Greeks, and conclusions. A brief history and lengthy glossary are included. The book is designed as a basic text for the introduction to ancient Greek mythology and beliefs, and the text muses about the religious lessons we might learn from them. It contains abridged stories of Greek mythology, including the extant Greek plays, and considers portions of the works of the great writers, including Aeschylus, Euripides Hesiod, Homer, Plato, and Sophocles. It opens a comprehensive window into the lives of these great ancient people.

Unicorns

Unicorns
Author: Abby Colich
Publisher: Heinemann-Raintree Library
Total Pages: 34
Release: 2011
Genre: Unicorns
ISBN: 141093800X

Readers may picture unicorns as beautiful white horselike creatures with a single horn in the middle of the head. However, depictions of unicorns vary throughout history from culture to culture. This book introduces readers to what unicorns are, how unicorn stories differ across the globe, and where unicorn stories originated.

Fly

Fly
Author: Steven Connor
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2006-12-15
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1861894910

Few creatures are as universally despised as flies. Blamed for pestilence and plagues, they were publicly excommunicated from the medieval church. Beelzebub, “the lord of the flies,” was said to be the embodiment of evil, and, for centuries, flies were considered the result of spontaneous generation—the unnatural consequence of rotting meat. Fly explores the history of this much-maligned creature and then turns to examine its newfound redemption through science. The secrets of the fly’s versatile powers of flight, Steven Connor reveals, are only beginning to be understood and appreciated. Its eyes and wings, for instance, have evolved so perfectly that they provide inspiration for some of today’s most daring technological and scientific innovations. And the humble fruit fly, Connor demonstrates, stands at the center of revolutionary advances in genetic research. Connor delights in tracking his lowly subject through myth, literature, poetry, painting, film, and biology. Humans live in close and intimate quarters with flies, but Fly is the first book to give these common creatures their due.

Our Only Hope

Our Only Hope
Author: Margaret B. Adam
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-08-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1610977599

The most popular source of theological hope for American Christians is that of Jrgen Moltmann. Preachers, teachers, and lay people reflect Moltmann's influence, with their hope in a this-worldly eschatology and a suffering God. However, an exclusive reliance on that hope deprives the church of crucial resources in the face of global economic, environmental, and military crises. This book explores Moltmannian hope and considers its costs before looking elsewhere for additional contributions, from Thomas Aquinas's theological virtue of hope to nihilism and beyond, in order to encourage the church to sustain and practice hope in Jesus Christ, our only hope.