A Mirror For Nature

Jane Yolen and Jason Stemple join forces again in this new winning combination of poems and photos. Water possesses reflective qualities, creating fascinating patterns and doubled images that allow us to see things in new ways. Celebrated writer Jane Yolen and photographer Jason Stemple capture these natural beauties in twelve thoughtful poems and breathtaking pictures in this winner of the John Burroughs Nature Books for Young Readers Award. Watery reflections provide an appropriate backdrop for Jane's musings on nature, such as a raccoon swimming with his reflected self, the water-jagged legs of a snowy egret, and the double danger of a hungry alligator at the edge of a swamp. Jason's photographs offer whimsical peeks at the natural world we rarely chance to see. This artistic collaboration gives readers a unique opportunity to contemplate their world.

Basing our psychospiritual development on the model of the tree a symbol of the continuity of life Stephanie Sorrell shows how we may understand the rhythms and cycles of the tree and integrate them into our vision in a conscious way.

This book brings the insights of psychoanalysis to bear on drama in the western dramatic tradition. Plays which are discussed in detail include works by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, Wilde, and Beckett among others. The authors seek to show that the subtle understanding of conscious and unconscious emotions achieved by psychoanalytic practice can bring new ways of understanding classic works of drama. The argument of the book, set out in its introduction and exemplified in its discussion of individual dramatists and plays, is that western drama has represented the central tensions of societies as crises in the relationships of gender and generation, through dramatic explorations of the inner life of families. This is the common theme which links the book's analysis of Medea, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream amongst others. The value of this book lies in the originality of its analysis of individual plays, and the subtlety with which it brings psychoanalytic and sociological insights together.

Shakespeare reveals the causes and consequences of violence more profoundly than any social or behavioural scientist has ever done.

Assuming no prior knowledge of Rorty or his ideas, this is a much needed critical introduction for both undergraduates and postgraduates in philosophy, literary theory and cultural studies.

It may be surprising to us now, but the taxidermists who filled the museums, zoos, and aquaria of the twentieth century were also among the first to become aware of the devastating effects of careless human interaction with the natural world. Witnessing firsthand the decimation caused by hide hunters, commercial feather collectors, whalers, big game hunters, and poachers, these museum taxidermists recognized the existential threat to critically endangered species and the urgent need to protect them. The compelling exhibits they created—as well as the scientific field work, popular writing, and lobbying they undertook—established a vital leadership role in the early conservation movement for American museums that persists to this day. Through their individual research expeditions and collective efforts to arouse demand for environmental protections, this remarkable cohort—including William T. Hornaday, Carl E. Akeley, and several lesser-known colleagues—created our popular understanding of the animal world and its fragile habitats. For generations of museum visitors, they turned the glass of an exhibition case into a window on nature—and a mirror in which to reflect on our responsibility for its conservation.

Issued in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name held at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, September 10-December 10, 2017.