Out Of Eden

In this stunning work of narrative nonfiction, the author tours the front lines of ecological invasion--in Hawaii, Tasmania, Guam, San Francisco, in lush rain forests, through underground lava tubes, on the deck of an Alaska-bound oil tanker.

Offering a philosophical meditation on the problem of evil, this book uses the Genesis story of the Fall as the starting point for an articulation of the human condition, and shows us that evil expresses the rage of a subject who knows both that he is an image of an infinite God and that he must die.

How did the replication bomb we call ”life” begin and where in the world, or rather, in the universe, is it heading? Writing with characteristic wit and an ability to clarify complex phenomena (the New York Times described his style as ”the sort of science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius”), Richard Dawkins confronts this ancient mystery.

In a brilliant synthesis of genetic, archaeological, linguistic and climatic data, Oppenheimer challenges current thinking with his claim that there was only one successful migration out of Africa. In 1988 Newsweek headlined the startling discovery that everyone alive on the earth today can trace their maternal DNA back to one woman who lived in Africa 150,000 years ago. It was thought that modern humans populated the world through a series of migratory waves from their African homeland. Now an even more radical view has emerged, that the members of just one group are the ancestors of all non-Africans now alive, and that this group crossed the mouth of the Red Sea a mere 85,000 years ago. It means that not only is every person on the planet descended from one African 'Eve' but every non-African is related to a more recent Eve, from that original migratory group. This is a revolutionary new theory about our origins that is both scholarly and entertaining, a remarkable account of the kinship of all humans. Further details of the findings in this book are presented at www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/

Out of Eden presents the rigorous investigations and musings of a poet-essayist on the ways in which modern artists have confronted and transfigured the realist tradition of representation. Di Piero pursues his theme with an autobiographical force and immediacy. He fixes his attention on painters and photographers as disparate as Cezanne, Boccioni, Pollock, Warhol, Edward Weston, and Robert Frank. There is indeed a satisfying sweep to this collection: Matisse, Giacometti, Morandi, Bacon, the Tuscan Macchiaioli of the late nineteenth century, the Futurists of the early modern period, and the American pop painters. Di Piero's analysis of modern images also probes the relation between new kinds of image making and transcendence. The author argues that Matisse and Giacometti, for example, continued to exercise the religious imagination even in a desacralized age. And because Di Piero believes that the visual arts and poetry live intimate, coordinate lives, his essays speak of the relation of poetry to forms in art. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.

On a night of torrential rain, a warrior appears near the Colombia River, where the Chinook people thrived before the hydroelectric dams came and changed their entire way of life. He has come to reclaim the river, to return it to its original majesty. Soon after, government employees are found murdered with elaborate harpoons. As the body count grows, Francine Smohalla, a government marine biologist of Chinook and white descent, embarks on her own investigation of the bizarre murders. As she desperately tries to find the killer and prevent any other murders, she finds herself spinning in the convergence of ethnic hatreds between Indians and whites, an unlikely relationship with a kindred spirit whose troubled life has led him to contemplate terrorism and apocalypse, an ancient prophecy about the return of her beloved salmon, and the giant dams on the Columbia that loom large and as seemingly immovable as the mountains themselves. A River Out of Eden is a gripping literary thriller straight from today’s headlines set against the uniquely American contradictions of the Pacific Northwest.

In this changing world of what is deemed socially and politically "correct," polygamy is perhaps the last great taboo. Over the course of the last thousand years, monogamy - at least in name - has been the default setting for coupledom and procreation. And yet, throughout history, there havebeen inklings that "one-man, one-woman" may not be the most natural state-of-being for humans. The recent Ashley Madison "cheaters website" hacking, coupled with the high divorce rate of the last half-century, provide more than enough evidence to convince even a hopeless romantic that monogamy, andthe institution of marriage which props it up, is doomed to be a bygone remnant of a more socially conservative past.Esteemed writer and evolutionary biologist David P. Barash tackles this uncomfortable finding: that humans are actually biologically and anthropologically more inclined toward polygamy. With years of research in the field to back up this argument, Barash presents hundreds of anecdotes from bothevolutionary biology and human history that guide the reader through the societal impacts of monogamy and polygamy - some expected (sexual behavior) and others unexpected (the most successful models of parenting). Despite this natural inclination of humanity, Barash is reassuring throughout thisfascinating read in his resolution that "biology is not destiny."

Sometimes paradise isn't all it's cracked up to be. That's what I, Kylie McGraw, have discovered since sacrificing my dreams of traveling the world to run the family shoe store. But if I have my way, peaceful Eden, Indiana, is in for a major shake-up…. It all began on my birthday, when I got drunk and disorderly all over Eden's hunky new police chief (and my former high school crush), Jack Reynolds. Then I may have, in my Cosmo haze, witnessed a murder in progress. Now I'm almost certain I'm being stalked by the mob, while he-of-the-distracting-abs Jack continues to think I'm nuts. However, there comes a time when a girl has to kick off her sensible shoes (size 7, cushion insoles) and go after what she wants. So if I can just survive long enough to put on my sexy new red heels, that's exactly what I intend to do….