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When the Earth was green : plants, animals, and evolution's greatest romance / by Black, Riley,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A gorgeously composed look at the longstanding relationship between prehistoric plants and life on Earth Fossils plants allow us to touch the lost worlds from billions of years of evolutionary backstory. Each petrified leaf and root show us that dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, and even humans would not exist without the evolutionary efforts of their leafy counterparts. It has been the constant growth of plants that have allowed so many of our favorite, fascinating prehistoric creatures to evolve, oxygenating the atmosphere, coaxing animals onto land, and forming the forests that shaped our ancestors' anatomy. It is impossible to understand our history without them. Or, our future. Using the same scientifically-informed narrative technique that readers loved in the award-winning The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, in When the Earth Was Green, Riley Black brings readers back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded. Each chapter stars plants and animals alike, underscoring how the interactions between species have helped shape the world we call home. As the chapters move upwards in time, Black guides readers along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present"--
Subjects: Evolutionary paleoecology.; Paleobotany.; Plants; Plants, Fossil.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The class : a memoir of a place, a time, and us / by Dryden, Ken,1947-author.;
"From bestselling author Ken Dryden, a riveting new book. On Tuesday, September 6, 1960, the day after Labour Day, class 9G at Etobicoke Collegiate Institute in a suburb of Toronto assembled for the first time. Its thirty-five students, having written special exams, came to be known as the "Selected Class." They would stay together through high school, with few exceptions. They would spend more than two hundred days a year together. Few had known each other before. Few have been in other than accidental contact in all the decades since. Their ancestors were almost all from working-class backgrounds. Their parents had lived their formative years through depression and war. They themselves were born into a postwar world of new homes, new schools, new churches. New suburbs. Of new classes like this one. Of boundless possibilities. When almost anything seems within reach, what do we reach for? Ken Dryden was one of these thirty-five. In his varied, improbable life, he had wondered often how he had gotten from there to here. How any of us do. He decided to try and find his classmates, to see how they are, what they are doing, how life has been for them. They talked many long hours, in a way they had never talked before. Most had married, some divorced, most have kids, many have grandkids. This is the story of a place, a time, and so much more."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Dryden, Ken, 1947-; Etobicoke Collegiate Institute (Ont.); High school graduates;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations. by M. Fagan, Brian,actor.; The Great Courses (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Brian M. FaganOriginally produced by The Great Courses in 2003.Where do we come from? How did our ancestors settle this planet? How did the great historic civilizations of the world develop? How does a past so shadowy that it has to be painstakingly reconstructed from fragmentary, largely unwritten records nonetheless make us who and what we are? These 36 lectures bring you the answers that scientific and archaeological research and theorizing suggest about human origins, how populations developed, and the ways in which civilizations spread throughout the globe. It's a fascinating 36-lecture narrative that covers human prehistory from our beginnings more than 2.5 million years ago up to and beyond the advent of the world's first preindustrial civilizations.Along the way, you'll explore a fascinating set of civilizations, including Homo habilis (the first tool-making hominid); the Cro-Magnons, among the first known artists as well as hunter-gatherers; Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia and the intricate patchwork of city-states between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers; and the mysterious Harappan civilization of the Indus. Woven through this narrative is a set of pervasive themes: emerging human biological and cultural diversity, the impact of human adaptations to climatic and environmental change, and the importance of seeing prehistory not merely as a chronicle of archaeological sites but of the stories of the people who created them.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Social sciences.; History, Ancient.; Instructional films.; Documentary films.; History.; Archaeology.; Evolution (Biology).; Prehistoric peoples.;
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I'll tell you when I'm home : a memoir / by Alyan, Hala,1986-author.;
"After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate. In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman -- the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn -- to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance. As her baby grows in the body of another woman, in another country, Hala finds her own life unraveling -- a husband who wants to leave; the cost of past traumas and addictions threatening to resurface; the city of her youth, Beirut, on the brink of crisis. She turns to family stories and communal myths: of grandmothers mapping their lives through Palestine, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon; of eradicated villages and invading armies; of places of refuge that proved only temporary; of men that left and women that stayed; of the contradictions of her own Midwestern childhood, and adolescence in various Arab cities. Meanwhile, as the baby grows from the size of a poppyseed to a grain of rice, then a lime, and beyond, Hala gathers the stories that are her legacy, setting down the ones that confine, holding close those that liberate. It is emotionally charged, painstaking work, but now the stakes are higher: how to honor ancestors and future generations alike in the midst of displacement? How to impart love for those who are no longer here, for places one can no longer touch?"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Alyan, Hala, 1986-; Families; Generational trauma.; Inheritance of acquired characters.; Love.; Miscarriage.; Motherhood.; Palestinian American women; Surrogate mothers.; Women authors, American; Authors, American;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Big chief / by Hickey, Jon,1981-author.;
"There, There meets The Night Watchman in this gripping literary debut about power and corruption, family, and facing the ghosts of the past. Mitch Caddo, a young law school graduate and aspiring political fixer, is an outsider in the homeland of his Anishinaabe ancestors. But alongside his childhood friend, Tribal President Mack Beck, he runs the government of the Passage Rouge Nation, and with it, the tribe's Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel. On the eve of Mack's reelection, their tenuous grip on power is threatened by a nationally known activist and politician, Gloria Hawkins, and her young aide, Layla Beck, none other than Mack's estranged sister and Mitch's former love. In their struggle for control over Passage Rouge, the campaigns resort to bare-knuckle political gamesmanship, testing the limits of how far they will go-and what they will sacrifice-to win it all. But when an accident claims the life of Mitch's mentor, a power broker in the reservation's political scene, the election slides into chaos and pits Mitch against the only family he has. As relationships strain to their breaking points and a peaceful protest threatens to become an all-consuming riot, Mitch and Layla must work together to stop the reservation's descent into violence. Thrilling and timely, Big Chief is an unforgettable story about the search for belonging-to an ancestral and spiritual home, to a family, and to a sovereign people at a moment of great historical importance"--
Subjects: Political fiction.; Novels.; Elections; Ethics; Families; Friendship; Interpersonal relations; Political corruption; Indigenous reservations; Ojibwe;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Ancestry : a novel / by Mawer, Simon,author.;
The past is another country and we are all its exiles. Banished forever, we look back in fascination and wonder at this mysterious land. Who were the people who populated it? Almost two hundred years ago, Abraham, an illiterate urchin, scavenges on a Suffolk beach and dreams of running away to sea. Naomi, a seventeen-year-old seamstress, sits primly in a second class carriage on the train from Sussex to London and imagines a new life in the big city. George, a private soldier of the 50th Regiment of Foot, marries his Irish bride, Annie, in the cathedral in Manchester and together they face married life under arms. Now these people exist only in the bare bones of registers and census lists but they were once real enough. They lived, loved, felt joy and fear, and ultimately died. But who were they? And what indissoluble thread binds them together? Simon Mawer's compelling and original novel puts flesh on our ancestors' bones to bring them to life and give them voice. He has created stories that are gripping and heart-breaking, from the squalor and vitality of Dickensian London to the excitement of seafaring in the last days of sail and the horror of the trenches of the Crimea. There is birth and death; there is love, both open and legal but also hidden and illicit. Yet the thread that connects these disparate figures is something that they cannot have known, the unbreakable bond of family.
Subjects: Biographical fiction.; Domestic fiction.; Historical fiction.; Novels.; Mawer, Simon; Census; Families; Genealogy;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Sisters of the spruce : a novel / by Shimotakahara, Leslie,author.;
Includes bibliographical references.World War One is in high gear. Fourteen-year-old Khya Terada moves with her family to a remote, misty inlet on Haida Gwaii, then the Queen Charlotte Islands, in northern British Columbia, known for its Sitka spruces. The Canadian government has passed an act to expedite logging of these majestic trees, desperately needed for the Allies' aircrafts in Europe. At a camp on the inlet, Khya's father, Sannosuke--a talented, daring logger with twenty years of experience since immigrating from Japan--assumes a position of leadership among the Japanese and Chinese workers. But the arrival of a group of white loggers, eager to assert their authority, throws off balance the precarious life that Khya and her family have begun to establish. When a quarrel between Sannosuke and a white man known as "the Captain" escalates, leading to the betrayal of her older sister, Izzy, and humiliation for the family, Khya embarks on a perilous journey with her one friend--a half-Chinese sex worker, on the lam for her own reasons--to track down the man and force him to take responsibility. Yet nothing in the forest is as it appears. Can they save Izzy from ruination and find justice without condemning her to a life of danger, or exposing themselves to the violence of an angry, power-hungry man? Drawing on inspiration from her ancestors' stories and experiences, Shimotakahara weaves an entrancing tale of female adventure, friendship, and survival.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Betrayal; Families; Female friendship; Loggers; Sisters; Sitka spruce; Survival; Japanese Canadians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Becoming Madam Secretary / by Dray, Stephanie,author.;
"Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference. When she's not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell's Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists, including the millionaire socialite Mary Harriman Rumsey, the flirtatious budding author Sinclair Lewis, and the brilliant but troubled reformer Paul Wilson, with whom she falls deeply in love. But when Frances meets a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a tea dance, sparks fly in all the wrong directions. She thinks he's a rich, arrogant dilettante who gets by on a handsome face and a famous name. He thinks she's a priggish bluestocking and insufferable do-gooder. Neither knows it yet, but over the next twenty years, they will form a historic partnership that will carry them both to the White House. Frances is destined to rise in a political world dominated by men, facing down the Great Depression as FDR's most trusted lieutenant -- even as she struggles to balance the demands of a public career with marriage and motherhood. And when vicious political attacks mount and personal tragedies threaten to derail her ambitions, she must decide what she's willing to do -- and what she's willing to sacrifice -- to save a nation"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Biographical fiction.; Novels.; Perkins, Frances, 1880-1965; Women cabinet officers; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The women in the castle / by Shattuck, Jessica,author.;
Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany's defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband's ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband's brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows. First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin's mother, the beautiful and naive Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resister's wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war. As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband's resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually, all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war--each with their own unique share of challenges.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Castles; Interpersonal relations; Widows;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
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Outlaw Lake / by Yates, Maisey,author.;
"Carson Wilder and Perry Bramble have been best friends forever, starting with their painful childhoods. As far as romance, Carson always knew he wasn't good enough for her. And by the time they were grown, their bond was too important to risk messing up. Now, Carson is grieving the death of his wife. And like always, Perry is his rock. He can't imagine life without her. But he may have to. Perry has loved Carson since she was 7 years old. He never showed a hint of interest in her beyond friendship, but two decades later, he's still the most important person in her life. Maybe too important. Inspired by the diary of an ancestor who left everything behind to come west as a mail order bride, Perry stuns Carson with a decision: She's moving to a neighboring city to expand her florist business--and to find love and start a family. Carson hates the idea, but he'll do anything for Perry's happiness. He'll even help get her historic home fixed up for sale. She can stay with him at his ranch house on Outlaw Lake in the meantime. What ensues are dinners filled with laughter, dating app disasters--and Carson wondering why he'd look for another woman when the one he loves is right here. His answers may lie in the letters he finds from the man who married the mail order bride ... But can he finally gather the courage to be true to his wild heart--before it's too late?"--
Subjects: Romance fiction.; Novels.; Best friends; Florists; Man-woman relationships;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Results 131 to 140 of 182 | « previous |