Bill Vaughn— In “Hawthorn Blossom,” the Brothers Grimm rewriting of the folk story Sleeping Beauty, a queen is informed by a frog that the royal couple finally will have a child. Among the guests at the celebration of the princess’s birth are twelve “wise women” (the sort of traditional village
Tony Angell— To most of us owls are mysterious and elusive creatures of the night. That they can freely operate in darkness that leaves us gripping a flashlight to make our way, contributes to their singular standing among birds. Of course their broad feathered faces collect all available light to
Follow @yaleSCIbooks Looking for a little motivation to reconnect with your backyard now that summer is officially here? James Barilla’s My Backyard Jungle: The Adventures of an Urban Wildlife Lover Who Turned His Yard into Habitat and Learned with It is the summer reading book for you. Now available in paperback, the book makes
This month’s theme focuses on public art, touching on fashion, street art, fine art, and, what may tend to get overlooked, the art found in nature. Nature is around all of us whether it be a tree lining a city street or sprawling mountain ranges covered in thick forests. Nature itself could
Arcadian America, written by Aaron Sachs, takes a look back at nineteenth-century garden cemeteries and relates them to our current moment of environmental crisis. Throughout, Arcadian America presents the reader with a great deal of historical facts and context, which Sachs effortlessly blends with cultural criticism and personal memoir to
Thanks to the insight of James Barilla’s new book, My Backyard Jungle: The Adventures of an Urban Wildlife Lover Who Turned His Yard into Habitat and Learned with It, we at Yale University Press are sharing stories of our own backyards and the specially hidden, and often overlooked, secrets contained
Follow @yaleSCIbooks In The Value of Species, Edward L. McCord both celebrates the immense breadth of life forms found on earth—from the rainforests and oceans to the prairies and deserts—and defends its value in the face of ever-more-urgent environment threats to biodiversity. Drawing on concepts from philosophy, law, and ethics
Follow @yaleSCIbooks It is to be expected that ants with eventually begin crawling on your picnic blanket as you try to enjoy an outdoor lunch on a sunny afternoon in a New England park. Though they seem to exist solely to be nuisances, ants play a fundamental part of our
Sarah Underwood— Reading poetry normally does not make me hungry, but after “Lake of Little Birds,” poet Katherine Larson had me ready for “[s]wordish/ drizzled with virgin oil, rubbed with/ mint and saffron”…and several other dishes. The 2010 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize uses her experience
Thoreau: Fully Annotated
In a month, it will have been ten years since Jeffrey S. Cramer published Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition. Cramer has had a prolific and successful decade, editing numerous volumes on Henry David Thoreau and racking up awards and praise. In 2012, radio host Jim Fleming said that Cramer “may know
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