Tuesday, January 25, 2011

More new books arrived! High time, too.

Just when cobwebs threatened to form on the books displayed since mid-December, a shipment of new books was wheeled into the library.  Good stuff, all of it.  The World is Blue caught my eye immediately, and reminded me of the BBC story heard today of the polar bear who swam continuously for nine days, seeking sea ice, losing 22% of her body fat and her yearling cub in the process.  A photograph of a polar bear, looking directly into the camera, is the last image in The World is Blue.

The world is blue : how our fate and the ocean's are one / Sylvia A. Earle.
Washington, D.C. : National Geographic, c2009.

Sylvia Earle is former NOAA Chief Scientist, and the first person to walk untethered at the lowest depth ever—1, 250 feet. She is founder and director of Deep Ocean Research and Exploration, which designs instruments for deep-sea exploration.

It seemed very fitting that we received a replacement copy of Wendell Berry's The gift of good land : further essays, cultural and agricultural (Counterpoint Press, c1981) in the same shipment as Rebels for the soil : the rise of the global organic food and farming movement / Matthew Reed. (Earthscan, 2010).  The two books are excellent bookends for the past two decades of progress toward sustainable agricultural practices.

Browse the new book shelf - you will find a good read for that lull between the end of Winter Term and the start of spring semester!

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