Many Early Modern Europeans who during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries travelled to the New World left written or pictorial records of their encounters with a surprising fauna. The story told in this book is woven out of the threads of those texts and pictures. A New World of Animals shows how the initial wonder at the new beasts gave way to a more utilitarian approach, assessing their economic and medical potential. It elucidates how shifts in European perceptions brought the animals from the realm of the fantastic into the mainstream of early modern natural history, while at the same time changing the way in which Europeans saw their own world. Indeed, the chronicles and treatises of those who in the wake of the discovery arrived in the new lands tell as much about the particular interests and mental worlds of the writers as about the 'new animals'. This book traces the amazement of the first explorers and colonizers, the chronicles of soldiers and Indians, the 'natural histories of the New World', the place of animals in the network of economic interests driving the early expansion of Europe, the views of the missionaries and those of natural philosophers and physicians. Taking the reader from the Brazilian forests to the erudite cabinets of the Old World, from Patagonia to the centres of empire, the story of the discovery of the unexpected menagerie of the New World is also an exploration of Early Modern European imagination and learning.

A large format board book of animals from all over the world, illustrated with charm and humor. Each spread in this big book focuses on a continent or ocean and features animals unique to that part of the world. Simple but charming, this is a great mix of world tour and day at the zoo, with plenty of room for spontaneous storytelling.

Animal lovers will enjoy learning to draw their favorite creatures from around the globe, step by easy step, in A World of Animals.

Illustrated with nearly 100 photographs, New Worlds, New Animals gives readers a new respect for and understanding of the role of zoos in social and cultural history.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling” (The New York Times), “dazzling” (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong “One of this year’s finest works of narrative nonfiction.”—Oprah Daily ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader’s Digest, Chicago Public Library, Outside, Publishers Weekly, BookPage ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Smithsonian Magazine, Prospect (UK), Globe & Mail, Esquire, Mental Floss, Marginalian, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world. In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved. Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.” WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON AWARD

This dazzling tour of the animal kingdome takes you all over the globe, from tiny bugs on Himalayan peaks to hairy rhinos in the depths of the jungle. The very best of today's wildlife photography combines with lively, fascinating text to reveal the magic and wonder of the animal world.

Literary Nonfiction. North American History. Science. Three centuries ago, white Europeans began to colonize the North American continent. In doing so, they encountered flying squirrels, ruby-throated hummingbirds, and the easily tamed beaver: creatures their kind had never met before. The accounts of early explorers and settlers in describing these animals and others provide fascinating insight into the taxonomies they carried to the so-called New World. Their literature of discovery was by turns comic, cruel and adulatory. This book brings together period quotes and 21st-century science in an idiosyncratic narrative. Extended anecdote conveys the adventures of historical personalities, and the book borrows, too, from fables, children's stories and natural histories. Yet WHAT SPECIES OF CREATURES addresses present concerns our habitual understanding of wild animals and our own place in the natural order. In the process of quoting from and commenting upon European ancestors' speciesist arrogance, Kirsch interrogates our seemingly insatiable appetite to trap, catch, skin, domesticate, eat, eradicate or otherwise bend to our use the animals in our midst."

With 50 chunky flaps to lift and warm, friendly illustrations by award-winning artist Anthony Lewis, this is an essential interactive introduction to animal habitats around the world.

Text and pictures take the reader inside animal homes--used for resting, sheltering from weather, escaping enemies, and raising young.