Outside the Magic Square considers issues of food security and offers solutions at the street, neighbourhood and global levels. Mixing gardening advice and food plot design with discussion of issues like global warming, dwindling oil supplies, the future for farmers and GM foods, Lolo Houbein challenges us to mobilise for food security.

ONE MAGIC SQUARE shows how, with a ten-minute effort, you can start your own productive food garden on a single square metre. By following these plot designs you can keep your labour pleasurable as your self-sufficiency increases. Take control of your own fresh food supply! Food gardening is the most intelligent adult endeavour on earth - Lolo Houbein shows you how to do it, and why you should.

A funny, entertaining introduction to Ben Franklin and his many inventions, including the story of how he created the "magic square." A magic square is a box of nine numbers arranged so that any line of three numbers adds up to the same number, including on the diagonal! Teachers and kids will love finding out about this popular teaching tool that is still used in elementary schools today!

This 2nd edition of the classic gardening guide features more than 40 small garden designs for everything from stir-fry vegetables to anti-cancer foods. For decades, Lolo Houbein has cultivated her own organic fruits, vegetables and herbs from small gardens of no more than 3 feet square. Now she shows readers how to reap an abundant harvest from a tiny plot of land. One Magic Square features plot designs geared toward specific themes, like soups, salads, and starchy staples, as well as plots of edible flowers, and antioxidant-rich foods—with encyclopedic information about every crop in every plot. With wisdom and humor, Lolo shares sustainable, cost-effective techniques for using compost, saving water, troubleshooting weeds and pests and more. She also offers tips on drying, freezing, pickling, and other ways to get more value and enjoyment from your homegrown produce. Ever encouraging, often charming, and always practical, this expanded second edition of One Magic Square Vegetable Gardening will help first-time gardeners get started—and help veteran gardeners get results—on a small, easy-to-maintain plot.

Provides a history of magic squares and similar structures, describing their construction and classification, along with informaiton on newly discovered objects.

Few American lives have been as celebrated--or as closely scrutinized--as that of Benjamin Franklin. Yet until now Franklin's biographers have downplayed his interest in mathematics, at best portraying it as the idle musings of a brilliant and ever-restless mind. In Benjamin Franklin's Numbers, Paul Pasles reveals a side of the iconic statesman, scientist, and writer that few Americans know--his mathematical side. In fact, Franklin indulged in many areas of mathematics, including number theory, geometry, statistics, and economics. In this generously illustrated book, Pasles gives us the first mathematical biography of Benjamin Franklin. He draws upon previously unknown sources to illustrate Franklin's genius for numbers as never before. Magic squares and circles were a lifelong fascination of Franklin's. Here, for the first time, Pasles gathers every one of these marvelous creations together in one place. He explains the mathematics behind them and Franklin's hugely popular Poor Richard's Almanac, which featured such things as population estimates and a host of mathematical digressions. Pasles even includes optional math problems that challenge readers to match wits with the bespectacled Founding Father himself. Written for a general audience, this book assumes no technical skills beyond basic arithmetic. Benjamin Franklin's Numbers is a delightful blend of biography, history, and popular mathematics. If you think you already know Franklin's story, this entertaining and richly detailed book will make you think again.

Packed with never-before-published photographs, Sightings confronts the uncanny and proves once again that truth is stranger than fiction.