Books about Biology from Amazon.com

The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Ants render the extraordinary lives of the social insects in this visually spectacular volume.

The Superorganism promises to be one of the most important scientific works published in this decade. Coming eighteen years after the publication of The Ants, this new volume expands our knowledge of the social insects (among them, ants, bees, wasps, and termites) and is based on remarkable research conducted mostly within the last two decades. These superorganisms—a tightly knit colony of individuals, formed by altruistic cooperation, complex communication, and division of labor—represent one of the basic stages of biological organization, midway between the organism and the entire species. The study of the superorganism, as the authors demonstrate, has led to important advances in our understanding of how the transitions between such levels have occurred in evolution and how life as a whole has progressed from simple to complex forms. Ultimately, this book provides a deep look into a part of the living world hitherto glimpsed by only a very few. 110 color and 100 black-and-white illustrations..
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Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands of readers to rethink their beliefs about life.
In his internationally bestselling, now classic volume, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains how the selfish gene can also be a subtle gene. The world of the selfish gene revolves around savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit, and yet, Dawkins argues, acts of apparent altruism do exist in nature. Bees, for example, will commit suicide when they sting to protect the hive, and birds will risk their lives to warn the flock of an approaching hawk.
This 30th anniversary edition of Dawkins' fascinating book retains all original material, including the two enlightening chapters added in the second edition. In a new Introduction the author presents his thoughts thirty years after the publication of his first and most famous book, while the inclusion of the two-page original Foreword by brilliant American scientist Robert Trivers shows the enthusiastic reaction of the scientific community at that time. This edition is a celebration of a remarkable exposition of evolutionary thought, a work that has been widely hailed for its stylistic brilliance and deep scientific insights, and that continues to stimulate whole new areas of research today..
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Often imitated, never duplicated

• New! Lay-flat binding makes coloring easier.
• New! 8 plates have been added: Accessory Structures of the Skin, Temporomandibular Joint, Upper Limb: Shoulder (Glenohumeral) Joint, Upper Limb: Elbow Joints, Lower Limb: Male and female Pelves, Lower Limb: Sacroiliac and Hip Joints, Lower Limb: Knee Joints, Somatic Visceral Receptors.
• New! 7 additional sections: Skeletal and Articular Systems, Skeletal Muscular System, Central Nervous System, Central Nervous System: Cavities and Coverings, Peripheral Nervous System, Autonomic Nervous System, Human Development.

For over 23 years, The Anatomy Coloring Book has been the leading human anatomy coloring book, offering concisely written text and precise, extraordinary hand-drawn figures. Organized according to body systems, each of the 170 plates featured in this book includes an ingenious color-key system anatomical terminology is linked to detail illustration of the structures of the body.

Wynn Kapit graduated in 1955 from the University of Miami, Florida with honors in Business Administration and Law. He then attended Art Center School in Los Angeles and worked in New York as a graphic designer and advertising art director from 1960-66. He moved to California to pursue a painting career and was given a one-man show at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco in 1968. He then attended the University of California at Berkeley and received a Masters in Painting and worked as a portraitist and teacher of figure drawing.

While taking a class in human anatomy at San Francisco City College, he discovered a way to effectively learn the subject by coloring in drawings, diagrams and names. The teacher of the course, Lawrence Elson, Ph.D. agreed to help him produce a coloring book. Elson wrote and Kapit designed and illustrated The Anatomy Coloring Book, which was published in 1977 and has been a widely-translated bestseller ever since. The Physiology Coloring Book was published in 1987, with the assistance of two professors from Berkeley: Robert Macey and Esmail Meisami. The Geography Coloring Book was published in 1991; Kapit drew the maps and wrote the text. The Anatomy Coloring Book was published in a second edition in 1993, and second editions of Geography and Physiology Coloring Books will be published in 1997.

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Lawrence M. Elson received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley in Zoology (Pre-Med), and completed his graduate and Ph.D. work in Human Anatomy also at the University of California, Berkeley. Elson has served as an instructor in human anatomy at the City College of San Francisco, an assistant professor of anatomy at Baylor College of Medicine, and as a lecturer at numerous additional universities and professional organizations.

Elson is the founder and president of Coloring Concepts, Inc. (CCI), producer and packager of college level, educational, scientific directed-coloring texts. He is the author/co-author of the Anatomy Coloring Book, Human Brain Coloring Book, Zoology Coloring Book, and Microbiology Coloring Book.

Presently, he is principally functioning as a clinical and forensic anatomist retained as a consultant to governments, provinces, insurance and other corporations, and law firms on causation of injury issues in cases in or anticipated to be involved in litigation.

Future plans include expanding CCI by developing new titles in the physical sciences and other education-related disciplines.

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The best-selling author of Stiff turns her outrageous curiosity and infectious wit on the most alluring scientific subject of all: sex.

The study of sexual physiology—what happens, and why, and how to make it happen better—has been a paying career or a diverting sideline for scientists as far-ranging as Leonardo da Vinci and James Watson. The research has taken place behind the closed doors of laboratories, brothels, MRI centers, pig farms, sex-toy R&D labs, and Alfred Kinsey's attic.

Mary Roach, "the funniest science writer in the country" (Burkhard Bilger of The New Yorker), devoted the past two years to stepping behind those doors. Can a person think herself to orgasm? Can a dead man get an erection? Is vaginal orgasm a myth? Why doesn't Viagra help women—or, for that matter, pandas? In Bonk, Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm, two of the most complex, delightful, and amazing scientific phenomena on earth, can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to slowly make the bedroom a more satisfying place. 16 illustrations..
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A caterpillar comes to school in a jar. The class watches the caterpillar each day as it grows and changes. Soon, it disappears into a hard shell called a chrysalis. Then the chrysalis breaks, and a beautiful butterfly flies out of the jar! This is a perfect beginner's guide to the mystery of metamorphosis.

Outstanding Science Trade Books for Children 1997 (NSTA/CBC).
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"The best general account of evolution I have read in recent years."—E. O. Wilson. With a new introduction.

Twenty years after its original publication, The Blind Watchmaker, framed with a new introduction by the author, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the eighteenth-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte. Natural selection—the unconscious, automatic, blind, yet essentially nonrandom process Darwin discovered—is the blind watchmaker in nature..
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Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that why a chimp fetus resembles a human being? And should that worry us? There's a new genetic cure for drug addiction—is it worse than the disease?

We live in a time of momentous scientific leaps, a time when it's possible to sell our eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars and to test our spouses for genetic maladies.

We live in a time when one fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else, and an unsuspecting person and his family can be pursued cross-country because they happen to have certain valuable genes within their chromosomes . . .

Devilishly clever, Next blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn.

Next challenges our sense of reality and notions of morality. Balancing the comic and the bizarre with the genuinely frightening and disturbing, Next shatters our assumptions and reveals shocking new choices where we least expect.

The future is closer than you think.

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A reassuring and humorous addition to the series including Everyone Poops presents curious readers with a straightforward, relatable look at a natural body function, explaining how and why gas is produced and eliminated..
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