In the two hundred years since their arrival in America, elephants have worked on farms, mills, mines, and railroads, in Hollywood, and in professional baseball. They've contributed to the national discourse on civil rights, immigration, politics, and capitalism. They became so deeply ingrained in the American way that they were once accorded the rights of American citizenship, including the right to vote and the right to provide testimony under oath-and...

In the late eighteenth century, the British took greater interest than ever before in observing and recording all aspects of the natural world. Travelers and colonists returning from far-flung lands provided dazzling accounts of such exotic creatures as elephants, baboons, and kangaroos. The engraver Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) harnessed this newfound interest by assembling the most comprehensive illustrated guide to nature of his day. A General...

Unlike other barnyard animals, which pull plows, give eggs or milk, or grow wool, a pig produces only one thing: meat. Incredibly efficient at converting almost any organic matter into nourishing, delectable protein, swine are nothing short of a gastronomic godsend-;yet their flesh is banned in many cultures, and the animals themselves are maligned as filthy, lazy brutes. As historian Mark Essig reveals in Lesser Beasts, swine have such a bad reputation...

Early readers can delve into the wild world of American bison with this title. They'll learn what bison eat, their preferred habitats, and other great facts, alongside awesome photographs.

Follow Boone and Crockett Club member W. Douglas Burden and his wife on their expedition to the lost world of the Dutch East Indies in the 1920s in search of what many considered direct descendants of dinosaurs and what others thought may be true dragons-the impressive and fierce Komodo dragon (Varanus Komodoensis). Not only did their party find the giant lizards, they were able harvest many for display in museums as well as capture live specimens,...

Meerkats live in colonies that work together to hunt for food and protect one another from soaring predators. Readers will learn a lot more awesome facts with simple sentences and exciting photographs. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Abdo Kids Jumbo is an imprint of Abdo Kids, a division of ABDO.

An Affectionate History of Nature's Most Surprising Species. Independent and resourceful, rabbits represent balance, rebirth, speed, fertility, resurrection, abundance, creativity, magic, and harmony. Yet they are much more than symbols, they are unique individuals with complex inner lives. In The Way of the Rabbit, Mark Hawthorne immerses himself in their world, exploring their habitats and evolution, their role in legend and literature, their place...

When seeking to understand animals, context is key. Humans have a habit of viewing the animal kingdom through the prism of our own narrow existence. Zoologist and documentary filmmaker Lucy Cooke is fascinated by the myths people create about animals to fill in the gaps in our understanding, and how much they reveal about the mechanics of discovery and the people doing the discovering. In this book she has gathered together the biggest misconceptions...

When Philadelphia naturalist Samuel George Morton died in 1851, no one cut off his head, boiled away its flesh, and added his grinning skull to a collection of crania. It would have been strange, but perhaps fitting, had Morton's skull wound up in a collector's cabinet, for Morton himself had collected hundreds of skulls over the course of a long career. Friends, diplomats, doctors, soldiers, and fellow naturalists sent him skulls they gathered from...

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857) is the autobiography of Mary Seacole. Recognized for her pioneering healthcare work for soldiers and citizens around the world, Seacole was also the first Black Briton to publish an autobiographical work. Although Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands underwent editing by an anonymous person, it is a first-person account of Seacole's experiences during outbreaks of cholera, malaria,...