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by John Leland
ISBN: 1570035822
Hardcover: 235 pages
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. Gently read copy with with light reading wear. This is an EX LIBRARY copy in a very good condition. Library markings present, no additional markings.
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Customer Reviews
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Things they Never Tell You About American History
Rating  (5)
Date: 2007-01-22
For a short time I worked at a Florida lab helping to compile the USDA list of introduced arthropods. It was then I learned about a lot of obscure creature that had invaded the US in ballast, on plants, in clothing, and on wood, rock, sand, and just about any commodity or personal effect. The invasion has not stopped, but it is often not even known to be going on by the general public, except in some high profile invasions such as the Asian tiger mosquito!
John Leland, in his "Aliens in the Backyard: Plant and Animal Imports into America" presents us with many (but certainly not all) of these imported organisms, from starlings to Russian thistle and from dogs (first brought in by Native Americans) to anthrax. Some of these introductions changed history as they destroyed or interfered with crops, or were of medical importance. Smallpox, unknown in America, was used to kill Native Americans long before anyone heard of a virus by transferring contaminated blankets to the intended victims. Both diseases and destroyers of crops had their effects on armies and the outcomes of wars, as well as the physical and economic health of the hemisphere.
Despite a few irritating typos, I found the book to be basically accurate and I learned a few things as well, such as the fact that all species of human lice were already present in the New World when Columbus landed. Typhus may have been here as well.
This is one of those eye-opening books that should be read by everyone, especially if you are concerned with security. We don't need terrorists (although they can help things along) to cause major impacts on society. Nature and our own mobility can do it as efficiently or even better! We should also keep in mind that we, who evolved on the plains of Africa, are aliens to the New World as well! Indeed, John Leland drives this point home several times in this book!
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A dizzying, entertaining compendium of facts and myths and stories
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-10-10
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
We've all heard tales of the dreaded zebra mussel, rampant purple loosestrife, or prolific European starling, but if you think exotic species are the exception, even a quick browse of Leland's entertaining compendium of aliens will set you straight. You can't step into your backyard without treading on interlopers, like the favored Kentucky bluegrass.
From the hallucinogenic properties of hemp, morning glory, datura and more; to attempts to cultivate the silkworm; to rats, cockroaches and disease, Leland's essays offer an entertaining history of facts, rumors and squabbles on an exhaustive number of alien species. Whether purposely (often to rid the place of some other unwanted interloper) or accidentally introduced, aliens have long thrived in their new home and many have come to be considered natives.
A professor of English at the Virginia Military Institute, Leland ("Porcher's Creek: Lives Between the Tides") writes with wit and a certain wicked relish, and his research is dizzyingly thorough. But the sheer width and breadth of information is overwhelming. This is a book to keep, to dip into again and again a chapter or even a few pages at a time, so as to have some hope of retention.
With chapter titles like "Out of Africa," "Cowboys: And Their Alien Habits," "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time," and "Bioterror: Older than You Think," Leland makes an appreciative and entertaining case for the melting pot.
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How alien species have changed America
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-09-07
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
John Leland (Professor of English at the Virginia Military Institute) does a great job of pointing out which plants and animals are, and which plants and animals are not, native to America. He writes well with style, grace and wit, and he gives a lot of interesting information about how various animals and plants came to be incorporated into the America landscape and enterprise.
From apples to kudzu he details which aliens have been a boon and which have been a sorry bust. In the case of kudzu (Pueraria lobata, which I saw for the first time in a Louisiana swamp a week before hurricane Katrina hit), "It Seemed a Good Idea at the Time" (title of one of his chapters). That was before people realized that kudzu completely blankets "whatever it grows on in a smothering welter of leaves and vines" strangling trees and other vegetation to death. (p. 161)
Also not a good idea was the introduction of carp into America's waters. Leland opines that "Most fishermen and environmentalist regard its widespread introduction...as a disaster...," although there are some, including the Carp Angler Group, who have a different opinion. Similarly, people differ about whether it was a good idea to bring the starling (one of the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's works) to America since it is now considered "a dirty, noisy, gregarious, and aggressive" bird that has displaced native species. Perhaps the worst of the "it seemed like a good idea at the time" species is the gypsy moth, brought to America as a possible silk worm. Leland goes into some detail about "well-intentioned dreamers of silken fortunes" in the chapter, "A Sow's Ear from a Silk Purse."
But these deliberately introduced species are relatively benign in the public eye compared to those that have freeloaded their way into our land and have more or less taken over in ways that we cannot control. The German cockroach, the Norway or brown rat, and the tumbleweed (surprisingly not native to the land of the cowboy but from Russia (with love)--oh, you deluded Sons of the Pioneers!) are three that Leland zeroes in on. He also has a few words to say about the American cockroach (probably not American--also called the palmetto bug) and the Oriental cockroach. Here in southern California we have all three, the German, the American and the Oriental. The German is the ever so prolific one that lives indoors in apartment houses and restaurants the world over, while the larger American and Oriental tend to live outdoors. I sometimes find one of the latter in my house dried up and dead in a corner or in a drawer, having wandered in and found nothing to eat and no moisture.
An introduced species that is perhaps an even bigger pest here in the southland is the Argentine ant, which Leland unaccountably does not mention. I recommend he take a study on it. There's enough material there to write a book and then some. Once the Argentine ant (small and black with only an occasional tiny bite) sets up shop inside the walls or under an establishment such as an apartment building or a college dormitory, it is there to stay.
What Leland does so very well in this book, and what makes it superior to some other books I have read, is integrate the alien species into the historical and cultural experience of the American people. In his chapter, "Out of Africa," he details "How Slavery Transformed the American Landscape and Diet." I had to laugh when I read that watermelon is not native to America but comes from Africa, as do peanuts and Bermuda grass, sesame seed and of course the cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) also known as the black-eyed pea. I had to laugh because I recalled Randy Newman's satirical song encouraging Africans to come to America in the early days of the republic for "the sweet watermelon and the buckwheat cake"!
Naturally, it is not in any way surprising that many of our foods come from other lands since most of the world's cuisines have found a home in American. Rice is not native, although the so-called "wild rice" is. Wheat comes from the Middle East as most people know, while potatoes are native to the Andes in South American.
In the chapter "Cowboys and Their Alien Habits" Leland recalls the familiar story of how the horse was once native to America but had gone extinct here before Columbian times, and then was accidentally reintroduced by the Spanish explorers after which it revolutionized the Plains Indians' way of life. (p. 92) Also alien are the cowboy's cattle, including the Texas longhorn; and if we go back far enough even the "Indians," the so-called native Americans are not native. Sad to say many of the true natives, like the giant sloth and the cave bear and the great mammoth went extinct coincidental with the arrival of the first humans from across the Bering Strait.
The only problem I have with this book and others like it, is that there is never enough. The way plants and animals have moved around the world and the way they have changed the lives of people is a continual source of fascination. Leland's fine book adds to the reader's pleasure while not sating it.
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by E. Fuller Torrey, Robert H. Yolken
ISBN: 0813535719
Hardcover: 191 pages
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. No publisher marks, no writing. Light shelf wear.
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Customer Reviews
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Yes, humans are beasts too
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-05-28
This short, compact book provides a solid introduction to the topic of diseases and how they spread from animals to humans. The two authors examine how this has occurred throughout history, and how it has affected history. The book takes care to distinguish between bacteria, viruses, and prions, and provides examples of each of them crossing the species barrier to infect humans. The authors also show how human behavior, whether it be agriculture, medical research, or leisure, enhances the spread of microbes from animals to humans. The book provides many examples, giving the where, when, how, and why. The authors also do a good job of citing the scientific literature; both books and publications in peer-reviewed journals. I enjoyed this book and believe you will too.
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Good doctors, evolutionarily informed but NOT BIOLOGISTS
Rating  (3)
Date: 2006-07-15
7 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
This short review is being written as I am reading the second chapter. The evolutionary theme is appropriately strong. If we cannot make people appreciate the forces and import of evolution in this context, we never will.
BUT that said, the details reveal that the authors may be good medical doctors, good virologists, but they are very bad general biologists. In these 21 pages, I have found that
1. sea otters are called "pinnepeds" ie the suborder of mammals to which seals belong, when they are really carnivores related to weasels;
2. "rhesus monkeys" are Old World primates, while "macacques" (actually the group of Old World monkeys to which rhesus macaques belong) are New World primates;
3. getting hantavirus from air-borne spores originating in rodent droppings is considered "Direct transmission" while getting prion diseases from eating infected cattle is not;
4. "animals and humans" is a consistently used phrase, rather than the accurate "human and non-human animals";
5. "primates including rhesus monkeys,gibbons, apes,and chimpanzees" incorrectly splits chimps out from the apes--and in fact gibbons are "lesser apes" and an early part of the ape lineage.
In some cases, the mistakes change the message substantially--transmission from cats to otters occured within an order--the Carnivora--not across orders of mammals. I find myself doubting other facts given, such as the lack of yellow fever deaths among Old World monkeys. It certainly causes deaths among New World monkeys and Haddow & Ellice in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene mid-1900's reported cyclical epidemics among galagos, Old World prosimians, members of the Primates that evolved before Old World monkeys.
I am reading this book because I am preparing to teach a seminar on behavior and disease in non-human animals. It will be hard to use it an accessory reading if these errors in basic biology keep occuring. Shame on Rutgers University Press for not doing a better job of editing. Any good undergraduate biology major could have done it for them. These factual errors mar what is otherwise a very valuable book.
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Hard to imagine
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-03-03
8 out of 11 customers found this reveiw helpful
Imagine a scenario where Donald Duck's droppings are falling on Porky Pig who eats them and then drops his into a pond to grow more algae so that Nemo and his friends will grow bigger faster, spreading increasingly lethal strains of the flu to the rest of the world. What nonsense is this, you say? Donald, Porky and Nemo would never do such a thing. Such is the scenario that came to my mind as I started to appreciate the lethal intermingling of viruses and species DNA going on in China and elsewhere today. Meanwhile, back in the USA, Bambi is wasting away from BSE and Garfield is giving toxoplasmosis to a pregnant mom who will have a baby who will become bipolar or schizophrenic.
A fascinating historical overview of an increasingly important current subject. Would like to have seen at least some exploration of the vaccine/AIDs connection and the insecticide/manganese connection for mad cow and BSE.
A mind boggling book.
David Moyer, Author "Too Good to be True? Nutrients Quiet the Unquiet Brain"
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A Beast Of A Book
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-03-03
8 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book, in short, tells the spectacular tale (more like spectacular tail!) of our relationships with animals. Although the subject can be seen as dry by many, Torrey and Yolken do a great job at making the subject lively and easy to understand. The subject especially pertains to us with the recent mad cow, SARs, and bird flu outbreaks.
We as humans often get so caught up in our own species that we forget about the animals around us and their effect on us. However, we live in a highly connected world where animals play a very vital. This is why we need to have a book like Beasts of the Earth to point out these human-animal interactions that we encounter everyday.
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by Sharon Seitz, Adrian Benepe
ISBN: 0881506214
Paperback: 282 pages
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. Gently read copy with with light reading wear. This is an EX LIBRARY copy in a very good condition. Library markings present, no additional markings.
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by William T. Keeton (Editor: James L. Gould)
ISBN: 0393955389
Paperback: 1294 pages
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. This copy is in a very good condition. No writing, no highlighting. Minimal reading wear.
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Customer Reviews
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Thorough text at intelligent level
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-12-14
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I'm just through reading the first half of Vol. 1, but I am so far impressed with its thoroughness and clarity. When I looked at other biology text books for self-study, many seemed padded with extraneous material and gimmicks. Worse, these texts talked down to the reader. "Biological Sciences" is not chatty in a forced attempt to be 'relevant' but instead makes demands on the reader without being willfully obscure. Even better, the pages are not full of fashionable white space, but packed with text. The only caveat I have is that since 1996, surely many developments have cropped up since this last edition. But for basics, this is top notch.
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Excellent preparation for the AP Test
Rating (5)
Date: 1999-07-09
14 out of 22 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is a treasure. I used it several years ago as a sophomore in high school to prepare for the AP Examination in Biology. Wonderfully illustrated, exceptionally written, and very easy to use! I got a "5" on the exam, which is the highest score attainable... I think that speaks for itself!
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by Charles Sheppard
ISBN: 0896582205
Paperback: 72 pages
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. Book in very good condition with VERY LIGHT reading wear. EX LIBRARY copy which did not spend much time in circulation before being released. Library markings present but no further markings or imperfections.
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Brilliant Photography Illustrates Reef Ecology
Rating (5)
Date: 2003-08-02
6 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
A cousin of mine travels around the world to dive on the most beautiful reefs. Encouraged by that, but not being a diver, I've made it a point to snorkel and take glass-bottomed boats to look at reefs whenever they are present. All along, I've wondered why he found the skin diving to be so wonderful. Now, I know. Coral Reefs exposes a world of vivid and bizarre colors and shapes that I had never imagined could exist. Having also listened to more talks about coral than I care to remember, I was also pleasantly surprised to learn a lot more than I knew before about the development of the reefs and the ecological challenges they face. Of the many beautiful books focusing on nature's wonders that I have seen, I would have to rank this one near the top. At its modest price, this book is also a good value. If you only buy one nature book this year, buy this one!!!!! After you finish the book, why not take a moment to plan how you can see one of the reefs close up on a future trip? Perhaps you should even consider learning to skin dive, if you don't already.
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A Great Introduction For a Great Price
Rating (5)
Date: 2003-07-19
3 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
This wonderful little book is a great introduction to coral reefs for people who don't know a whole lot about them. Well worth it's price.
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by J. H. van Lint, R. M. Wilson
ISBN: 0521803403
Hardcover: 550 pages
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. This is a gently read copy in a very good condition. No writing, no highlighting.
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A real math book
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-01-11
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I am a lover of combinatorics, and I have read quite a few on the topic. This one is as good as any. Lucidly written, you can pretty much dive into any chapter, reading, scribbling, racking your brain, and come away with a deep sense of satisfaction and pride and vanity:). Price is so resonable with regard for its extensive content. You get a feel that the author really wants to share with readers his love and joy for the subject and not just to make some money. Thank you, my dear professors!
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Excellent book, but organized in a unorthodox and inconvenient manner
Rating  (4)
Date: 2006-06-11
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I think this is an excellent book but I have a few concerns about its organization.
The writing is very clear and there is a lot of explanation. Exercises are mixed in with the text, which I like very much; it makes them seem more natural, and it makes the book well-suited for self-study. I would say the difficulty level of this book is a bit inconsistent--but this is more a function of the material than of the writing style. The authors make everything as clear as possible, but they choose to include some difficult topics which require more thought.
My main criticism of this book is about the order of topics, which is not only unorthodox but can be inconvenient as well. Many concepts which are often presented earlier in combinatorics texts, such as binomial coefficients and stirling numbers, are relegated to later chapters, where their presentation depends on results from earlier chapters. I find it difficult to skip around in this book--if you do not read it from the beginning, in order, it will be hard to follow the arguments in some of the chapters. This sort of dependency is something I can accept in a more advanced text but I think is inappropriate for a text at this level.
I think this is an excellent book to add to your collection, but if you're going to grab only one or two books in combinatorics I would recommend other books. The organization issues I mentioned could make this book hard to use as a standalone text for a course if you did not wish to follow the same course of development chosen by the authors. Cameron's book is written at a similar level and covers a similar amount of material (although it has a very different style of presentation), and it is much easier to skip around in. Stanley's "Enumerative Combinatorics" is a denser, more advanced text that most will find more difficult to follow than this book, but it is still easier to skip around in as well.
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A nice tour of combinatorics
Rating (5)
Date: 2003-11-19
11 out of 12 customers found this reveiw helpful
The first word that comes to my mind when I think of this text is "encyclopedic". It contains around 40 chapters, hitting most of the high points of combinatorics that a graduate student should see. The exposition is generally good with nice examples. The one thing that I fault it for is the number of statements that the authors claim are "obvious". In a way, this is good, because it makes you pay attention and understand the material, but sometimes the statement isn't obvious until you've thought about it for an hour and written out a lengthy proof. At that point, it does become completely obvious and you can't believe that you ever thought it wasn't, so I can understand why van Lint and Wilson fell into the trap so often. (In fact, I've heard that Wilson even stumbles over some of those points in lectures.) This is a great book to have on your shelf if you need somewhere to look up combinatorial ideas.
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A gentle introduction to combinatorics
Rating (4)
Date: 2000-07-22
32 out of 35 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book was the text for a graduate-level course I took. The presentation is very laid-back, much like the lecturing style of one of the authors (Wilson), and so it was quite readable (unlike many other math books which you have to stop every few pages and pick apart everything before it sinks in).Combinatorics is a relatively recent development in mathematics, one which is generally easy to explain, but with many difficult open questions. Van Lint and Wilson do an excellent job explaining, but there are a few places where the reader needs to know some background to place the particular problem in the appropriate mathematical context. Understandably, if the authors were to include all the mathematical machinery needed, the book would be huge! Instead, they have chosen to describe as many facets of the field as possible, and therefore have written a broad, well-balanced book which approaches the topic in a non-threatening way. My one criticism, then, is that there is a lack of depth in several areas of the book, with further discussion of advanced topics or open problems. But even so, I can appreciate the omission for the sake of accessibility. To fully appreciate the subject, the authors are correct in mentioning that the book is written with the graduate student in mind. But by no means does the reader require such a background to appreciate the remarkable concepts and the exciting questions revealed in this book.
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Proof that you can't judge a book by its cover
Rating (5)
Date: 1998-12-21
45 out of 64 customers found this reveiw helpful
The cover says, "...ideally suited for use as a text...at the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate level." WRONG!! I'm a sixteen year old-- far from graduate school-- and I am reading, understanding, and LOVING this book. I cannot think of a greater introduction to combinatorics-- it has examples and problems to test your comprehension, and logical flow from one subject to another. This book is a rare find-- clear explanations and definitions at a fast pace that doesn't bore you. I would recommend this book unconditionally to ANYBODY interested in mathematics.
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by Ernest Callenbach
ISBN: 0520214633
Paperback: 192 pages
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. No publisher marks. Light shelf/ reading wear. Some marking on the inside, but this is MINIMAL.
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by T. W. Graham Solomons
ISBN: 0471160296
Paperback: 600 pages
Condition: Used: Like New
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. Gently read copy in like new condition. Light reading wear.
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4.9 stars over the past 12 months (954 ratings)
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