Quantitative Conservation Biology: Theory and Practice of Population Viability Analysis

Book Description

Conservation biology relies not only on the general concepts, but on the specific methods, of population ecology to both understand and predict the viability of rare and endangered species and to determine how best to manage these populations. The need to conduct quantitative analyses of viability and management has spawned the field of "population viability analysis," or PVA, which, in turn, has driven much of the recent development of useful and realistic population analysis and modeling in ecology in general. However, despite calls for the increased use of PVA in real-world settings?developing recovery plans for endangered species, for example?a misperception remains among field-oriented conservation biologists that PVA models can only be constructed and understood by a select group of mathematical population ecologists.

Part of the reason for the ongoing gap between conservation practitioners and population modelers has been the lack of an easy-to-understand introduction to PVA for conservation biologists with little prior exposure to mathematical modeling as well as in-depth coverage of the underlying theory and its applications. Quantitative Conservation Biology fills this void through a unified presentation of the three major areas of PVA: count-based, demographic, and multi-site, or metapopulation, models. The authors first present general concepts and approaches to viability assessment. Then, in sections addressing each of the three fields of PVA, they guide the reader from considerations for collection and analysis of data to model construction, analysis, and interpretation, progressing from simple to complex approaches to answering PVA questions. Detailed case studies use data from real endangered species, and computer programs to perform all described analyses accompany the text.

Book Description

William Morris is one of the most admired figures of the Victorian era. Studies of his Art and his life fill the shelves of libraries. Yet, for all this accessibility, an air of uncertainty has always clouded his image. Since Morris's death, biographers and scholars have portrayed the artist as a victim, bound to an adulterous wife. In Art and Forbidden Fruit, John Le Bourgeois lifts the veil of appearances, and shows the truth about Morris's life. In a close analysis of Morris's poetry and biography, the Author asserts the early existence of an emotional attachment between William Morris and his sister Emma, and how she became the principal source of his inspiration. Le Bourgeois follows the paths of Morris the artist and Morris the man, and points out the links between the poet's love for his sister and his evolution as an artist.

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A Well Written Biography
The Final Biography on Morris

William Morris: A Life for Our Time
Fiona Maccarthy
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Artists, Architects & Photographers | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0394585313
Release Date: 1995-09-26

Customer Reviews:

A Well Written Biography.......2000-07-12

Fiona MacCarthy's background is in design, which brings a lovely perspective to her biography of Morris. MacCarthy also writes well, which is a plus in a book this size. She writes with affection for her subject, but without any of the bizarre idolatry with which some people approach Morris. He was a crashing bore as a poet, a mere amateur painter, a gifted fabric designer (but there are many gifted fabric designers), and a Socialist who knew only marginally more about what people actually do for a living than did Ruskin. Nevertheless, Morris was a volcano of artistic activity and heart-felt social ideas, and therein lay his genius. MacCarthy does an excellent job bringing Morris's genius to life in this first rate biography.

The Final Biography on Morris.......1999-12-19

Most books about William Morris are like rainbows, filled with colorful images. Simply because he made so many wonderful and colorful embroideries, tapestries and patterns, and because color itself is something people like, and therefore buy.

This book doesn't have many colors inside, but it contains many black and white photographs, that are of great interest for those who like to read about William Morris and his time. And the combination of text and photographs create so many images in your mind, that you forget about color.

For the same people, this is the the final book about William Morris and his life. It's not the book to buy, if you want to know all about his printing of books in Kelmscott Press (there you have to go for Peterson's books), but it's the book about all the other stuff you want to know about Morris - and everything, you didn't know, you would want to know.

Having spent more than 5 years on this matter, Fiona MacCarthy has succeeded in making an extraordinary and therefore the final biography on William Morris.

More than 700 pages with more than 100 pages of source and reference notes.

It's a book to read and to read again and to use, when you're working with text about the period, the arts & crafts movement - or simply with Morris. Buy it, even if you don't have the money - wear the old jacket another year. You won't regret.

Book Description

The life and works of William Morris continue to excite the imaginations of fresh generations of scholars working in many traditions, from the history of art and design to literary criticism and the history of socialism and socialist thought. This book concentrates on Morris's social and political acheivements as well as his artistic talents.

The Beauty of Life: William Morris and the Art of Design

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A joy to simply page through and savor

The Beauty of Life: William Morris and the Art of Design

Manufacturer: Thames & Hudson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0500284342

Book Description

"Beauty, which is what is meant by art...is no mere accident to human life, which people can take or leave as they choose, but a positive necessity of life."—William Morris

William Morris, the leader of the British Arts and Crafts movement, was a man of tremendous energies, his accomplishments astonishing in their range and depth. He became successively a poet, embroiderer, pattern designer, calligrapher, dyer, weaver, translator, architectural preservationist, socialist, and book publisher and printer. As the head of the internationally successful Morris & Company, he devoted himself to the decorative arts.

Drawing upon The Huntington's superb holdings—the largest collection of Morris material in North America—this book examines the life and work of the designer and of Morris & Company. It contains detailed studies of Morris's stained glass, interior decoration designs, and book publishing ventures, as well as an essay on his successor at Morris & Company, J. H. Dearle. The book also explores the design legacy of Morris and the firm in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries on both sides of the Atlantic.

Diane Waggoner, curator of the exhibition at The Huntington, is a specialist in nineteenth-century art and has written about the photography of Lewis Carroll. The contributors include Pat Kirkham, Professor of Design History at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture; Gillian Naylor, professor emerita at the Royal College of Art and an expert on the Arts and Crafts movement; and Edward R. Bosley, director of the Gamble House in Pasadena, California. 120 illustrations, 80 in color.

Customer Reviews:

A joy to simply page through and savor.......2003-12-07

Painstakingly compiled and expertly edited by Diane Waggoner (Andrew W. Mellon foundation Curatorial Fellow in the Art Collections at The Huntington), The Beauty Of Life: William Morris & The Art Of Design is specifically devoted to the decorative artwork of William Morris, an influential leader of the British Arts and Crafts movement. Contemplative and informative essays by Pat Kirkham, Gillian Naylor, and Edward R. Bosley are added to those of Diane Waggoner and concern William Morris' diverse works of art (including his stained glass and interior decoration designs). These essays are enhanced with eye-catching, full color photographs. A joy to simply page through and savor, and presented with a deep respect for artistic traditions stretching back to medieval times and beyond, The Beauty Of Life is a superbly presented and heartily endorsed addition to personal, professional, academic, and community library Art History collections.

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A missed opportunity
Adams Spendidly Gives Morris his Just Due

Gouverneur Morris: An Independent Life
William Howard Adams
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0300099800

Book Description

A plainspoken, racy patrician who distrusted democracy but opposed slavery and championed freedom for all minorities, an important player in the American Revolution, later an astute critic of the French Revolution, Gouverneur Morris remains an enigma among the founding generation. This comprehensive, engrossing biography tells his robust story, including his celebrated love affairs during his long stay in Europe. Morris's public record is astonishing. One of the leading figures of the Constitutional Convention, he put the Constitution in its final version, including its opening Preamble. As Washington's first minister to Paris, he became America's most effective representative in France. A successful, international entrepreneur, he understood the dynamics of commerce in the modern world. Frankly cosmopolitan, he embraced city life as a creative center of civilization and had a central role in the building of the Erie Canal and in laying out the urban grid plan of Manhattan. William Howard Adams describes Morris's many contributions, talents, sophistication, and wit, as well as his romantic liaisons, free habits, and free speech. He brings to life a fascinating man of great stature, a founding father who receives his due at last.

Customer Reviews:

A missed opportunity.......2005-06-21

For years, my knowledge of the revolutionary and federalist eras were informed by bland college textbooks, indifferent professors, and mythological stories. Imagine my joy when contemporary writers (McCullough, Ellis, Zinn, Shaara, etc.) managed to highlight the remarkable achievements of the individuals involved in these eras.

In many of the publications, I kept seeing Morris' name pop up and thought I would read this biography. The main problem with this book is the writing and style. While technically obeying the elements of the English language, the author's style is agonizingly plodding and uninteresting (just like the textbooks and professors that encouraged me to avoid historical scholarship for the first 25 years of my life). Frustratingly, the author applauds the efforts of Ellis, McCullough, and Elkins in brining the people and events of this era alive -- and then does the exact opposite, writing a book so bland discombobulated only a machoist could enjoy it.

There is a reason public demand is so high for books by Chernow, Ellis, and Brands and why this book will quickly be relegated to never-been-checked-out library book sales. The author had an opportunity to write about an interesting subject, but choose instead to write a pretentious 300 page sleeping pill. What a missed opportunity!

By itself, the book is tolerable, but put it next to Chernow, Ellis, or even Elkins and McKitrick and it is crushed. On the bright side, you could learn a thing or two about Morris by reading this book -- just don't expect to have near as much fun as you would with other authors.

Adams Spendidly Gives Morris his Just Due.......2004-02-18

In his book, "Gouverneur Morris: An Independent Life," William Howard Adams splendidly brings to life one of our Republic's most important citizens, the incomparable, the iconic, Gouverneur Morris! It's fair to say that this remarkable, witty, intellectual and cynical man was "The Bronx." His family estate, Morrisania, encompassed 9,000 acres of that area in New York. It stretched from the Harlem River to the south and touched on the East River, facing Randall's Island.

Morris was a New Yorker, all 6 ft. 4 inches of him. When Manhattan was young, he was young, too, graduating from King's College, (now Columbia), just before the outbreak of the American Revolution. As a budding lawyer, he tied his rising political star to the powerful Livington faction in NY State. Morris knew everybody that was anybody in NY, PA, MD, and Virginia. He later did a stint, as a Federalist, in the U.S. Senate, too.

Morris didn't hesitate to keep a record of his personal views on the leading American personalities of his day, ranging from: Alexander Hamilton; John Jay; the Immortal George Washington; James Monroe; the legal giant, John Marshall; John Adams; James Madison; Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson; Ben Franklin; and his intimate friend, the legendary financier, Robert Morris, to name just a few. When General Washington was desperate for aid for his troops camped at Valley Forge, PA, it was Morris, who provided it. Working with (not a relative) Robert Morris, Gouverneur was able to devise a financial plan that kept the Continental Army afloat until the French government could come to its rescue, just prior to the Allies' great victory at Yorktown, VA, over the British imperialists.

As a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, Morris helped to draft the Constitution and authored its "Preamble," one of the most powerful statements in all of the literature of that heroic period. He opposed slavery even though he owned slaves. He championed a Republican government, with checks and balances, to keep any tyrant from taking power and/or the Mob.

As an American Envoy, Morris also witnessed the "Reign of Terror," in France first hand. He had a lot to say, most of it very insightful, about why that experiment failed so miserably. Morris was critical, too, of the Marquis Lafayette's role in that bloodstained fiasco. He believed that Lafayette, a bona fide hero of the American Republic, was too much of "an idealist" to control or influence in a positive way that highly manipulated process. When Lafayette ended up in a grim Austrian prison, it was Morris, nevertheless, that worked behind the scenes to secure his eventual release.

Adams weaved into his portrait of Morris, the passionate love of his life, Adelaide Marie Emile (who was also the lady friend of that foxy Talleyrand). While Paris is descending into chaos, the one-legged Morris (he has lost his left leg in an accident), was chasing after "Adel." He finally caught her. But alas, their romance was not to last. Morris, depressed, consoled himself for a while with traveling throughout Europe. An astute business man, he made a fortune speculating in land, especially in Northern New York. At age 59, the old patriot, who had championed the building of the Erie Canal and laid out, in the role of an urban planner, New York City, settled down on his beloved estate at Morrisania, married a Virginia belle and fathered one child. He died, at age 64, in 1816.

Book Description

The "Young American" critics—Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford—are well known as central figures in the Greenwich Village "Little Renaissance" of the 1910s and in the postwar debates about American culture and politics. In Beloved Community, Casey Blake considers these intellectuals as a coherant group and assesses the connection between thier cultural criticisms and their attempts to forge a communitarian alternative to liberal and socialist poitics.

Blake draws on biography to emphasize the intersection of questions of self, culture, and society in their calls for a culture of "personality" and "self-fulfillment." In contrast to the tendency of previous analyses to separate these critics' cultural and autobiographical writings from their politics, Blake argues that their cultural criticism grew out of a radical vision of self-realization through participation in a democratic culture and polity. He also examines the Young American writers' interpretations of such turn-of-the-century radicals as William Morris, Henry George, John Dewey, and Patrick Geddes and shows that this adversary tradition still offers important insights into contemporary issues in American politics and culture.

Beloved Community reestablishes the democratic content of the Young Americans' ideal of "personality" and argues against viewing a monolithic therapeutic culture as the sole successor to a Victorian "culture of character." The politics of selfhood that was so critical to the Young Americans' project has remained a contested terrain throughout the twentieth century.

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The life of Tom Morris: With glimpses of St Andrews and its golfing celebrities
William Weir Tulloch
Manufacturer: United States Golf Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: 0941774120

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