Along with reproduction, balancing energy expenditure with the limits of resource acquisition is essential for both a species and a population to survive. But energy is a limited resource, as we know well, so birds and mammals-the most energy-intensive fauna on the planet-must reduce energy expenditures to maintain this balance, some taking small steps, and others extreme measures.Here Brian K. McNab draws on his over sixty years in the field to provide a comprehensive account of the energetics of birds and mammals, one fully integrated with their natural history. McNab begins with an overview of thermal rates-much of our own energy is spent maintaining our 98.6?F temperature-and explains how the basal rate of metabolism drives energy use, especially in extreme environments. He then explores those variables that interact with the basal rate of metabolism, like body size and scale and environments, highlighting their influence on behavior, distribution, and even reproductive output. Successive chapters take up energy and population dynamics and evolution. A critical central theme that runs through the book is how the energetic needs of birds and mammals come up against rapid environmental change and how this is hastening the pace of extinction.

For far too long humans have been ignoring nature. As the most dominant, overproducing, overconsuming, big-brained, big-footed, arrogant, and invasive species ever known, we are wrecking the planet at an unprecedented rate. And while science is important to our understanding of the impact we have on our environment, it alone does not hold the answers to the current crisis, nor does it get people to act. In Ignoring Nature No More, Marc Bekoff and a host of renowned contributors argue that we need a new mind-set about nature, one that centers on empathy, compassion, and being proactive.?This collection of diverse essays is the first book devoted to compassionate conservation, a growing global movement that translates discussions and concerns about the well-being of individuals, species, populations, and ecosystems into action. Written by leading scholars in a host of disciplines, including biology, psychology, sociology, social work, economics, political science, and philosophy, as well as by locals doing fieldwork in their own countries, the essays combine the most creative aspects of the current science of animal conservation with analyses of important psychological and sociocultural issues that encourage or vex stewardship. The contributors tackle topics including the costs and benefits of conservation, behavioral biology, media coverage of animal welfare, conservation psychology, and scales of conservation from the local to the global. Taken together, the essays make a strong case for why we must replace our habits of domination and exploitation with compassionate conservation if we are to make the world a better place for nonhuman and human animals alike.

Galileo's telescopic discoveries, and especially his observation of sunspots, caused great debate in an age when the heavens were thought to be perfect and unchanging. Christoph Scheiner, a Jesuit mathematician, argued that sunspots were planets or moons crossing in front of the Sun. Galileo, on the other hand, countered that the spots were on or near the surface of the Sun itself, and he supported his position with a series of meticulous observations and mathematical demonstrations that eventually convinced even his rival.?On Sunspots collects the correspondence that constituted the public debate, including the first English translation of Scheiner's two tracts as well as Galileo's three letters, which have previously appeared only in abridged form. In addition, Albert Van Helden and Eileen Reeves have supplemented the correspondence with lengthy introductions, extensive notes, and a bibliography. The result will become the standard work on the subject, essential for students and historians of astronomy, the telescope, and early modern Catholicism.

Although the subject of federally mandated Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) has been extensively debated, we actually do not know much about what takes place when they convene. The story of how IRBs work today is a story about their past as well as their present, and Behind Closed Doors is the first book to meld firsthand observations of IRB meetings with the history of how rules for the treatment of human subjects were formalized in the United States in the decades after World War II.?Drawing on extensive archival sources, Laura Stark reconstructs the daily lives of scientists, lawyers, administrators, and research subjects working-and "e;warring"e;-on the campus of the National Institutes of Health, where they first wrote the rules for the treatment of human subjects. Stark argues that the model of group deliberation that gradually crystallized during this period reflected contemporary legal and medical conceptions of what it meant to be human, what political rights human subjects deserved, and which stakeholders were best suited to decide. She then explains how the historical contingencies that shaped rules for the treatment of human subjects in the postwar era guide decision making today-within hospitals, universities, health departments, and other institutions in the United States and across the globe. Meticulously researched and gracefully argued, Behind Closed Doors will be essential reading for sociologists and historians of science and medicine, as well as policy makers and IRB administrators.

These days, the idea of the cyborg is less the stuff of science fiction and more a reality, as we are all, in one way or another, constantly connected, extended, wired, and dispersed in and through technology. One wonders where the individual, the person, the human, and the body are-or, alternatively, where they stop. These are the kinds of questions Hlne Mialet explores in this fascinating volume, as she focuses on a man who is permanently attached to assemblages of machines, devices, and collectivities of people: Stephen Hawking.Drawing on an extensive and in-depth series of interviews with Hawking, his assistants and colleagues, physicists, engineers, writers, journalists, archivists, and artists, Mialet reconstructs the human, material, and machine-based networks that enable Hawking to live and work. She reveals how Hawking-who is often portrayed as the most singular, individual, rational, and bodiless of all-is in fact not only incorporated, materialized, and distributed in a complex nexus of machines and human beings like everyone else, but even more so. Each chapter focuses on a de*ion of the functioning and coordination of different elements or media that create his presence, agency, identity, and competencies. Attentive to Hawking's daily activities, including his lecturing and scientific writing, Mialet's ethnographic analysis powerfully reassesses the notion of scientific genius and its associations with human singularity. This book will fascinate anyone interested in Stephen Hawking or an extraordinary life in science.

Design, build, and publish an iOS game from scratch using the stunning features of iOS 9 About This Book Create storyboards in Xcode from concept to code and designChalk out your game’s overall navigation and structureWork with 2D and 3D game development toolsWho This Book Is ForThis book is intended for game developers who wish to develop 2D and 3D games for iPhone and iPad. If you are a developer from another platform, or game engine such as Android or Unity, a current iOS developer wishing to learn more about Swift and the latest features of iOS 9, or even if you are new to game development, then this book is for you. Some prior programming knowledge is recommended, but not required.What You Will LearnFamiliarise yourself with both basic and advanced Swift game development codeUnderstand the structure and flow of a typical iOS appWork with the SpriteKit framework to make 2D games, sprites, and overlaysDiscover 3D game development with SceneKitVisually design levels and game assets with XCode 7’s latest featuresExplore the concept of component-based structuring with iOS 9’s GameplaykitBeta test and publish your game with iTunes ConnectIn DetailGame development has always been a combination of programming and art, and mobile game development is no exception to this rule. The iOS platform has been both a staple in the ever-growing mobile game market, as well as a launching point for many game developers (hobby and career-wise). The features and frameworks available in iOS 9 continue to cater to the synergy of design and computer engineering, using tools that allow developers to take a game idea from concept to application in record time.Whether you are new to iOS and game development as a whole, or are an experienced programmer wanting to learn the latest features of the platform, iOS 9 Game Development Essentials will provide you with crucial insight into this widely used platform.Starting with the Swift programming language, this book gets the ball rolling with code concepts and game-centric code samples right from the get-go, giving you get a solid understanding of Apple’s cutting-edge programming language. The book takes you through iOS game development concepts and introduces the various frameworks that allow you to develop robust, reusable, and intelligent game components in both 2D and 3D game environments.Style and approachThis book is a step-by-step guide into the code and concepts of iOS apps. Each chapter contains diagrams that showcase the features of the platform, along with code samples from Apple and code samples exclusive to this book.

Expand your knowledge of computer vision by building amazing projects with OpenCV 3About This BookBuild computer vision projects to capture high-quality image data, detect and track objects, process the actions of humans or animals, and much moreDiscover practical and interesting innovations in computer vision while building atop a mature open-source library, OpenCV 3Familiarize yourself with multiple approaches and theories wherever critical decisions need to be madeWho This Book Is ForThis book is ideal for you if you aspire to build computer vision systems that are smarter, faster, more complex, and more practical than the competition. This is an advanced book intended for those who already have some experience in setting up an OpenCV development environment and building applications with OpenCV. You should be comfortable with computer vision concepts, object-oriented programming, graphics programming, IDEs, and the command line.What You Will LearnSelect and configure camera systems to see invisible light, fast motion, and distant objectsBuild a “camera trap”, as used by nature photographers, and process photos to create beautiful effectsDevelop a facial expression recognition system with various feature extraction techniques and machine learning methodsBuild a panorama Android application using the OpenCV stitching module in C++ with NDK supportOptimize your object detection model, make it rotation invariant, and apply scene-specific constraints to make it faster and more robustCreate a person identification and registration system based on biometric properties of that person, such as their fingerprint, iris, and faceFuse data from videos and gyroscopes to stabilize videos shot from your mobile phone and create hyperlapse style videosIn DetailComputer vision is becoming accessible to a large audience of software developers who can leverage mature libraries such as OpenCV. However, as they move beyond their first experiments in computer vision, developers may struggle to ensure that their solutions are sufficiently well optimized, well trained, robust, and adaptive in real-world conditions. With sufficient knowledge of OpenCV, these developers will have enough confidence to go about creating projects in the field of computer vision.This book will help you tackle increasingly challenging computer vision problems that you may face in your careers. It makes use of OpenCV 3 to work around some interesting projects. Inside these pages, you will find practical and innovative approaches that are battle-tested in the authors’ industry experience and research. Each chapter covers the theory and practice of multiple complementary approaches so that you will be able to choose wisely in your future projects. You will also gain insights into the architecture and algorithms that underpin OpenCV’s functionality.We begin by taking a critical look at inputs in order to decide which kinds of light, cameras, lenses, and image formats are best suited to a given purpose. We proceed to consider the finer aspects of computational photography as we build an automated camera to assist nature photographers. You will gain a deep understanding of some of the most widely applicable and reliable techniques in object detection, feature selection, tracking, and even biometric recognition. We will also build Android projects in which we explore the complexities of camera motion: first in panoramic image stitching and then in video stabilization.By the end of the book, you will have a much richer understanding of imaging, motion, machine learning, and the architecture of computer vision libraries and applications!Style and approachThis book covers a combination of theory and practice. We examine blueprints for specific projects and discuss the principles behind these blueprints, in detail.

Implement state-of-the-art techniques to visualize solutions to challenging problems in scientific computing, with the use of the SciPy stackAbout This BookMaster the theory and algorithms behind numerical recipes and how they can be applied to real-world problemsLearn to combine the most appropriate built-in functions from the SciPy stack by understanding the connection between the sources of your problem, volume of data, or computer architectureA comprehensive coverage of all the mathematical techniques needed to solve the presented topics, with a discussion of the relevant algorithms built in the SciPy stackWho This Book Is ForIf you are a mathematician, engineer, or computer scientist with a proficiency in Python and familiarity with IPython, this is the book for you. Some basic knowledge of numerical methods in scientific computing would be helpful.What You Will LearnMaster relevant algorithms used in symbolic or numerical mathematics to address approximation, interpolation, differentiation, integration, root-finding, and optimization of scalar or multi-variate functionsDevelop different algorithms and strategies to efficiently store and manipulate large matrices of data, in particular to solve systems of linear equations, or compute their eigenvalues/eigenvectorsUnderstand how to model physical problems with systems of differential equations and distinguish the factors that dictate the strategies to solve themPerform statistical analysis, hypothesis test design and resolution, or data mining at a higher level, and apply them to real-life problems in the field of data analysisGain insights on the power of distances, Delaunay triangulations and Voronoi diagrams for Computational Geometry, and apply them to various engineering problemsFamiliarize yourself with different techniques in signal/image processing, including filtering audio, images, or video to extract information, features, or remove componentsIn DetailThe SciPy stack is a collection of open source libraries of the powerful *ing language Python, together with its interactive shells. This environment offers a cutting-edge platform for numerical computation, programming, visualization and publishing, and is used by some of the world’s leading mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. It works on any operating system that supports Python and is very easy to install, and completely free of charge! It can effectively transform into a data-processing and system-prototyping environment, directly rivalling MATLAB and Octave.This book goes beyond a mere de*ion of the different built-in functions coded in the libraries from the SciPy stack. It presents you with a solid mathematical and computational background to help you identify the right tools for each problem in scientific computing and visualization. You will gain an insight into the best practices with numerical methods depending on the amount or type of data, properties of the mathematical tools employed, or computer architecture, among other factors.The book kicks off with a concise exploration of the basics of numerical linear algebra and graph theory for the treatment of problems that handle large data sets or matrices. In the subsequent chapters, you will delve into the depths of algorithms in symbolic algebra and numerical analysis to address modeling/simulation of various real-world problems with functions (through interpolation, approximation, or creation of systems of differential equations), and extract their representing features (zeros, extrema, integration or differentiation).Lastly, you will move on to advanced concepts of data analysis, image/signal processing, and computational geometry.Style and approachPacked with real-world examples, this book explores the mathematical techniques needed to solve the presented topics, and focuses on the algorithms built in the SciPy stack.

Install, configure, and support your XenApp systems with the power of Citrix XenAppAbout This BookFamiliarize yourself with Citrix applications and desktop virtualizationMaintain and troubleshoot your XenApp environment to minimize system downtimeA hands-on, step-by-step guide with a practical approach and real-world examples to get you up and running with XenApp systemsWho This Book Is ForThis book is intended for IT administrators and consultants who want to build application and desktop virtualization solutions for their employers and customers. No prior knowledge of Citrix technologies is required.What You Will LearnMake the use case for Citrix XenApp and design your first systemPrepare your existing IT infrastructure for XenApp and learn what licenses you needInstall and configure the XenApp infrastructureEnable access with StoreFront and NetScaler GatewayEnable load balancing with NetScalerMaintain servers and publish applications and desktopsManage printing in a Citrix environmentTroubleshoot your environment using advanced tools and methodologies employed by Citrix Escalation TeamsIn DetailIf you want to effectively deploy the various components of Citrix XenApp to create an enterprise environment for application and desktop delivery, this hands-on guide is perfect for you. You start off by understanding the need and benefits of Citrix XenApp with respect to Virtualization technology. After this, you will get to grips with the requirement analysis and designing aspect of building XenApp systems and all the necessary installation and configuration procedures for Citrix XenApp, StoreFront and NetScalar Gateway are explained one by one in detail.Step-by-step, you will learn to deploy your first XenApp with the Machine Creation Services method and Provisioning Services method. After this, you will explore the administering part of applications and systems, followed by printing in the XenApp environment. Next, you will learn all the trips and tricks required to troubleshoot and support the XenApp environment. By the end of this book, you will be ready to go live with your new XenApp environment.Style and approachThis is a step-by-step guide to technical implementations in a conversational and easy-to-follow style. Each component is deployed sequentially until a full solution is built. Basic as well as advanced features of the product are explored to appeal to the widest possible audience interested in the topic.

Design efficient machine learning systems that give you more accurate results About This Book Gain an understanding of the machine learning design process Optimize machine learning systems for improved accuracy Understand common programming tools and techniques for machine learning Develop techniques and strategies for dealing with large amounts of data from a variety of sources Build models to solve unique tasks Who This Book Is For This book is for data scientists, scientists, or just the curious. To get the most out of this book, you will need to know some linear algebra and some Python, and have a basic knowledge of machine learning concepts. What You Will Learn Gain an understanding of the machine learning design process Optimize the error function of your machine learning system Understand the common programming patterns used in machine learning Discover optimizing techniques that will help you get the most from your data Find out how to design models uniquely suited to your task In Detail Machine learning is one of the fastest growing trends in modern computing. It has applications in a wide range of fields, including economics, the natural sciences, web development, and business modeling. In order to harness the power of these systems, it is essential that the practitioner develops a solid understanding of the underlying design principles. There are many reasons why machine learning models may not give accurate results. By looking at these systems from a design perspective, we gain a deeper understanding of the underlying algorithms and the optimisational methods that are available. This book will give you a solid foundation in the machine learning design process, and enable you to build customised machine learning models to solve unique problems. You may already know about, or have worked with, some of the off-the-shelf machine learning models for solving common problems such as spam detection or movie classification, but to begin solving more complex problems, it is important to adapt these models to your own specific needs. This book will give you this understanding and more. Style and approach This easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide covers the most important machine learning models and techniques from a design perspective.

No pictorial device in nineteenth-century French painting more clearly represented the free-ranging self than the loose brushstroke. From the romantics through the impressionists and post-impressionists, the brushstroke bespoke autonomous artistic individuality and freedom from convention.Yet the question of how much we can credit to the individual brushstroke is complicated-and in?Brushstroke and Emergence, James D. Herbert uses that question as a starting point for an extended essay that draws on philosophy of mind, the science of emergence, and art history. Brushstrokes, he reminds us, are as much creatures of habit and embodied experience as they are of intent. When they gather in great numbers they take on a life of their own, out of which emerge complexity and meaning. Analyzing ten paintings by Courbet, Manet, Czanne, Monet, Seurat, and Picasso, Herbert exposes vital relationships between intention and habit, the singular and the complex. In doing so, he uncovers a space worthy of historical and aesthetic analysis between the brushstroke and the self.

After decades of decline during the twentieth century, breastfeeding rates began to rise again in the 1970s, a rebound that has continued to the present. While it would be easy to see this reemergence as simply part of the naturalism movement of the '70s, Jessica Martucci reveals here that the true story is more complicated. Despite the widespread acceptance and even advocacy of formula feeding by many in the medical establishment throughout the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, a small but vocal minority of mothers, drawing upon emerging scientific and cultural ideas about maternal instinct, infant development, and connections between the body and mind, pushed back against both hospital policies and cultural norms by breastfeeding their children. As Martucci shows, their choices helped ideologically root a "e;back to the breast"e; movement within segments of the middle-class, college-educated population as early as the 1950s.?That movement-in which the personal and political were inextricably linked-effectively challenged midcentury norms of sexuality, gender, and consumption, and articulated early environmental concerns about chemical and nuclear contamination of foods, bodies, and breast milk. In its groundbreaking chronicle of the breastfeeding movement, Back to the Breast provides a welcome and vital account of what it has meant, and what it means today, to breastfeed in modern America.

In January 2010, the Gemini was moored in the Swinomish Slough on a Native American reservation near Anacortes, Washington. Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the rusted and dilapidated boat was in fact the most famous fishing vessel ever to have sailed: the original Western Flyer, immortalized in John Steinbeck's nonfiction classic The Log from the Sea of Cortez.In this book, Kevin M. Bailey resurrects this forgotten witness to the changing tides of Pacific fisheries. He draws on the Steinbeck archives, interviews with family members of crew, and more than three decades of working in Pacific Northwest fisheries to trace the depletion of marine life through the voyages of a single ship. After Steinbeck and his friend Ed Ricketts-a pioneer in the study of the West Coast's diverse sea life and the inspiration behind "e;Doc"e; in Cannery Row-chartered the boat for their now-famous 1940 expedition, the Western Flyer returned to its life as a sardine seiner in California. But when the sardine fishery in Monterey collapsed, the boat moved on: fishing for Pacific ocean perch off Washington, king crab in the Bering Sea off Alaska, and finally wild Pacific salmon-all industries that would also face collapse.As the Western Flyer herself faces an uncertain future-a businessman has bought her, intending to bring the boat to Salinas, California, and turn it into a restaurant feature just blocks from Steinbeck's grave-debates about the status of the California sardine, and of West Coast fisheries generally, have resurfaced. A compelling and timely tale of a boat and the people it carried, of fisheries exploited, and of fortunes won and lost, The Western Flyer is environmental history at its best: a journey through time and across the sea, charting the ebb and flow of the cobalt waters of the Pacific coast.

For many years Chicago's looming large-scale housing projects defined the city, and their demolition and redevelopment-via the Chicago Housing Authority's Plan for Transformation-has been perhaps the most startling change in the city's urban landscape in the last twenty years. The Plan, which reflects a broader policy effort to remake public housing in cities across the country, seeks to deconcentrate poverty by transforming high-poverty public housing complexes into mixed-income developments and thereby integrating once-isolated public housing residents into the social and economic fabric of the city. But is the Plan an ambitious example of urban regeneration or a not-so-veiled effort at gentrification?In the most thorough examination of mixed-income public housing redevelopment to date, Robert J. Chaskin and Mark L. Joseph draw on five years of field research, in-depth interviews, and volumes of data to demonstrate that while considerable progress has been made in transforming the complexes physically, the integrationist goals of the policy have not been met. They provide a highly textured investigation into what it takes to design, finance, build, and populate a mixed-income development, and they illuminate the many challenges and limitations of the policy as a solution to urban poverty. Timely and relevant, Chaskin and Joseph's findings raise concerns about the increased privatization of housing for the poor while providing a wide range of recommendations for a better way forward.

Following the discovery in Europe in the late 1850s that humanity had roots predating known history and reaching deep into the Pleistocene era, scientists wondered whether North American prehistory might be just as ancient. And why notThe geological strata seemed exactly analogous between America and Europe, which would lead one to believe that North American humanity ought to be as old as the European variety. This idea set off an eager race for evidence of the people who might have occupied North America during the Ice Age-a long, and, as it turned out, bitter and controversial search.?In The Great Paleolithic War, David J. Meltzer tells the story of a scientific quest that set off one of the longest-running feuds in the history of American anthropology, one so vicious at times that anthropologists were deliberately frightened away from investigating potential sites. Through his book, we come to understand how and why this controversy developed and stubbornly persisted for as long as it did; and how, in the process, it revolutionized American archaeology.

Poetry is often said to resist translation, its integration of form and meaning rendering even the best translations problematic. Elizabeth Marie Young disagrees, and with?Translation as Muse, she uses the work of the celebrated Roman poet Catullus to mount a powerful argument that translation can be an engine of poetic invention.Catullus has long been admired as a poet, but his efforts as a translator have been largely ignored. Young reveals how essential translation is to his work: many poems by Catullus that we tend to label as lyric originals were in fact shaped by Roman translation practices entirely different from our own. By rereading Catullus through the lens of translation, Young exposes new layers of ingenuity in Latin poetry even as she illuminates the idiosyncrasies of Roman translation practice, reconfigures our understanding of translation history, and questions basic assumptions about lyric poetry itself.

In 1915, western farmers mounted one of the most significant challenges to party politics America has seen: the Nonpartisan League, which sought to empower citizens and restrain corporate influence. Before its collapse in the 1920s, the League counted over 250,000 paying members, spread to thirteen states and two Canadian provinces, controlled North Dakota's state government, and birthed new farmer-labor alliances. Yet today it is all but forgotten, neglected even by scholars.Michael J. Lansing aims to change that. Insurgent Democracy offers a new look at the Nonpartisan League and a new way to understand its rise and fall in the United States and Canada. Lansing argues that, rather than a spasm of populist rage that inevitably burned itself out, the story of the League is in fact an instructive example of how popular movements can create lasting change. Depicting the League as a transnational response to economic inequity, Lansing not only resurrects its story of citizen activism, but also allows us to see its potential to inform contemporary movements.

As with any enterprise involving violence and lots of money, running a plantation in early British America was a serious and brutal enterprise. Beyond resources and weapons, a plantation required a significant force of cruel and rapacious men-men who, as Trevor Burnard sees it, lacked any better options for making money. In the contentious Planters, Merchants, and Slaves, Burnard argues that white men did not choose to develop and maintain the plantation system out of virulent racism or sadism, but rather out of economic logic because-to speak bluntly-it worked.These economically successful and ethically monstrous plantations required racial divisions to exist, but their successes were always measured in gold, rather than skin or blood. Burnard argues that the best example of plantations functioning as intended is not those found in the fractious and poor North American colonies, but those in their booming and integrated commercial hub, Jamaica. Sure to be controversial, this book is a major intervention in the scholarship on slavery, economic development, and political power in early British America, mounting a powerful and original argument that boldly challenges historical orthodoxy.

At the close of the Second World War, modernist poets found themselves in an increasingly scientific world, where natural and social sciences claimed exclusive rights to knowledge of both matter and mind. Following the overthrow of the Newtonian worldview and the recent, shocking displays of the power of the atom, physics led the way, with other disciplines often turning to the methods and discoveries of physics for inspiration.?In Physics Envy, Peter Middleton examines the influence of science, particularly physics, on American poetry since World War II. He focuses on such diverse poets as Charles Olson, Muriel Rukeyser, Amiri Baraka, and Rae Armantrout, among others, revealing how the methods and language of contemporary natural and social sciences-and even the discourse of the leading popular science magazine Scientific American-shaped their work. The relationship, at times, extended in the other direction as well: leading physicists such as Robert Oppenheimer, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrdinger were interested in whether poetry might help them explain the strangeness of the new, quantum world. Physics Envy is a history of science and poetry that shows how ultimately each serves to illuminate the other in its quest for the true nature of things.

On the morning of November 22, 1963, President Kennedy told Jackie as they started for Dallas, "e;We're heading into nut country today."e; That day's events ultimately obscured and revealed just how right he was: Oswald was a lone gunman, but the city that surrounded him was full of people who hated Kennedy and everything he stood for, led by a powerful group of ultraconservatives who would eventually remake the Republican party in their own image.In Nut Country, Edward H. Miller tells the story of that transformation, showing how a group of influential far-right businessmen, religious leaders, and political operatives developed a potent mix of hardline anticommunism, biblical literalism, and racism to generate a violent populism-and widespread power. Though those figures were seen as extreme in Texas and elsewhere, mainstream Republicans nonetheless found themselves forced to make alliances, or tack to the right on topics like segregation. As racial resentment came to fuel the national Republican party's divisive but effective "e;Southern Strategy,"e; the power of the extreme conservatives rooted in Texas only grew.Drawing direct lines from Dallas to DC, Miller's captivating history offers a fresh understanding of the rise of the new Republican Party and the apocalyptic language, conspiracy theories, and ideological rigidity that remain potent features of our politics today.

Bed bugs. Few words strike such fear in the minds of travelers. In cities around the world, lurking beneath the plush blankets of otherwise pristine-looking hotel beds are tiny bloodthirsty beasts just waiting for weary wanderers to surrender to a vulnerable slumber. Though bed bugs today have infested the globe, the common bed bug is not a new pest at all. Indeed, as Brooke Borel reveals in this unusual history, this most-reviled species may date back over 250,000 years, wreaking havoc on our collective psyche while even inspiring art, literature, and music-in addition to vexatious red welts.?In Infested, Borel introduces readers to the biological and cultural histories of these amazingly adaptive insects, and the myriad ways in which humans have responded to them. She travels to meet with scientists who are rearing bed bug colonies-even by feeding them with their own blood (ouch!)-and to the stages of musicals performed in honor of the pests. She explores the history of bed bugs and their apparent disappearance in the 1950s after the introduction of DDT, charting how current infestations have flourished in direct response to human chemical use as well as the ease of global travel. She also introduces us to the economics of bed bug infestations, from hotels to homes to office buildings, and the expansive industry that has arisen to combat them.Hiding during the day in the nooks and seams of mattresses, box springs, bed frames, headboards, dresser tables, wallpaper, or any clutter around a bed, bed bugs are thriving and eager for their next victim. By providing fascinating details on bed bug science and behavior as well as a captivating look into the lives of those devoted to researching or eradicating them, Infested is sure to inspire at least a nibble of respect for these tenacious creatures-while also ensuring that you will peek beneath the sheets with prickly apprehension.