"The Metamorphosis of Plants, originally published in 1790, was Goethe's first major attempt to describe what he called in a letter to a friend "the truth about the how of the organism." Inspired by the diversity of flora he found on a journey to Italy, Goethe sought a unity of form in diverse structures. He came to see in the leaf the germ of a plant's metamorphosis - "the true Proteus who can hide or reveal himself in all vegetal forms" - from the...

John Steinbeck, intellectual soulmate of pioneering ecologist Edward F. Ricketts, developed a literary vision unique for its biological holism. From his exploration of the environmental disaster in the Dust Bowl region described in The Grapes of Wrath to his voyage of scientific and spiritual discovery among near-pristine marine ecosystems recounted in Log from the Sea of Cortez, Steinbeck's entire canon probes the multiple and interlocked dimensions...

In 2003, Kathleen Flinn was a thirty-six-year-old American in London who felt trapped in corporate middle management–until her boss eliminated her job while she was on vacation. Ignoring her mother’s advice that she find another job immediately, Flinn moved to Paris to pursue a dream–a diploma from the venerable Le Cordon Bleu cooking school.
But instead of being ushered into “a glamorous world of soufflés and foie...

An account of the former British prime minister's seventy-year relationship with the United States describes how he laid the foundation of a century-long alliance between the countries and established a policy of cooperation that continues to this day.