Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web
Smart gardeners know that soil is anything but an inert substance. Healthy soil is teeming with life — not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms. When we use chemical fertilizers, we injure the microbial life that sustains healthy plants, and thus become increasingly dependent on an arsenal of artificial substances, many of them toxic to humans as well as other forms of life. But there is an alternative to this vicious circle: to garden in a way that strengthens, rather than destroys, the soil food web — the complex world of soil-dwelling organisms whose interactions create a nurturing environment for plants.
Added by: Kahena | Karma: 11524.33 | Fiction literature | 7 September 2011
5
The Circle of Reason
Amitav Ghosh’s extraordinary first novel makes a claim on literary turf held by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie. In a vivid and magical story, The Circle of Reason traces the misadventures of Alu, a young master weaver in a small Bengali village who is falsely accused of terrorism. Alu flees his home, traveling through Bombay to the Persian Gulf to North Africa with a bird-watching policeman in pursuit.
Beecher White, a young archivist, spends his days working with the most important documents of the U.S. government. He has always been the keeper of other people's stories, never a part of the story himself . . . Until now.
Coming of age during the turbulent 1960s, Tana Roberts dreams of having a successful career and is willing to sacrifice everything to achieve her goal, only to discover that she can have a life that includes a career, love, and peace of mind.
What are crop circles and what do they mean? Who-or what-is responsible for the thousands of complex patterns found in cereal crops all over the world? Are they made by aliens or Government satellites? Are they screams from a dying planet? Are we in danger, and are crop circles some kind of warning signal? Colin Andrews, author of the first book about the crop circle phenomenon, brings the world up to date with his many years of research into this fascinating subject. He takes you on a mysterious and informative ride into the world of the crop circle phenomenon, providing an overview and setting the record straight about the nature of crop circles, their origin, and their meaning.
