For Bookworms

After 125 years, the Field Museum has collected almost as many stories as it has specimens, and you can read many of them in this major work encompassing the history of the Field Museum dating back to 1893 till now. Find out things you never knew from our beginning in the white city to our first collections that are still on display, all the way to crazy events like a Star Wars movie screening!

 

• Paperback
• 391 pages
• Edited by Franck Mercurio, Erin Hogen, and Chandler Garland

 

Chicago photographer Brad Temkin (born 1956) brings attention to the visual and ecological beauty of the transformation of water, by showing the structures and processes that most people do not even think about. Most storm water runoff is considered waste, yet more than 700 cities reclaim and reuse wastewater and storm water with combined sewer systems, recycling it for agricultural uses and even drinking water. As we mimic nature and separate the impurities like sludge, salt or chemicals, a transformation occurs. Temkin believes it matters less what each structure really is used for, or whether the water pictured is pure or waste. He is drawn to the strangeness of these forms and the distorted sense of scale. Moving beyond mere description, he embraces the abstract and surreal landscape of water transformation. Temkin has received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work, which is collected in museums throughout the United States.

• Hardcover
• 148 pages
• By Brad Temkin

As explorers and scientists have known for decades, the Neotropics harbor a fantastic array of our planet's mammalian diversity, from capybaras and capuchins to maned wolves and mouse opossums to sloths and sakis. This biological bounty can be attributed partly to the striking diversity of Neotropical landscapes and climates and partly to a series of continental connections that permitted intermittent faunal exchanges with Africa, Antarctica, Australia, and North America. Thus, to comprehend the development of modern Neotropical mammal faunas requires not only mastery of the Neotropics' substantial diversity, but also knowledge of mammalian lineages and landscapes dating back to the Mesozoic.

Bones, Clones, and Biomes offers just that-an exploration of the development and relationships of the modern mammal fauna through a series of studies that encompass the last 100 million years and both Central and South America. This work serves as a complement to more taxonomically driven works, providing for readers the long geologic and biogeographic contexts that undergird the abundance and diversity of Neotropical mammals. Rather than documenting diversity or distribution, this collection traverses the patterns that the distributions and relationships across mammal species convey, bringing together for the first time geology, paleobiology, systematics, mammalogy, and biogeography. Of critical importance is the book's utility for current conservation and management programs, part of a rapidly rising conservation paleobiology initiative.

• Hardcover
• 432 pages
• Edited by by Bruce D. Patterson and Leonora P. Costa

A pictorial documentation of Herb Alpert's Black Totems sculpture installation, photographed by Philipp Scholz Ritterman with an essay by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp.

• Hardcover
• Book autographed by Herb Alpert
• Written by Philipp Scholz Ritterman and Hunter Drohojowska-Philp

From the brilliantly green and glossy eggs of the Elegant Crested Tinamou―said to be among the most beautiful in the world―to the small brown eggs of the house sparrow that makes its nest in a lamppost and the uniformly brown or white chickens’ eggs found by the dozen in any corner grocery, birds’ eggs have inspired countless biologists, ecologists, and ornithologists, as well as artists, from John James Audubon to the contemporary photographer Rosamond Purcell. For scientists, these vibrant vessels are the source of an array of interesting topics, from the factors responsible for egg coloration to the curious practice of “brood parasitism,” in which the eggs of cuckoos mimic those of other bird species in order to be cunningly concealed among the clutches of unsuspecting foster parents.

• Hardcover
• 656 pages
• Written by Mark E Hauber

Animal: Exploring the Zoological World is a visually stunning and broad-ranging survey that explores and celebrates humankind's ongoing fascination with animals. Since our very first moments on Earth, we have been compelled to make images of the curious beasts around us - whether as sources of food, danger, wonder, power, scientific significance or companionship. This carefully curated selection of images, chosen by an international panel of experts, delves into our shared past to tell the story of animal life.

From the first cave paintings, extraordinary medieval bestiaries and exquisite scientific illustration, to iconic paintings, contemporary artworks and the incredible technological advancements that will shape our futures together, the huge range of works reflects the beauty and variety of animals themselves - including butterflies, hummingbirds, bats, frogs, tigers, dogs, jellyfish, spiders and elephants, to name a few.

Arranged in a curated and thought-provoking sequence, this engaging compilation includes iconic works by some of the great names in zoology, such as Conrad Gesner, Charles Darwin and John James Audubon, as well as celebrated artists and photographers, indigenous cultures and lesser-known figures who have made important contributions to the study and representation of animals throughout history.

• Hardcover
• 352 pages
• Written by James Hanken