What if the 100,000-odd year-old evidence of human social life—from the arrowheads in South Africa, to the Venus figurines at Dordogne—is the effect of nothing, more or less, but our efforts to become parents? What if the 10,000-odd year-old record of civilization—from the tax accounts at temples in the Near East, to…
Since I have had to pay college tuition for five daughters, I have chosen to play the role of preacher. I preach to all who will listen the gospel of manifest destiny. The destiny which I am preaching is not the expansion of a single nation or of a single species, but the spreading out of life in all its multifarious…
Many plants new to North America first sprouted up alongside wharves and shipyards. From there they made their way inland along new roads hacked out of the wilderness, and later along canals and railroad embankments, taking up residence in any sort of disturbed soil. Native plants adapted to quiet precolonial forests…