Penn Press Log

Philadelphia Weekly Talks to Birch about Greening Philly

Eugenie Birch, co-editor of Growing Greener Cities: Urban Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century, spoke with Philadelphia Weekly's Jeffrey Barg about Philly's status as a green metropolis.

"How is Philly doing?" asked Barg.

“It’s a tremendous leader," said Birch. "There’s the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s work with community gardens—it’s an international leader. Another area is the work that the Water Department is doing with drainage issues and infrastructure. A lot of really sensational things are going on in Philadelphia. Philly is equal to other cities that have been more highly touted.”

Check out PW's map of Philadelphia's green scenes to see how the City of Brotherly Love stacks up.

Caring for Patients from Different Cultures--Now Available

Caring for Patients from Different Cultures
Geri-Ann Galanti
Fourth Edition
320 pages | 6 x 9
Paper Jul 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2031-5 | $19.95 | £13.00

Today's health care professional serves a multicultural population and must understand how cultural misunderstandings can result in inferior medical care and health care disparities. The fourth edition of this classic work provides over 250 case studies illustrating what can go wrong, as well as what culturally competent clinicians can do right.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

The Journal of Medical Toxicology is now on PubMed

As of this morning, all articles since the inception of The Journal of Medical Toxicology, from Vol. 1.1 December 2005 to the latest issue, are now indexed on PubMed, the premiere database for biomedical research run by the National Library of Medicine, the National  Center for Biotechnology Information and the National Institutes for Health.

A journal goes through a rigorous evaluation process to verify the viability and scholarship before acceptance to PubMed and we’re very proud that JMT is now a part of this information service. Coming soon: PubMed access to full text article links.

Goodbye, Alex

In Parrot Culture: Our 2500-Year-Long Fascination with the World's Most Talkative Bird, Bruce Thomas Boehrer quotes a short but telling conversation about nuts.

Alex: Wanna nut.
Irene: Want another one? How about a different kind? What kind of nut is this?
Alex: Walnut. . . .
(Takes walnut, drops it immediately.)
Irene: You don't like walnuts? Do you want anything else?. . .
Alex: Want cork.

While the subject is mundane, the conversation stands out as remarkable, for this was not a snack time chat between a mother and a toddler, but a dialog between research psychologist Irene Pepperberg and Alex, the celebrated African gray parrot whose ability to construct sentences and invent new words ("corknut" for almond) led humans to a deeper understanding of avian intelligence.

Alex died last week at the age of 31.  News of his passing made yesterday's New York Times. Not bad for a bird, but perhaps not so unusual for a parrot. Alex's psittacine ability to speak not only inspired scientists, but also made an appearance in Oryx and Crake, a novel by Margaret Atwood, placing him in the long line of parrots who have captured human imagination from Ovid to Monty Python.

The Plants of Pennsylvania--Now Available

The Plants of Pennsylvania: An Illustrated Manual
Ann Fowler Rhoads and Timothy A. Block. Illustrations by Anna Anisko
Second Edition
1,056 pages | 7 x 10 | 2,645 line drawings, 4 maps
Cloth Aug 2007 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4003-0 | $69.95 | £45.50

The second edition of The Plants of Pennsylvania is the authoritative guide to identifying the nearly 3,400 species of flowering plants, ferns, and gymnosperms native or naturalized in the Commonwealth. It features a complete reorganization into a genetic scheme that reflects recent advances in our understanding of plant relationships.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Lens Versus Pencil: A Post from a Penn Press Intern

Intern Taylor Wemmer sheds light on the value of illustration in the following article.

Film and Lens or Paper and Pencil?

If someone asked me whether I would prefer a book full of black and white illustrations or a book full of color photographs, I would answer, “the one with color photographs, please.” Aren’t photographs the closest we can come to experiencing the true form of an object? Don’t photographs provide more details than a mere illustration? Not necessarily. For those who study plants, a black-and-white illustration can hold far greater value than a photograph. The usefulness of such illustrations makes them a vital component in the second edition of Dr. Ann Rhoads and Dr. Timothy Block's The Plants of Pennsylvania, a practical guide for plant enthusiasts with any level of experience.

Rhoads explains that "drawings, prepared by a skilled botanical illustrator, can depict important details that are necessary for accurate identification better than photographs.”

Care to test this out for yourself? Try to find the poison ivy in the photo below (from Wikipedia).

Wildlife of the Mid-Atlantic--Now Available

Wildlife of the Mid-Atlantic: A Complete Reference Manual
John H. Rappole
384 pages | 8 x 10 | 1040 illus.
Cloth 2007 | ISBN 978-0-8122-3982-9 | $49.95 | £32.50

This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the wildlife of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. Approximately 550 species are described and illustrated, including all birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians known to inhabit the area.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Wildlife of the Week: Big-eared Bats

It's hard to be neutral about the looks of this week's featured animals, Rafinesque's Big-eared Bat (pictured on the left) and Townsend's Big-eared Bat (pictured below) . They are either  jolie laide or pretty ugly. The illustrations of both bats, which appear in John H. Rappole's Wildlife of the Mid-Atlantic, seem to capture a special kind of good-natured cheekiness underneath the leathery wings and enormous echolocating ears. Or not. If the freaky appeal of these flying mammals is lost on you, it's probably for the best as far as their future survival is concerned. The best-intentioned visit from a curious person can be deadly to a bat.

Wildlife of the Week: The Eastern Fence Lizard

Today's Wildlife of the Week, the Eastern Fence Lizard (Sceloporus undulatus), might be living in your backyard but you'd probably never notice, because this reptile is a bit of a shrinking violet. Its variegated brown and black scales make it almost impossible to spot in its favorite arboreal habitat. At four to seven inches long, the lizard likes to lie low in forests, fields, pastures, and on cliffs, munching insects and basking in the sun. Can you find the fence lizard in this picture (from Davidson College's www.herpsofnc.org)?

When approached by humans, sceloporus undulatus will dash for the nearest tree and run around to the far side of the trunk. Catching a fence lizard in the wild is a two-person job: one person has to scare the lizard around to the back of a tree while the other waits to snag it. Despite all this modesty, the lizard does have a secret wild side. During mating season, the male fence lizard develops bright blue patches on its neck and belly and struts his stuff for the females, striking revealing poses that show off his markings. Rejection can be harsh: if the female isn't impressed, she arches her back and hops away to another suitor. Too many experiences like that, and anyone would start hiding behind trees.

Luckily, this shy little reptile is about to get its fifteen minutes of fame and then some. Front and center on the cover of John H. Rappole's forthcoming book, Wildlife of the Mid-Atlantic, is a very flattering life-sized portrait of our friend sceloporus undulatus. Maybe a taste of the spotlight will be enough to lure the lizard out of its wallflower ways.

Colonial Botany--Now in Paperback

Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World
Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan, Editors
352 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 54 illus.
Cloth 2004 | ISBN 978-0-8122-3827-3 | $59.95 | £39.00
Paper 2007 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2009-4 | $22.50 | £15.00

"Well illustrated and imaginatively written, this . . . superb collection surveys the leading edge of current approaches but also points towards future research."--Renaissance Studies

Colonial Botany explores how the study, naming, cultivation, and marketing of rare and beautiful plants resulted from and shaped European voyages, conquests, global trade, and scientific exploration.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.