Synopses & Reviews
Starting with an elegant description of a small piece of land called Hungry Hollow, A.K. Dewdney introduces us to its denizens. The reader goes on a guided tour through the many dimensions of our natural habitat, back into prehistoric time and inward to a teeming microscopic world full of strange creatures performing bizarre feats. "It surprised me how 220 pages explaining biological phenomena can add up to a literary image of the magic of lifePerhaps this book will go some way to redress the general deficiency in judgement that allows humans to endanger other life forms..." -NEW SCIENTIST
Review
"...220 pages explaining biological phenomena add up to a literary image of the magic of life." New Scientist
Synopsis
Hungry Hollow is simply an ordinary creek winding through about a mile of ordinary forest and meadow somewhere east of the Rocky Mountains. But like all such places, it is also a vast and intricate web of life with extensions that reach around the planet, back into prehistoric time, and within to a teeming, bizarre microscopic world. In dozens of short, wonderfully imaginative chapters, A.K. Dewdney introduces us to the denizens of this world. We encounter a hackberry tree whose branches perfectly reproduce the taxonomic Tree of Life, learn how it would look and feel to shrink by stages to the size of an amoeba while swimming in a river, watch a toad win the lottery, and see the world of Hungry Hollow from the viewpoint of bears, earthworms, and even stones. This is an excursion into natural history like no other.
Synopsis
In a series of short, wonderfully imaginative chapters, A.K. Dewdney introduces us to the vast and intricate web that is Hungry Hollow, a seemingly ordinary stretch of river somewhere east of the Rocky Mountains. We encounter a hackberry tree that perfectly reproduces the taxonomic Tree of Life, learn how it would look and feel to shrink by stages to the size of an amoeba while swimming in a river, watch a toad win the lottery, and see the world of Hungry Hollow from the viewpoint of bears, earthworms and even stones. This is a natural history book like no other.
Synopsis
Dewdney takes us on a guided journey through Hungry Hollow's many dimensions of time and space - a multifaceted prism through which its present and prehistory, and its worlds large and small, are all refracted. We meet many plants, animals, fungi, and other life forms, guided sometimes by the raccoon called Lotor, sometimes by the biologist Dianne, who is just coming to terms with the real world of biological diversity. We encounter a Hackberry tree whose branches reproduce the taxonomic tree of life; learn how it would look and feel to shrink by stages to the size of an amoeba; watch a toad win the survival lottery; and see the world of Hungry Hollow from the viewpoint of plants, earthworms, rotifers, and even stones. We also learn about the geological forces that molded North America, the kingdoms of life, surface tension, genetics, the strange sex lives of diatoms and bacteria, and how everything is eventually recycled into the molecular building blocks of nature.