Life as We Made It

Life as We Made It
Author: Beth Shapiro
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2021-10-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1541644158

From the first dog to the first beefalo, from farming to CRISPR, the human history of remaking nature When the 2020 Nobel Prize was awarded to the inventors of CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing tool, it underlined our amazing and apparently novel powers to alter nature. But as biologist Beth Shapiro argues in Life as We Made It, this phenomenon isn’t new. Humans have been reshaping the world around us for ages, from early dogs to modern bacteria modified to pump out insulin. Indeed, she claims, reshaping nature—resetting the course of evolution, ours and others’—is the essence of what our species does. In exploring our evolutionary and cultural history, Shapiro finds a course for the future. If we have always been changing nature to help us survive and thrive, then we need to avoid naive arguments about how we might destroy it with our meddling, and instead ask how we can meddle better. Brilliant and insightful, Life as We Made It is an essential book for the decades to come.

Life as It Comes

Life as It Comes
Author: Anne-Laure Bondoux
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2008-08-12
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0440239699

After their parents are killed in a car accident, sisters Mado, fifteen, and Patty, twenty, try to cope, but when the irresponsible and impulsive Patty gets pregnant and expects Mado to take charge of everything, life becomes increasingly difficult.

Life as It Is

Life as It Is
Author: William F. Loomis
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2009-05-06
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0520260015

"This book is an enjoyable and thought-provoking 'My Dinner With Bill Loomis'. He shows how respect for human life means acknowledging its ecological and evolutionary contexts. Molecular biology, he writes, is like Prometheus, giving us incredible tools for good or evil—and it's time that we grow up."—Scott F. Gilbert, Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology, Swarthmore College "A wonderful journey through the very basis of life and how we live."—Lewis Wolpert, Professor of Biology as Applied to Medicine, University College, London "Advances in biology increasingly impinge on our everyday lives, challenging us with new interventions and ideas of what it means to be human. In this book, the distinguished scientist Bill Loomis takes us effortlessly through the biology we need to understand to come to our own opinions about these issues of great importance to each of us and to society as a whole."—Paul Nurse, President of Rockefeller University, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine

Loving Life as It Is

Loving Life as It Is
Author: Chakung Jigme Wangdrak
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2024-06-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1645473163

Practical Buddhist wisdom and mindful methods for finding the silver lining in all circumstances—from a remarkable new voice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Chakung Jigme Wangdrak gives concrete advice on how to reorient your thinking when faced with the challenges, mess, and chaos that inevitably occur in life. By embracing pain and suffering, you can learn to see their roots, begin to work with them, and eventually let them go. This will create joy and ease, allowing you to fully savor happiness. In clear language, Jigme Wangdrak conveys the steps, stages, and categories of mental exercises and methods that everyone—from beginner to experienced practitioner and non-Buddhists—can use to train their mind toward happiness: Take happiness and suffering as the path Cultivate courage, gratitude, and compassion Practice contentment (not complacency) Recognize outer and inner obstacles when faced with challenging situations Dispel self-grasping to reduce suffering Develop patience and tolerance A true Buddhist master and unique lineage holder, Jigme Wangdrak offers a roadmap to freedom with teachings that will benefit your spiritual practice and daily life—he shows you how to love your life as it already is!

Life as We Knew it

Life as We Knew it
Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2008
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0152061541

I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald's still would be open. High school sophomore Miranda's disbelief turns to fear in a split second when an asteroid knocks the moon closer to Earth, like "one marble hits another." The result is catastrophic. How can her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis are wiping out the coasts, earthquakes are rocking the continents, and volcanic ash is blocking out the sun? As August turns dark and wintery in northeastern Pennsylvania, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove. Told in a year's worth of journal entries, this heart-pounding story chronicles Miranda's struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all--hope--in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world. An extraordinary series debut Susan Beth Pfeffer has written several companion novels to Life As We Knew It, including The Dead and the Gone, This World We Live In, and The Shade of the Moon.

Life as It Is

Life as It Is
Author: Dr. William F. Loomis
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2008-03-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780520934344

This concise, accessible book considers from a biological perspective the controversial issues of our day: abortion, euthanasia, engineered evolution, cooperativity, and the future of sustainable life on this planet. Exploring in fascinating detail the processes by which cells come into being and multiply, Loomis clearly and simply explains the latest in complex biological research. He reviews recent insights into molecular and human evolution, the role of DNA sequences in determining traits, and the biological basis for consciousness, all of which, he argues, need to be considered when making life-and-death decisions and wrestling with questions about the limits to intervention.

Life as It Should Be

Life as It Should Be
Author: Dick Bont
Publisher: WestBow Press
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2014-12-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1490863451

You can be anything you want to be! Follow your dream! Be all that you can be! Do these phrases sound familiar? We are bombarded with words like these all our lives; yet many of us remain confused, disappointed, and disillusioned. Perhaps there is a greater pursuitmaybe discovering who God made you to be and following His plan for your life is a better way. Life as It Should Be may be your roadmap to that destination.

It's Life as I See it

It's Life as I See it
Author: Dan Nadel
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1681375613

Originally published by Chicago's Black press, long neglected by mainstream publishing, and now included in a Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago exhibition, these comics showcase some of the finest Black cartoonists. Between the 1940s and 1980s, Chicago’s Black press—from The Chicago Defender to the Negro Digest to self-published pamphlets—was home to some of the best cartoonists in America. Kept out of the pages of white-owned newspapers, Black cartoonists found space to address the joys, the horrors, and the everyday realities of Black life in America. From Jay Jackson’s anti-racist time travel adventure serial Bungleton Green, to Morrie Turner’s radical mixed-race strip Dinky Fellas, to the Afrofuturist comics of Yaoundé Olu and Turtel Onli, to National Book Award–winning novelist Charles Johnson’s blistering and deeply funny gag cartoons, this is work that has for far too long been excluded and overlooked. Also featuring the work of Tom Floyd, Seitu Hayden, Jackie Ormes, and Grass Green, this anthology accompanies the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s exhibition Chicago Comics: 1960 to Now, and is an essential addition to the history of American comics. The book's cover is designed by Kerry James Marshall. Published in conjunction with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, on the occasion of Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now, June 19–October 3, 2021. Curated by Dan Nadel.

The Truth of This Life

The Truth of This Life
Author: Katherine Thanas
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2018-01-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 161180468X

Accessible and elegant teachings from a well-loved and revered woman Zen teacher. “The truth and joy of this life is that we cannot change things as they are.” The import of those words can be found beautifully expressed in the work of the woman who spoke them, Katherine Thanas (1927–2012)—in her art, in her writing, and especially in her Zen teaching. Fearlessly direct and endlessly curious, Katherine’s understanding of Zen was inseparable from her affinity for the arts. She was an MFA student studying painting with Richard Diebenkorn, the preeminent Californian abstract painter, when she met Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, in the sixties. Soon thereafter she decided to drop painting to dedicate herself to Zen, which she did for the last forty years of her life. In these essential teachings taken from her dharma talks—which make up her only book—her love of art and literature shine through in her elegant prose and her vast references, from poets William Stafford and Naomi Shihab Nye to the Zen teachings of Dogen and Robert Aitken. Ranging on subjects from the practice of zazen to the meaning of life, Katherine urges us to “develop an insatiable appetite for inner awareness, to become proficient with this mind.” This slim volume is an important contribution by a well-loved and revered teacher.