Understanding Wood

Understanding Wood
Author: R. Bruce Hoadley
Publisher: Taunton
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1980
Genre: Timber
ISBN: 9780918804051

Inn this essential reference for woodworkers, the author explains everything from how trees grow to getting a sharp edge. Includes examples of problems and their solutions to help woodworkers through their own projects. Full-color photos and b&w illustrations.

Working with the Grain

Working with the Grain
Author: Brian Levy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2014
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199363803

The development discourse has long been dominated by best practices prescriptions for reform, but these are not a useful way of responding to the governance ambiguities of the early 21st century. Working with the Grain draws on both innovative scholarship and Brian Levy's quarter century of experience at the World Bank to lay out an alternative-a practical, analytically grounded, "with-the-grain" approach to reducing poverty and addressing weaknesses in governance. Best practice prescriptions confuse the goals of development with the journey of getting from here to there. A strong rule of law, capable and accountable governments, and a flexible, level playing field business environment are indeed desirable end points. But the ability to describe well-governed states does not conjure them into existence. If the only available actions are all or nothing, then efforts at change will almost certainly fall short, leading to disillusion and despair. By contrast, this book takes as its point of departure the realities of a country's economy, polity and society, and directs attention towards the challenges of initiating and sustaining forward development momentum. The book: -- distinguishes among four broad groups of countries, according to whether polities are dominant or competitive, and whether institutions are personalized or impersonal -- identifies alternative options for governance and policy reform-top down options which endeavor to strengthen formal institutions, and options supporting the emergence of "islands of effectiveness" -- explores how to identify entry points for change where there is a good fit between divergent country contexts and alternative options for reform. Sometimes the binding constraint to forward movement can be institutional, making governance reform the priority; at other times, the priority can better be on inclusive growth. Taking the decade-or-so time horizon of practitioners, the aim is to nudge things along-seeking gains that initially may seem quite modest but sometimes can give rise to a cascading sequence of change for the better.

Good to the Grain

Good to the Grain
Author: Kim Boyce
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 688
Release: 2011-11-23
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 1613121296

The James Beard Foundation Award-winning cookbook “that explores the landscape of whole-grain flours, with deliciousness as its guiding principle” (The Oregonian). Baking with whole-grain flours used to be about making food that was good for you, not food that necessarily tasted good, too. But Kim Boyce truly has reinvented the wheel with this collection of seventy-five recipes that feature twelve different kinds of whole-grain flours, from amaranth to teff, proving that whole-grain baking is more about incredible flavors and textures than anything else. When Boyce, a former pastry chef at Spago and Campanile, left the kitchen to raise a family, she was determined to create delicious cakes, muffins, breads, tarts, and cookies that her kids (and everybody else) would love. She began experimenting with whole-grain flours, and Good to the Grain is the happy result. The cookbook proves that whole-grain baking can be easily done with a pastry chef’s flair. Plus, there’s a chapter on making jams, compotes, and fruit butters with seasonal fruits that help bring out the wonderfully complex flavors of whole-grain flours. “This is the book we’ve been waiting for. A cookbook that takes all those incredible flours with names like amaranth and kamut that have started appearing in stores, and tells us what to do with them.” —Kitchn “Thanks to Kim Boyce’s Good to the Grain, we’ve got a whole new range of flavors to play with—she’s inspired us to put a little whole wheat into our cookies, a little spelt in our cake, and to always remember to make our food taste, above all, more of itself.” —Food52

Against the Grain

Against the Grain
Author: Robert Dana
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2009-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1587298945

Against the Grain is a collection of interviews with nine small press publishers, each one characterized by strength of resolve and a dedication to good books. Each press reflects, perhaps more directly than any large trade publisher could, the character of its founder; and each has earned its own place in the select group of important small presses in America. This collection is the first of its kind to explore with the publishers themselves the historical, aesthetic, practical, and personal impulses behind literary publishing. The publishers included are Harry Duncan (the Cummington Press), Lawrence Ferlinghetti (City Lights), David Godine (David R. Godine), Daniel Halpern (the Ecco Press), Sam Hamill and Tree Swenson (Copper Canyon Press), James Laughlin (New Directions), John Martin (Black Sparrow), and Jonathan Williams (the Jargon Society). Their passion for books, their belief in their individual visions of what publishing is or could be, their inspired mulishness crackle on the page.

The World in a Grain

The World in a Grain
Author: Vince Beiser
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0399576444

A finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world--sand--and the crucial role it plays in our lives. After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. From Egypt's pyramids to the Hubble telescope, from the world's tallest skyscraper to the sidewalk below it, from Chartres' stained-glass windows to your iPhone, sand shelters us, empowers us, engages us, and inspires us. It's the ingredient that makes possible our cities, our science, our lives--and our future. And, incredibly, we're running out of it. The World in a Grain is the compelling true story of the hugely important and diminishing natural resource that grows more essential every day, and of the people who mine it, sell it, build with it--and sometimes, even kill for it. It's also a provocative examination of the serious human and environmental costs incurred by our dependence on sand, which has received little public attention. Not all sand is created equal: Some of the easiest sand to get to is the least useful. Award-winning journalist Vince Beiser delves deep into this world, taking readers on a journey across the globe, from the United States to remote corners of India, China, and Dubai to explain why sand is so crucial to modern life. Along the way, readers encounter world-changing innovators, island-building entrepreneurs, desert fighters, and murderous sand pirates. The result is an entertaining and eye-opening work, one that is both unexpected and involving, rippling with fascinating detail and filled with surprising characters.

With the Grain

With the Grain
Author: Christian Becksvoort
Publisher:
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: Wood
ISBN: 9780985077747

A practical guide for woodworkers on the different species of trees, their characteristics and how to work with them in the shop.

Grain by Grain

Grain by Grain
Author: Bob Quinn
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1610919955

"A compelling agricultural story skillfully told; environmentalists will eat it up." - Kirkus Reviews When Bob Quinn was a kid, a stranger at a county fair gave him a few kernels of an unusual grain. Little did he know, that grain would change his life. Years later, after finishing a PhD in plant biochemistry and returning to his family’s farm in Montana, Bob started experimenting with organic wheat. In the beginning, his concern wasn’t health or the environment; he just wanted to make a decent living and some chance encounters led him to organics. But as demand for organics grew, so too did Bob’s experiments. He discovered that through time-tested practices like cover cropping and crop rotation, he could produce successful yields—without pesticides. Regenerative organic farming allowed him to grow fruits and vegetables in cold, dry Montana, providing a source of local produce to families in his hometown. He even started producing his own renewable energy. And he learned that the grain he first tasted at the fair was actually a type of ancient wheat, one that was proven to lower inflammation rather than worsening it, as modern wheat does. Ultimately, Bob’s forays with organics turned into a multimillion dollar heirloom grain company, Kamut International. In Grain by Grain, Quinn and cowriter Liz Carlisle, author of Lentil Underground, show how his story can become the story of American agriculture. We don’t have to accept stagnating rural communities, degraded soil, or poor health. By following Bob’s example, we can grow a healthy future, grain by grain.

Against the Grain

Against the Grain
Author: Richard Manning
Publisher: North Point Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2005-02-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1466823429

In this provocative, wide-ranging book, Against the Grain, Richard Manning offers a dramatically revisionist view of recent human evolution, beginning with the vast increase in brain size that set us apart from our primate relatives and brought an accompanying increase in our need for nourishment. For 290,000 years, we managed to meet that need as hunter-gatherers, a state in which Manning believes we were at our most human: at our smartest, strongest, most sensually alive. But our reliance on food made a secure supply deeply attractive, and eventually we embarked upon the agricultural experiment that has been the history of our past 10,000 years. The evolutionary road is littered with failed experiments, however, and Manning suggests that agriculture as we have practiced it runs against both our grain and nature's. Drawing on the work of anthropologists, biologists, archaeologists, and philosophers, along with his own travels, he argues that not only our ecological ills-overpopulation, erosion, pollution-but our social and emotional malaise are rooted in the devil's bargain we made in our not-so-distant past. And he offers personal, achievable ways we might re-contour the path we have taken to resurrect what is most sustainable and sustaining in our own nature and the planet's.

Against the Grain

Against the Grain
Author: Lowery Sims
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1580933440

Focusing on some of the most interesting conceptual technical trends in wood working today, Against the Grain includes approximately 65 vessels, sculptures, furniture, and installations, created since 2000, which provocatively defy categories and celebrate the visual dynamics of wood. The book demonstrates how contemporary creators have engaged the medium of wood in strategies that might be described as “postmodern,” employing mimicry, assemblage, virtuosity, and whimsy (with a serious purpose). Environmental issues also are prominently addressed. Artists represented include Derek Bencomo, Gary Carsley, Hunt Clark, Piet Hein Eek, David Ellsworth, Sebastian Errazuriz, Bud Latven, Mark Lindquist, Thomas Loeser, Sarah Oppenheimer, William Pope.L, Martin Puryear, Marc Andre Robinson, Laurel Roth, Betye Saar, Courtney Smith, Elisa Strozyk, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, and Ursula von Rydingsvard.

Living Wood

Living Wood
Author: Mike Abbott
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: House & Home
ISBN: 9780954234560

First published in 2002, Living Wood is both a practical manual and an inspirational guide, updating much of the information included in Mike's best-selling book Green Woodwork. Living Wood covers: • Becoming a green woodworke--Mike's story, from playing in the woodlands to owning a share in a woodland in Herefordshire • Buying, managing, and harvesting a woodland; • Developing woodland facilities, including tracks, steps, huts, a barn, a kitchen, and a compost toilet • Setting up a woodland workshop--plans for a shelter and updated designs for a shaving horse, a pole lathe, and other green wood-working tools and devices • Making ladder-back chairs, including cleaving, steam-bending, and techniques for ultra-tight joints without glue • Seating chairs with bark and with cord • A comprehensive list of suppliers, woodland organizations, and books Now in its fourth edition, Living Wood includes a selection of photographs of Mike’s latest workshop at Brookhouse Wood.