2 books found
A fascinating guide to the natural and cultural significance of mosses and lichens. Moss and Lichen is a celebration of the extraordinary biology, beauty, and resilience of two unassuming organisms. Endowed with unique abilities to thrive in extreme habitats, mosses and lichens defy easy categorization. Mosses, which are integral to the plant kingdom, and lichens, which are a kingdom unto themselves, colonize a variety of landscapes from rainforests to deserts to urban streets. Long neglected for lacking flowers, these organisms are now beloved for their significant role in maintaining the health of our world’s ecosystem. Elizabeth Lawson describes how mosses and lichens shape landscapes, prevent erosion, and sequester carbon, but she also offers a wide-ranging introduction to the biologists, artists, and writers inspired by their beauty. Moss and Lichen will inspire a newfound appreciation for these unsung heroes of the natural world.
Now available in paperback, this award-winning book provides a comprehensive history of gender policies and practices in American public schools. David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot explore the many factors that have shaped coeducation since its origins. At the very time that Americans were creating separate spheres for adult men and women, they institutionalized an education system that brought boys and girls together. How did beliefs about the similarities and differences of boys and girls shape policy and practice in schools? To what degree did the treatment of boys and girls differ by class, race, region, and historical period? Debates over gender policies suggest that American have made public education the repository of their hopes and anxieties about relationships between the sexes. Thus, the history of coeducation serves as a window not only on constancy and change in gender practices in the schools but also on cultural conflicts about gender in the broader society. "Learning Together presents a rich and exhaustive search through [the] 'tangled history' of gender and education that links both the silences and the debates surrounding coeducation to the changing roles of women and men in our society....It is the generosity and capaciousness of Tyack and Hansot's scholarship that makes Learning Together so important a book." —Science