Paradise Found:
Nature in American at the Time of Discovery
By Steve Nicholls
QH102 .N53 2009
New Book Island, 2nd floor
How has your hometown changed over the last ten years? Your lifetime? Ever wonder what your hometown looked like before anyone actually lived there? This week’s featured title take a look at our continent and its natural history around the time that Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
Nicholls, known for his work as a wildlife filmmaker, takes the reader on a journey through North America – before the first settlers left their lasting marks. The Europeans that made the voyage across the ocean were met with untouched natural beauty, leaving behind detailed notes of the flora and fauna that they encountered. The author uses his vast knowledge of natural history and experience from directing and writing documentaries to bring the picturesque beauty of the landscape to life. He utilizes the firsthand accounts from the past and scientific research being done today to create portraits of each of the regions of the continent.
The Special Libraries Association’s BioMedical & Life Sciences Division conducted a poll to identify the 100 most influential journals of biology & medicine over the last 100 years.” The poll was conducted by selection panels for three areas: clinical medicine & allied health sciences, molecular and cellular biology (including journals of biotechnology), and natural history.
The top ten are listed here.
Clinical medicine & allied health sciences:
- The New England Journal of Medicine
- JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association
- BMJ: The British Medical Journal (which beat out The Lancet by two votes)
Molecular, cellular, and general science:
- Science
- Nature
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
Natural history (Botany, Zoology, Anthropology and Paleontology):
- The American Journal of Botany
- The Journal of Zoology
- The American Journal of Physical Anthropology (which finished in a three-way tie with the Journal of Human Evolution, and the American Journal of Human Biology, but then won according to tie-breaking rules on grounds of longevity)
- The Journal of Paleontology
All of the top ten titles except for The American Journal of Physical Anthropology and the current year’s content of The Journal of Zoology are available to UWW students and staff, either through online databases or in Andersen Library’s first-floor periodicals collection.
