A Taste For The Beautiful

"In A Taste for the Beautiful, Michael Ryan, one of the world's leading authorities on animal behavior, tells the remarkable story of how he and other scientists have taken up where Darwin left off, transforming our understanding of sexual selection and shedding new light on animal and human behavior. Drawing on cutting-edge science, Ryan explores the key questions: Why do animals perceive certain traits as beautiful and others not? Do animals have an inherent sexual aesthetic and, if so, where is it rooted? Ryan argues that the answers lie in the brain--particularly of females, who act as biological puppeteers, spurring the development of beautiful traits in males."--Back cover

A FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, SMITHSONIAN, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world. In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum—reviving Darwin's own views—thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change. Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time. The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.

From one of the world's leading authorities on animal behavior, the astonishing story of how the female brain drives the evolution of beauty in animals and humans Darwin developed the theory of sexual selection to explain why the animal world abounds in stunning beauty, from the brilliant colors of butterflies and fishes to the songs of birds and frogs. He argued that animals have “a taste for the beautiful” that drives their potential mates to evolve features that make them more sexually attractive and reproductively successful. But if Darwin explained why sexual beauty evolved in animals, he struggled to understand how. In A Taste for the Beautiful, Michael Ryan, one of the world’s leading authorities on animal behavior, tells the remarkable story of how he and other scientists have taken up where Darwin left off and transformed our understanding of sexual selection, shedding new light on human behavior in the process. Drawing on cutting-edge work in neuroscience and evolutionary biology, as well as his own important studies of the tiny Túngara frog deep in the jungles of Panama, Ryan explores the key questions: Why do animals perceive certain traits as beautiful and others not? Do animals have an inherent sexual aesthetic and, if so, where is it rooted? Ryan argues that the answers to these questions lie in the brain—particularly of females, who act as biological puppeteers, spurring the development of beautiful traits in males. This theory of how sexual beauty evolves explains its astonishing diversity and provides new insights about the degree to which our own perception of beauty resembles that of other animals. Vividly written and filled with fascinating stories, A Taste for the Beautiful will change how you think about beauty and attraction.

For fans of Jenny Han, Jane Austen, and The Great British Baking Show, A Taste for Love, is a delicious rom com about first love, familial expectations, and making the perfect bao. To her friends, high school senior Liza Yang is nearly perfect. Smart, kind, and pretty, she dreams big and never shies away from a challenge. But to her mom, Liza is anything but. Compared to her older sister Jeannie, Liza is stubborn, rebellious, and worst of all, determined to push back against all of Mrs. Yang's traditional values, especially when it comes to dating. The one thing mother and daughter do agree on is their love of baking. Mrs. Yang is the owner of Houston's popular Yin & Yang Bakery. With college just around the corner, Liza agrees to help out at the bakery's annual junior competition to prove to her mom that she's more than her rebellious tendencies once and for all. But when Liza arrives on the first day of the bake-off, she realizes there's a catch: all of the contestants are young Asian American men her mother has handpicked for Liza to date. The bachelorette situation Liza has found herself in is made even worse when she happens to be grudgingly attracted to one of the contestants; the stoic, impenetrable, annoyingly hot James Wong. As she battles against her feelings for James, and for her mother's approval, Liza begins to realize there's no tried and true recipe for love.

Food sustains life. Since the beginning of time, it has underpinned our existence. Every day, in every country around the world, it continues to do so. While once food comprised the humble gatherings of hunters in caves, today it has been elevated to an obsession, loathed and adored, craved and crammed in equal measure. Some people eat to live, others live to eat. In an age where we consume up to 285 pieces of content just via social media on a daily basis, information needs to be easily accessible, quick to the point and captivating. This is the age of the infographic, where statistics, facts and knowledge are made easily available and understandable. Taste will explore the complex, colourful and at times controversial world of food, through a collection of thought-provoking, stimulating and beautifully-crafted infographics. Accessible and authoritative, it will cover everything you need to know about food – from its origins to its consumption, weird and wonderful traditions, mealtimes and trends – as well as startling, challenging and unusual facts. Our content will have authority and wit, chart history and predict trends, and will be complemented by beautiful naturally styled imagery and fact-packed illustrations. From Christmas lunch to curry, pizza to Pavlova, and bagels to burgers, Taste will inform and inspire. Our readers will be information hungry but time poor. They want to eat good food, they want to know good food, but they want it quickly and they want it now. They want to feel travelled without leaving home. It took love, care and attention to create but will ultimately be consumed in a matter of minutes by an eager foodie. Food is the one global language that always translates.

This ultimate foodie guide to the Florida city “features more than 70 restaurants, and the recipes reflect the diverse, multicultural culinary landscape” (Mitch & Mel Take Miami). A Taste of Coral Gables is brimming with all the great food and good vibes that make this sunny city in South Florida such a magnet for food lovers of all stripes. Filled with recipes, restaurant descriptions, menu highlights, chef profiles, wine pairings, and more, this one-stop resource on the Coral Gables food scene doubles as a restaurant guide and recipe resource to the best places the city has to offer. There are approximately seventy-five restaurants covered in the book, each with a two-page spread that contains color photographs, informative text on the origins and highlights of the restaurant, what makes it unique, and who the people are behind the restaurant’s unique atmosphere and cuisine. Each also features a recipe for one of the restaurant’s signature dishes for easy preparation at home. From such venerable dining establishments as the Palm d’Or at the Biltmore (haute cuisine in Old-World charm with New World sensibilities) to fun and funky specialty joints such as Ms. Cheezious (grilled cheese in every manner imaginable), to ethnic standouts such as Talavera (down-home Mexican), all bases are covered in this comprehensive culinary treasure trove paying homage to the “City Beautiful.”

A sixth-grade Goth girl who thinks she’s a vampire encounters her greatest nemesis when she enrolls at Sunny Hill Middle School in this hilarious and entirely original take on the vampire genre for middle graders. Svetlana Grimm has recently discovered she’s a vampire. The clues are all there: she can eat only red foods, has to sleep under the bed because of her heightened sensitivity to light and noise, and can read others’ thoughts. But this new discovery is making her transition from home-schooling to attending sixth grade at Sunny Hill Middle School that much more difficult. After all, what can she possibly have in common with those jellybean-eaters in her class? She prefers to watch them from afar in her hidden lair atop the Oak of Doom in her backyard. But things get more interesting when Svetlana’s cruel yet beautiful science teacher, Ms. Larch, reads her thoughts. Svetlana is excited to have found another of her kind—until her new neighbor, The Bone Lady, fills her in on Ms. Larch's true identity and her own. What happens when your sixth-grade science teacher might also be your immortal enemy?

Now an Indie Next pick! A Most Anticipated Pick for BookRiot | FanFi Addict | The Nerd Daily | io9 | We Are Bookish | Buzzfeed Book of the Year for Kirkus Reviews, Book of the Year for Gizmodo “A delicious tangle of romance, fealty, and dangerous politics.”—Tasha Suri The Goblin Emperor meets "Magnificent Century" in Alexandra Rowland's A Taste of Gold and Iron, where a queer central romance unfolds in a fantasy world reminiscent of the Ottoman Empire. Kadou, the shy prince of Arasht, finds himself at odds with one of the most powerful ambassadors at court—the body-father of the queen's new child—in an altercation which results in his humiliation. To prove his loyalty to the queen, his sister, Kadou takes responsibility for the investigation of a break-in at one of their guilds, with the help of his newly appointed bodyguard, the coldly handsome Evemer, who seems to tolerate him at best. In Arasht, where princes can touch-taste precious metals with their fingers and myth runs side by side with history, counterfeiting is heresy, and the conspiracy they discover could cripple the kingdom’s financial standing and bring about its ruin. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"He looks like he could plow my north field without a horse." Sonja Watts needs to re-enter the workforce after divorcing her husband of thirteen years. Taking the advice of her sister Birdie and her best friend Estelle, she signs up for a six-week course for entrepreneurs; hoping that she will learn everything she needs to know to build a business to support herself and her kids. On the first night of class, Sonja is able to ignore the fact that most of the students are younger than her by ten years or more. It's what she expected. But when the instructor walks in, she debates packing up her new twelve-hundred dollar laptop and walking out. Sonja can't remember the last time she looked at a man with little more interest than she would give a sturdy dining room table. She isn't frigid... just disinterested. But wow, did Atlas James grab her interest. Atlas hasn't been interested in dating since he moved back home from California. Adjusting to newfound success in the town where everyone sees him as that big, geeky guy who cut grass for pocket change when they were in high school has been awkward. Aside from a couple of one night stands, he hasn't really wanted to pursue a relationship with anyone until sweet, shy Sonja signs up for his class. Compact, curvy, and juicy in all the right places, being in the same room Sonja Watts ignites all of those giddy feelings he felt when he had his first crush. He wants to know her and he's pretty sure she wants to know him -- even though she seems fixated on the fact that he's younger than her. With her future riding on the success of her new business, Sonja has no time for distraction. Will she be able to keep her eyes on her own paper or will they remain glued to Atlas's biceps and thick thighs?

Think of this book as your herb-seasoning master class, filled with simple secrets for capturing the power of flavor from your herb garden. Herbs are easy to grow anywhere, indoors or out, but do you know which ones do what in your foods and beverages...or how flavors play off of each other? This book shows you how to become an herbal tastemaster, whether you're a home cook or a gourmet foodie. It all starts in the garden with fresh-picked herbs. Let dedicated herb lover Sue Goetz guide you into the delicious world of 20 essential, flavor-rich herbs and the pleasures they offer. With over 100 kitchen-tested herb recipes and full-color photographs throughout, you'll discover how to: grow and harvest the best flavor cultivars for culinary use preserve and package complement herbal flavors with spices, edible flowers, garlic, citrus, and other botanicals prepare easy recipes for mixes, salts, rubs, pestos, oils, vinegars, butters, sugars, dressings, teas, herb-infused beverages...and much more!