The Karoo: Ecological Patterns and Processes

Book Description

The Succulent and Nama Karoo form part of the arid southwestern zone of Africa, a vast region of rugged landscapes and low treeless vegetation. Studies of this unique biome have yielded fascinating insights into the ecology of its flora and fauna. This book is the first to synthesize these studies, presenting information on biogeographic patterns and life processes, form and function of animals and plants, foraging ecology, landscape-level dynamics, and anthropogenic influences. The contributions offer novel analyses of the factors distinguishing the Karoo from other temperate deserts and challenge generalizations about semi-arid ecosystems.

Download Description

The Succulent and Nama Karoo form part of the arid southwestern zone of Africa, a vast region of rugged landscapes and low treeless vegetation. Studies of this unique biome have yielded fascinating insights into the ecology of its flora and fauna. This book is the first to synthesize these studies, presenting information on biogeographic patterns and life processes, form and function of animals and plants, foraging ecology, landscape-level dynamics and anthropogenic influences. Novel analyses of the factors distinguishing the biota of the Karoo from that of other temperate deserts are given and generalisations about semi-arid ecosystems challenged. The ideas expounded, the ecological principles reviewed, and the results presented are relevant to all those working in the extensive arid and semi-arid regions of the world.

Gorgon: The Monsters That Ruled the Planet Before Dinosaurs and How They Died in the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History

Average customer rating:

Well written but just an autobiography
Too Much Personal Trivia--Not Enough Paleontology
GORGON, the process.
Amazing detective story
Scientific Advancement involves People

Gorgon: The Monsters That Ruled the Planet Before Dinosaurs and How They Died in the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History
Peter Ward
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Earth Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

History of Science | History & Philosophy | Science | Subjects | Books

Rivers in Time
When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time
Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, And Earth's Ancient Atmosphere
Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago
Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth (Princeton Science Library)

ASIN: 0143034715
Release Date: 2005-02-22

Book Description

Millions of years before the Age of Dinosaurs, an environmental cataclysm annihilated 90 percent of all plant and animal life on the planet. In this lost world that was swept away 250 million years ago, the ferocious lizard-like Gorgon was the T. rex of its day. In this remarkable journey of discovery deep into Earth's history, Peter D. Ward, one of the world's most recognized authorities on mass extinctions, examines the strange and mysterious fate of this little-known prehistoric animal and its contemporaries—the ancestors of the turtle, the crocodile, the lizard, and eventually the dinosaur. Based on more than a decade's research in South Africa's Karoo Desert, Ward's groundbreaking work offers provocative theories on the mass extinctions of the past and confronts the startling implications they hold for humanity's future on the planet.

Customer Reviews:

Well written but just an autobiography.......2007-04-05

Ward loses a momentous scientific theory under a book about his personal trivia and self-involvement. Managed to get in quite a few snarky comments about people he's supposed to be best friends with, too.

I didn't learn anything and the Gorgon in the title was barely in the story.

Too Much Personal Trivia--Not Enough Paleontology.......2007-03-17

When the Permian began nearly 300 million years ago, the earth was ripe for animal growth. The oxygen content was high and the age of reptiles was just beginning to compete with their amphibian forebears. There was a massive increase in life of all kinds. The promise for a continuity of life seemed unlimited. Then in seemingly a geological wink of the eye, the earth became virtually inhospitable for all species. For those like myself who wish to know the what and the why of the Permian Extinction, Peter Ward's GORGON held a similar bright promise of shedding light on a mystery that far predated the even quicker exit of the dinosaurs. Ward's book, sorry to say, does not live up to its hype.

Most of GORGON relates his various journeys to the Karoo in South Africa over a decade long search to learn the answer to the question that perplexed us both: why did the earth become very nearly as inhospitable to life as the moon? Ward details the trying times that he, his wife, and his crewmates faced when they battled the elements, the natives, and a far from co-operative Afrikaans regime that was then being rent apart by civil rights issues that resulted in its collapse. We read of the bugs, the heat, the many sleepness nights, the frigid cold, and his inability to ascertain the true cause of the Extinction. All of this may have been fascinating to those readers who enjoy the human side of a story that leads to scientific advancement. But in this case, there was far too much of the former and hardly any of the latter. It was not until the very last chapter that Ward gets to the nitty-gritty of his book. He writes of a supercontinent that was plagued by the one-two punch of dropping levels of oxygen and the poisonous effluvia of volcanic ash from the Siberian traps. Since the fossil record suggests the extreme speed with which these confluent events overlapped, there was no time, historically speaking, for the world's species to adjust. Thus they died out. And the Gorgon of the title, a magnificent beast brought alive by the computer animations of the Discovery Channel, Ward relegates to the most superficial of symbols, a bystander who much like many of the readers of this book could hardly have understood what forces of nature were buffeting them. For a more balanced and informative view of the same topic, I suggest WHEN LIFE NEARLY DIED by Michael Benton. In this book, the Gorgon takes its rightful place at the top of the food chain.

GORGON, the process........2007-02-19

Nothing that I have read immerses you more vividly in the gritty process of sample collection and processing, and the need to go out again to redo what you completely finished at least twice before. The author does not have to say a word about the prospect of someone pursuing quick fame wanting to rework your hard-fought samples from academic offices. Finding GORGON itself was led to by a related venture running into on the spot obstacles. Later GORGON is found to be not quite GORGON. Peter Ward includes a brief statement of his newest theory that some body types evolved in low-oxygen in which the problem of respiration dominates.

Amazing detective story.......2006-11-24

This wonderful book reads like a detective "who-dunnit" story, including some unsuspected plot twists and a surprising conclusion. The "crime" is the mass extinction at the end of the Permian age, and the detective is a geologist searching a hostile African desert for clues.

This book weaves science with emotion, describing both the research as well as the lives and adventures of scientists dedicated to solving the mystery of what happened to a world that existed before the dinosaurs, some 250 million years ago.

A bit more could have been included on the animals of the late Permian, and some sketches of what they looked like when alive would have been helpful. Nevertheless, one of the best books on palaeontology and science I have ever read.

Scientific Advancement involves People.......2006-06-26

Previous reviewers seem disappointed with the fusion of people, politics, and NSF grants with "the science". But, I found this to be an important part of the appeal of the book. As a former engineer on groundbreaking developments in signal processing in the satellite industry, I realize that exciting discoveries usually involve incremental progress, a lot of toil, a few "ah-ha" moments, paperwork, and false starts. By painting the discoveries, as they unfolded, you get a real feeling about how the science really advanced. I, for one, very much enjoyed reading about how the experiments had to be conducted and independently verified by multiple parties or at different locations. I commiserated with the tensions between great thinkers, and really admired the dedication and professionalism of the particpants. As for South Africa -- the discussion of the changing politics there only served to emphasize the risks these folks took going out to the field (or leaving their families behind in S. African urban centers). Bravo to Peter Ward for giving us the nitty gritty.

Average customer rating:

enduring
Writerly stuff
Damn good writing style
Buy it, Steal it, Read it!
Well worth the read

Karoo: A Novel
Steve Tesich , and E. L. Doctorow
Manufacturer: Grove Press, Open City Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Summer Crossing

ASIN: 1890447374

Amazon.com

There are far more tragicomic possibilities in the lives of gracelessly aging men than one might suspect, and the list of writers who have taken advantage of them is small but fertile--Mordecai Richler, John Updike, Philip Roth, and Saul Bellow among them. The late Steve Tesich, best known for his original screenplay for Breaking Away, joins this august group with the tale of Saul Karoo, a wealthy, alcoholic Hollywood script doctor plagued by exactly the kind of banal problems that he has ruthlessly edited out of the scripts of others--most notably a fear of intimacy. He meets regularly with his estranged wife Dianah to discuss the academic question of their ever-impending divorce and celebrate the anniversary of their separation. "Tender, deeply felt, full of love, that's the kind of divorce we had in mind... The more we talked about divorce, the more married we seemed." His adopted teenage son, Billy, keeps pushing for more dedicated father-son contact, to Karoo's great discomfort: "I loved Billy, but I was absolutely incapable of loving him in private where it was just the two of us. That was another disease I had... Evasion of privacy. Evasion at all cost of privacy of any kind. With anyone."

A doctor tells Karoo that he's shrinking vertically and swelling horizontally, as if to push the world even further away. But when he signs on to re-cut the last film of dying directorial great Arthur Houseman, he discovers Leila, Billy's natural mother, playing a bit part in the film, and from that moment he's transformed. In a bizarre twist, the unbelievable melodrama that follows from his attempt to engineer happiness from this coincidence is the stuff of a blockbuster script--offered to him, naturally, for the writing. Karoo is bitter and cynical to the core, but the somewhat heavy-handed ending embraces the possibility of redemption even as it delivers the final insult to its unhappy hero.

Book Description

Saul Karoo thinks. But understanding eludes. He lusts. And sometimes with success. He drinks. But he cannot get drunk. Karoo is a professional fixer of other people's scripts and, by his own acknowledgment, he ruins them all. Originally published in 1998, shortly after the author's untimely death, this splendid new paperback edition, with an introduction by E. L. Doctorow, brings to the spotlight a book of shining causticity, humor, insight, and originality. Ruin and repair follow shambolic Saul Karoo as his life breaks down. But he is not without resources, namely his wit, his ex-wife, and his irrepressible soul, which in its own way is reminiscent of another bighearted broken man of literature: Saul Bellow's Herzog. Finally, he is a man prone to luck both bad and good, and when a young woman with a strange connection to his own past shows up, the plot of his life comes into sharp focus. Steve Tesich has grounded his story in the highly recognizable world of New York in the late-eighties, a milieu of unscrupulous producers from the West Coast, dry cleaning, divorce, and fantasies of escape. Karoo is a haunting, highly human, deliciously real novel of decline and fall and rejuvenation.

Customer Reviews:

enduring.......2007-06-28

Doubtful that this book will ever get the following it deserves. Could have used a bit of editing and I was slightly disappointed in the ending, but overall this is a book to add to your collection. Although I just finished my first reading of this, I can certainly see myself coming back to it in the future. A unique and satisfying novel.

Writerly stuff.......2007-05-24

How many more works of fiction do you want to read where the main character is a writer?
Karoo is a (re)writer of screen plays, not coming to terms with mid-life perhaps, but aware he can write.
Tesich knows he can write. He flaunts his virtuosity.
But he hasn't written a novel. It's just a narrative in the first person, mildly amusing and not really memorable.

Damn good writing style.......2003-03-06

I read about 7 chapters in this book when i had to return it to the library i had borrowed it from. When I went back after a week, some reader had lost the book and the library has never gotten it back since. Its been 3 months. So, now i'm ordering it because I have to finish this book... it is so god damn interesting. Great writing style. Great character development. I have to know how it ends.

Buy it, Steal it, Read it!.......2001-06-17

Quite simply, one of the best books I have read. Tesichs' insights, observations, and descriptions of situations are so disturbingly real, you find yourself alternately hating/loving Saul Karoo, the subject of the novel. Karoo is described as something of an anti-hero, however 'Everyman' would be more apt as I defy anyone who reads this book not to identify with him in any number of situations - some humorous, others poignant, but all of them true to life. Follow the trail of (ex?)alcoholic Karoo from parties to restaurants to meetings and try and NOT see yourself in at least one of these cleverly written pages - some 'laugh out loud', others a bit close to the bone, but always an eye-opener in his slightly surreal world. A real page turner. One of those books that you hate to finish.

Well worth the read.......2001-04-25

It took me more than one shot to get through this book, but I was glad I did. I think that the hopelessness of the main character made it difficult to get into at first--it was hard to like him, and a little difficult to care what happened to him. But once I got into the story, I truly enjoyed it. Tesich does an amazing job of filling a book with characters that aren't really all that likeable--he puts you inside their heads and shows you their motivations. They are all full of crap, but they convince themselves that their motives are pure--this can be laughable and completely disheartening at the same time. The story gained momentum, and (knowing that it couldn't possibly end well) I was torn between digging my heels in and letting myself get swept up. The ending left me feeling like I was trying to swallow cotton balls. It was a redemption story without the redemption, a portrait of a possibly souless man...I highly recommend this book, but not to anyone who's looking for a warm-fuzzy feeling about humankind.

Average customer rating:

Karoo Veld Ecology and Management
Karen J. Esler , Sue Milton , and W.R.J. Dean
Manufacturer: Not Avail
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Average customer rating:

dope
wonderful language...
Fantastic
"The air floats unanchored in space."
Even Angels...

Karoo Boy
Troy Blacklaws
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Twins | Issues | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical Fiction | History & Historical Fiction | Teens | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Skinner's Drift: A Novel
The Inheritance of Loss
The History of Love: A Novel
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
Suite Francaise

ASIN: 0156030659

Book Description

After a freak accident, Douglas's twin brother is dead, and his family's fragmentation begins. His mother packs up their home in Cape Town and takes him to a tiny backwater town in the semi-desert Karoo region, where she withdraws into her painting. Douglas, a city kid in an insular community, makes only two friends: a beautiful girl named Marika, with her adventurous spirit and tyrannical father; and an old garage worker named Moses, with his junkyard Volvo and dreams of driving away to Cape Town.

Against the backdrop of the bitter conflict of 1970s South Africa, Douglas develops a clearer insight into himself and his place in the world, a world where dreams and reality meet in a surprising twist. Blazing with color and light, Karoo Boy offers a sensuous and lyrical evocation of South Africa that leaves a lasting impression and ultimately ends on a note of hope.

Customer Reviews:

dope.......2006-05-08

Once you start reading, you cannot put this book down. This book is truly a way for people to visit Africa spiritually and experience another culture. Blacklaws' rich and detailed imagery takes readers on a journey of their own; this is probably why Chris Martin the singer of Coldplay said the book was so colourful. To truly enjoy the adventure u must read it with an open mind.

wonderful language..........2006-01-09

the african setting is poignant, evocative, romantic -- but the author's vocabulary and use of language raises this book to high levels of literary enjoyment...sort of like dylan thomas in its lyricism and poetic achievements...

Fantastic.......2006-01-02

This beautifully-written book is full of rich characters and convincing settings, but what makes this book special is the story. The protagonist of this coming-of-age tale (set in the South Africa of 1976) must wrestle with deep and painful problems under adverse circumstances. The ending is a stunner. I reread it within weeks of first reading it. Best book I've read in a long time.

"The air floats unanchored in space.".......2005-09-05

"My mother's cry is a sky full of gaping-beaked seagulls." On the Cape in South Africa in 1976, Dee's twin brother is killed in an accident, struck in the head by a ball while playing cricket; the twin loses the other half of himself, his anchor. His mother can't forgive her husband, who threw the ball, determined to make him suffer for the tragedy. The small family unravels after Marsden's death, the parents drifting away from each other in their grief. In Cape Town, "an un-African Africa, death catches the unsuspecting off guard, dealing the cruelest blow." Dee soon realizes that every time his father looks at him, he sees the boy he killed, a constant reminder of his identical twin.

When Dee's mother leaves the Cape for the more rural Klipdrop, south of the Free Orange State border, the white boy finds himself in unfamiliar territory, a Karoo boy. The Freedom Movement has already begun and is growing in momentum, crowds chanting, the authorities responding with violence, bulldozing the Crossroads shanty town. Apartheid has not yet been defeated. Curious about the township, the black shanty town not far removed from the white enclave, the bright-haired Dee wishes to make friends with the Xhosa boys. Dee's new friend, Marika, defies her father to visit the township with the boy. This precipitates a series of unfortunate events, all of which could have been avoided had the adolescents realized the inherent danger they brought along on their excursion.

Caught between his affection for an old garage man, a black appropriately named Moses, and his friendship with Marika, a white girl his age, Dee's wants are few, mainly to live without conflict in his new environment. Moses is a precious commodity, his willingness to make friends with the white boy putting him in constant danger of reprisal, while Marika is careless, impulsive. But Dee hasn't reckoned with the harsh lessons of apartheid. His young world already broken apart by the loss of his twin, Dee's coming-of-age is painful, a rude awakening for a boy of generous heart in an uneasy land. The author sensitively handles his protagonist, exposing the boy's vulnerabilities as he is transplanted from the relative security of Cape Town to the chaos of his new home, where a carefully constructed world is transformed almost overnight and a fourteen-year old boy passes the boundaries from child to man. Luan Gaines /2005.

Even Angels..........2005-08-18

Karoo Boy is an ambitious novel, in the sense that it tackles the really big themes that even angels (and definitely first-time novelists) approach with cautious tread: living in apartheid South Africa, growing up to consciousness, love and the loss of it, guilt and death. And yet Troy Blacklaws manages to tame these wild things, and bring them to rest in a compact novel, with a handful of well-drawn characters, surrounded by the vast impersonal canvas of the Karoo.

He is sensitive to the minutiae that make up a life, and he describes these in spare prose that paradoxically becomes lyrical in the repetition of the rhymes: "I paddle out through the ice-tea surf. The rising sun glints in the empty windows of the weekend train to Cape Town. I stand on a borrowed board. No flicks or tricks. The wave barrels. For a moment, I glide. Then the wave tumbles me. I fight it instead of going with it. Have I forgotten everything? I even forgot to dogleash the board to my foot. As I surface I hear the crack of the board on the rock. I wade up out of the water, feeling ashamed."

Karoo Boy is not only a welcome addition to the body of fiction now written by thirty-something South Africans, relating their experiences as teenagers during the unholy hey-day of apartheid. It is also a bloody good story, and it is well told.

Average customer rating:

Sorrows and Rejoicings
Athol Fugard
Manufacturer: Theatre Communications Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Valley Song
Exits And Entrances
A Walk in the Night and Other Stories
Fasting, Feasting
The Shadow Lines: A Novel

ASIN: 1559362081

Book Description

"If there is a more urgent and indispensible playwright in world theatre than South Africa's Athol Fugard, I don't know who it could be."-Jack Kroll, Newsweek?

One of the true contemporary masters of the stage, South African playwright Athol Fugard has written one of his most stunning works. Sorrows and Rejoicings explores the legacy of Apartheid on two women-one white, the other black-who on the surface seem to have little in common except for their love of one man, a white poet who is attached to the Karoo land of South Africa. The drama moves between past and present, reliving the poet's despondent years in exile and his eventual return to a new South Africa. With lyrical grace, Fugard once again demonstrates the human struggle to transcend the treacherous injustices of history.

South African playwright, actor and director, Athol Fugard is one of the world's leading theatre artists, of whom The New Yorker has said, "A rare playwright, who could be a primary candidate for either the Nobel Prize on Literature or the Nobel Peace Prize."

Also available by Athol Fugard:

The Road to Mecca?

PB $11.95 0-930452-79-8 â€¢ USA

My Children! My Africa!?

PB $10.95 1-55936-014-3 o USA

Statements

PB $10.95 0-930452-61-5 â€¢ USA

Blood Knot and Other Plays?

PB $ 14.95 1-55936-020-8 â€¢ USA

Valley Song?

PB $10.95 1-55936-119-0 â€¢ USA

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Spirits: Fifteen whalebone carvings
Karoo Ashevak
Manufacturer: American Indian Arts Center
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Average customer rating:

The Garden Route and Little Karoo
Leon Nell
Manufacturer: Struik Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Africa | Travel | Subjects | Books

Travel with Pets | Specialty Travel | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1868728560

Average customer rating:

The Little Karoo
Pauline Smith
Manufacturer: Africasouth Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B0006AW0AM

Bird communities of the False Upper Karoo (Memoirs van die Nasionale Museum)

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Bird communities of the False Upper Karoo (Memoirs van die Nasionale Museum)
Tibor Farkas
Manufacturer: Nationale Museum
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Water Supply & Land Use | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

The Starfollowers of Coramonde
Average customer rating:

Fond memories of this book and series

read this one (after Doomfarers of course)
The Starfollowers of Coramonde
Brian Daley
Manufacturer: Del Rey
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Daley, Brian | ( D ) | Authors, A-Z | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
General | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
General | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
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Firefly - The Complete Series

ASIN: 0345339541
Release Date: 1986-12-12

Customer Reviews:

Fond memories of this book and series.......2007-04-13

I read this and Doomfarers when they first came out during the horrid period in the 80s when fantasy was either new Conan novels or plain junk. Only Glen Cook's Black Company series kept me as entertained as these two books did. I can't recommend these two enough.

read this one (after Doomfarers of course).......2003-05-25

As I said about Doomfarers, this one is really a great read. It wouldn't make much sense without Doomfarers, but it develops the world nicely and provides a really good sense of completion. THe great characters from Doomfarers continue: Gil MacDonald recovers his sanity eventually, Springbuck grows up, and Yardiff Bey gets run through, but only after making a good play for the brass ring. And the supporting cast--van Duyn, the de Courtenays, Angorman, Reacher and Katya, etc. And the pace keeps up, never letting things slide.

Unlike the standard fantasy cliche nowdays, the Coramonde series has but two lean and mean books, not a trilogy or the multi-volume bloat that has become all too common these days. I'd love to have seen more in the world of course but not at the expense of quality. Alas they don't write 'em much like this anymore.

The Doomfarers of Coramonde
Average customer rating:
The Doomfarers of Coramonde

Manufacturer: del ray
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Magic & Wizards | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000EHLKCG

Starfollowers of Coramonde
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Starfollowers of Coramonde
Brian Daley
Manufacturer: Ballantine Pb #27495 1979.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000MZZQRA

The Starfollowers of Coramonde
Average customer rating:
The Starfollowers of Coramonde
Brian Daley
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books/Del Rey
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000O8ISZW

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The Starfollowers Of Coramonde
Brian Daley
Manufacturer: Del Rey
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OVURFS

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