In 1871 Marianne North escaped the swaddling of Victorian society and departed on her first expedition to make a pictorial record of the tropical and exotic plants of the world. This abridged version of her lively travel memoirs and autobiography is illustrated in colour with a selection from her collection of over 800 pictures now housed in the Marianne North gallery at Kew.

This is a lavishly illustrated, comprehensive view of the Ozarks Mountains and their valleys, rivers and creeks, forests and glades, geologic formations, and pioneer lifeways.

This illuminating study of the evolution of Chinese capitalism chronicles the fortunes of the Song family of North China under five successive authoritarian governments. Headed initially by Song Chuandian, who became rich by exporting hairnets to Europe and America in the early twentieth century, the family built a thriving business against long odds of rural poverty and political chaos. A savvy political operator, Song Chuandian prospered and kept local warlords at bay, but his career ended badly when he fell afoul of the new Nationalist government. His son Song Feiqing—inspired by the reformist currents of the May Fourth Movement—developed a utopian capitalist vision that industry would redeem China from foreign imperialism and cultural backwardness. He founded the Dongya Corporation in 1932 to manufacture wool knitting yarn and for two decades steered the company through a constantly changing political landscape—the Nationalists, then Japanese occupiers, then the Nationalists again, and finally Chinese Communists. Increasingly hostile governments, combined with inflation, foreign competition, and a restless labor force, thwarted his ambition to create an “Industrial Eden.” Brett Sheehan shows how the Song family engaged in eclectic business practices that bore the imprint of both foreign and traditional Chinese influences. Businesspeople came to expect much from increasingly intrusive states, but the position of private capitalists remained tenuous no matter which government was in control. Although private business in China was closely linked to the state, it was neither a handmaiden to authoritarianism nor a natural ally of democracy.

What distinguishes a great garden from one that is merely beautiful? In her triumphant follow-up to the award-winning Earth on Her Hands, Starr Ockenga illustrates how a diverse group of visionary American plantsmen and women have taken risks, pushed boundaries, and stretched traditions to create distinctive, idiosyncratic gardens. Boldly conceived and boldly executed, these 21 gardens are highly personal interpretations of paradise. Each of the gardens bears the indelible stamp of the individual. Paul Held's Connecticut garden reflects his passion for the Japanese Sakurasoh, a variety of primula he propagates from seed. Marlyn Sachtjen's Wisconsin property is a sanctuary for the magnificent trees she has termed "majesties." In his Illinois garden, Justin Harper collects and propagates rare conifers, and in a New York penthouse Mark Bramble's obsession is orchids. Artists such as Sarah Draney in upstate New York and Marcia Donahue in northern California have conceived landscapes that serve as the ideal settings for their own works, while Richard Reames forms living trees into unique arborsculpture in Oregon. William Woys Weaver and husband-wife team Karen Strohbeen and Bill Luchsinger use their Pennsylvania and Iowa gardens as laboratories for ongoing experimentation in heirloom vegetable cultivation and ambitious perennial gardening. From the making of welcoming garden rooms densely planted with exotic flowers and foliage to sprawling landscapes featuring drifts of native plants in their natural habitats, these gardens represent a personal vision of Eden for each of their creators. Intimate portraits of the gardeners themselves and invaluable lists of the plants and techniquesthese innovators have devised over years and decades of gardening make this a useful and memorable addition to any gardener's library.

Since the turn of the century, the opportunity to design a city nestled in a subtropical garden has attracted the nation's preeminent planners to St. Petersburg. The most ambitious plan was developed in 1923 by John Nolen, who believed that an interconnected system of preserves and parks would enhance the city's development and attract tourists for generations. His initiative failed miserably at the polls, however, because it threatened the conflicting notion of paradise held by hundreds of investors, who were profiting from the greatest real estate boom in the nation's history and feared that planning would curtail speculation. As Stephenson points out, a half century would pass until a series of ecological disasters in the 1970s finally compelled city officials to adopt an environmentally sound development plan that reflected Nolen's original vision.

This book chronicles humanity's cultural and psychospiritual evolutionary journey over some six million years from its primal past into its dazzling cosmic future.