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Skateboarding isn't just a recreational activity, but a professional sport, lifestyle, art form, and cultural phenomenon. The striking book FOUR WHEELS AND A BOARD captures its spirited history, iconic skateboarders, diverse community, and the palpable passion of the people who love it. It includes contributions from the most influential names in the game, including Rodney Mullen, Tony Hawk, Mimi Knoop, and more.   The gorgeously designed book presents objects, artifacts, and photographs from the Smithsonian's collections that exemplify the vitality and innovation of skate culture. Book chapters are organized chronologically by decade from the '60s to present day, starting with 20th-century surfboards, moving through technological changes, the disappearance of skate parks, the rise of social media and collaborations, and ending with never-before-seen objects from the 2020 Summer Olympics, where skateboarding made its historic Olympic debut.    Largely invented by youth, skateboarding has attracted punks, misfits, and dreamers looking for somewhere to belong. The book features skateboards and skaters who open dialogues about race, the gender binary, queerness, the displacement of Native people, and so much more, shining a light on people and places not often represented in traditional skateboard history. FOUR WHEELS AND A BOARD is a fresh look at a transformative culture, and one hell of a ride.

The story of an ornithologist’s journey to trace the spring migration of songbirds from the southern border of the United States through the heartland and into Canada. In late March 2015, ornithologist Bruce M. Beehler set off on a solo four-month trek to track songbird migration and the northward progress of spring through America. Traveling via car, canoe, and bike and on foot, Beehler followed woodland warblers and other Neotropical songbird species from the southern border of Texas, where the birds first arrive after their winter sojourns in South America and the Caribbean, northward through the Mississippi drainage to its headwaters in Minnesota and onward to their nesting grounds in the north woods of Ontario. In North on the Wing, Beehler describes both the epic migration of songbirds across the country and the gradual dawning of springtime through the U.S. heartland—the blossoming of wildflowers, the chorusing of frogs, the leafing out of forest canopies—and also tells the stories of the people and institutions dedicated to studying and conserving the critical habitats and processes of spring songbird migration. Inspired in part by Edwin Way Teale’s landmark 1951 book North with the Spring, this book—part travelogue, part field journal, and part environmental and cultural history—is a fascinating first-hand account of a once-in-a-lifetime journey. It engages readers in the wonders of spring migration and serves as a call for the need to conserve, restore, and expand bird habitats to preserve them for future generations of both birds and humans.

AFROFUTURISM explores the evolving and exhilarating concept of Afrofuturism, a lens used to imagine a more empowering future for the Black community through music, art, and speculative fiction. Sumptuous, beautifully designed spreads feature 100 gorgeous illustrations of objects and images that reflect Black identity, agency, creativity, and hope, including: T'Challa's suit from Black Panther, Octavia Butler's typewriter, Uhura's outfit from Star Trek, Sun Ra's space harp, costumes from Broadway's The Wiz, handwritten lyrics by Jimi Hendrix, and Janelle Monae's ArchAndroid dress. Chapters include essays from a diverse group of scholars who reflect on themes such as legacy, alienation, and activism, with profiles on influential people and objects:   Foreword & Introduction: Provides background on Afrofuturism  Chapter 1 - Space is the Place: Reflects on space and its defining connection to Afrofuturism and its African cultural legacy  Chapter 2 - Re-Animation and Re-Invention: Explores short stories, Black speculative fiction and sci-fi, comics, and Black superheroes as bastions of Afrofuturist expression Chapter 3 - Visualizing Afrofuturism: Analyzes the vast visual culture of Afrofuturism Chapter 4 - Sonic Architects: Explores Afrofuturism and music Chapter 5 - Infinite Possibilities: Investigates Afrofuturism in the present and future, and how it connects with the activist goals of Black youth culture AFROFUTURISM offers a framework of radical potential to envision Black liberation and alternatives to oppressive structures like white supremacy. Afrofuturism comes at a time of increasing visibility for the concept, both in scholarship and in pop culture, and is a compelling ode to the revolutionary power of Black imagination.

How Humans Adapt collects the papers, commentaries, and discussions from the 1981 Smithsonian international symposium on human physical and cultural adaptations. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, How Humans Adapt sets out a complex picture of past human adaptations and speculates on how future adaptations may ensure the continued survival of the human race.

Celebrates the groundbreaking work of six contemporary craft artists from Indigenous Nations across the USThis volume features the work of six Indigenous artists whose craft speaks to the responsibility of honoring cultural traditions while shaping the future. Joe Feddersen (Arrow Lakes/Okanagan) is a printmaker, glass artist, and basket maker who creates geometric patterns sourced from everyday life. Multimedia artist Erica Lord (Athabascan/Iñupiat) crafts beaded burden straps and sled dog blankets with abstracted representations of diseases that disproportionately affect Native and other marginalized communities. Geo Neptune (Passamaquoddy) is a master basket maker, activist, and educator who uses colorful narrative to emphasize the honor and burden of keeping tradition alive. Sisters Lily Hope and Ursala Hudson (Tlingit) weave labor-intensive textiles that convey Tlingit values of reciprocity and balance, maintaining cultural integrity while experimenting with new forms and materials. Textile artist Maggie Thompson (Fond du Luc Ojibwe) creates large-scale works that explore the intersections of grief and trauma with honor, beauty, and healing.Exhibition dates: Renwick Gallery, May 26, 2023 — March 31, 2024

Measuring and Monitoring Biological Diversity is the first book to provide comprehensive coverage of standard methods for biodiversity sampling of amphibians, with information on analysing and using data that will interest biologists in general. In this manual, nearly fifty herpetologists recommend ten standard sampling procedures for measuring and monitoring amphibian and many other populations. The contributors discuss each procedure, along with the circumstances for its appropriate use. In addition, they provide a detailed protocol for each procedure's implementation, a list of necessary equipment and personnel and suggestions for analysing the data. The data obtained using these standard methods are comparable across sites and through time and as a result, are extremely useful for making decisions about habitat protection, sustained use and restoration--decisions that are particularly relevant for threatened amphibian populations.

A pilot for the China-based airline reputed to be the most shot at in the world, Felix Smith recounts in vivid detail his experiences ferrying troops and equipment for the Nationalists during China's civil war; providing medicine and supplies to war-torn regions; and flying under CIA contract during the French war in Indochina, the Korean War, America's secret war in Laos, and the Vietnam War. China Pilot provides a rare view of the Cold War in Asia, documenting not only the hair-raising adventures of Civil Air Transport's pilots but also those of the men and women behind the scenes.

History from Things explores the many ways objects, defined broadly to range from Chippendale tables and Italian Renaissance pottery, to seventeenth-century parks and a New England cemetery, can reconstruct and help reinterpret the past. Eighteen essays describe how to "read" artefacts, how to "listen to" landscapes and locations and how to apply methods and theories to historical inquiry, that have previously belonged solely to archaeologists, anthropologists, art historians and conservation scientists. Spanning vast time periods, geographical locations and academic disciplines, History from Things leaps the boundaries between fields that use material evidence to understand the past. The book expands and redirects the study of material culture, an emerging field now building a common base of theory and a shared intellectual agenda.

In this engaging introduction to the red fox (Vulpes vulpes), J. David Henry recounts his years of field research on this flame-coloured predator. With its catlike whiskers, teeth and paws, as well as vertical-slit pupils, the North American red fox not only resembles but often behaves like a feline, especially when hunting. Probing the reasons for these similarities, Henry reveals the behaviour and ecology of a species that thrives from the edge of suburbia to the cold northern tundra.

Measuring and Monitoring Biological Diversity: Standard Methods for Mammals provides a comprehensive manual for designing and implementing inventories of mammalian biodiversity anywhere in the world and for any group, from rodents to open-country grazers. The book emphasizes formal estimation approaches, which supply data that can be compared across habitats and over time. Beginning with brief natural histories of the twenty-six orders of living mammals, the book details the field techniques, observation, capture and sign interpretation, appropriate to different species. The contributors provide guidelines for study design, discuss survey planning, describe statistical techniques and outline methods of translating field data into electronic formats. Extensive appendixes address such issues as the ethical treatment of animals in research, human health concerns, preserving voucher specimens and assessing age, sex and reproductive condition in mammals. Useful in both developed and developing countries, this volume and the Biological Diversity Handbook Series as a whole establish essential standards for a key aspect of conservation biology and resource management.

In his sensitive portrayal of the Raramuri (or Tarahumara) Indians, Merrill examines the ways in which a society, lacking formal educational institutions, produces and transmits its basic knowledge about the world.

When first published in 1971, Amazonia was a pioneering contribution to the emerging field of cultural ecology. Betty Meggers argued that the Amazon's luxurious vegetation concealed significant limitations for human exploitation, placing a ceiling on pre-Columbian population density and social complexity. This controversial view has implications for academic anthropology and also relates to the modern development of Amazonia, including attempts to introduce sustainable methods of intensive exploitation. Amazonia in this revised new edition includes recent biological and climatic data. Ethnographic and archaeological evidence reemphasize the complexity of the ecosystem and broaden our understanding of past and present sophisticated adaptations among indigenous groups.