Waiting for Aphrodite: Journeys Into the Time Before Bones

Front Cover
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, May 3, 2000 - Biography & Autobiography - 256 pages

"We humans are a minority of giants, stumbling around in the world of little things," Sue Hubbell writes in this marvelous book. Each of these little things "has a complicated and special way of getting on in the world, different from ours and different from one another's." In Waiting for Aphrodite she explores the ways of sponges and sea urchins, horseshoe crabs and the sea mouse known as Aphrodite -- as well as our ways. She takes us on a journey through the mysteries of time -- geological, biological, and personal -- as she writes of the evolution of life on this planet and the evolution of her own life: her childhood next to a Michigan graveyard; the three colleges where she "learned three things"; her twenty-five years keeping bees on a farm in the Ozarks; her move to a "strange little house" in a small Maine town, "the place I wanted to grow old in." And in the tide pools and ocean waters there she discovered a whole new world, the world of little things that inspired this book.

 

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
1
Section 2
20
Section 3
38
Section 4
50
Section 5
85
Section 6
88
Section 7
101
Section 8
123
Section 9
140
Section 10
152
Section 11
179
Section 12
194
Section 13
229
Copyright

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Waiting for Aphrodite: Journeys Into the Time Before Bones
Sue Hubbell
Snippet view - 1999

Common terms and phrases

adult algae animals Aphrodite asked barnacles beekeepers behavior biologists biology Bioluminescence Blue Creek Bob Vadas body burrowing called camel crickets Carrie Bow Cay cells chemical coast color creatures cyanobacteria cylindraceus Darwin earthworms ecosystem eggs Everett evolution exotics extinct farm feed females fireflies firefly larvae fish forest fossil genus grow hives honey honeybees horseshoe crabs human insects invertebrates isopods kind Klaus Kristian land lantern larvae legs lifesize light living look Maine marine million years ago millipedes Missouri mites moths museum mussels native bees Natural History nest North nudibranch ocean parasites phylum physsalus pill bugs plants pollination polychaetes population predators rock scientists sea cucumber sea mice sea mouse sea urchins seen segments Smithsonian snails soil species sperm spiders sponges taxonomist things tide told trees trilobites walk winkles worms zoologist

References to this book

About the author (2000)

Sue Hubbell was the author of eight books, including A Country Year and New York Times Notable Book A Book of Bees. She wrote for the New Yorker, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Smithsonian, and Time, and was a frequent contributor to the Hers" column of the New York Times."

Bibliographic information

TitleWaiting for Aphrodite: Journeys Into the Time Before Bones
AuthorSue Hubbell
Editionillustrated
PublisherHoughton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000
ISBN061805684X, 9780618056842
Length256 pages
Subjects ›  ›  › 

Biography & Autobiography / Memoirs
Nature / Animals / Marine Life
Nature / Environmental Conservation & Protection
Nature / Essays
Nature / Reference
Science / Life Sciences / Biology
Science / Life Sciences / Zoology / Invertebrates
Science / Natural History
  
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