Displaying the top 100 results that match your query. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/rssapi.jsp?Ne=6642&N=3+5525+6659 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=1007683 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=399806 The Stone of Heaven combines original historical research, a travelogue, and investigative journalism to tell the history of Imperial Green Jade. Imperial Green Jade, also known as jadeite, is one of the rarest stones in the world. Jadeite is worth more, carat for carat, than diamonds or rubies. Not to be confused with common opaque jade, jadeite has an astonishing green hue, more brilliant and translucent than emeralds. For almost a thousand years, jadeite has been worshiped and ingested for its life-extending powers, as well as venerated by concubines and used in lovemaking for its erotic properties. Emperors filled their palaces with jadeite jewelry and fought battles for its possession. One eighteenth-century emperor ransomed his entire kingdom for the stone. Jadeite has lost none of its allure in the modern world, and celebrities from Marlene Dietrich to Danielle Steele have collected it.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=241500 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=131704 Drawing inspiration from the magical realism of Latin American fiction as much as from the documentary natural history tradition of the North American West, ethnobiologist Gary Paul Nabhan and photographer Mark Klett celebrate the many lives of the Sonoran borderlands. Their Sonoran Desert home is the most biologically and culturally diverse of any arid lands on this continent. As we travel with Nathan and Klett, we hear Seri Indian songs of the summer heat, the bleating of mating desert toads, and the chants of an elderly Hispanic curandera. We catch sight of a night-blooming cereus ready to flower; of homes handmade from the mud, mesquite, and cactus bones surrounding them; and miniature mescal gardens planted for the Virgin Mary. We also confront, face to face the forces threatening to weaken the communities of plants, animals, and cultures of the desert: charcoal making, pesticide spraying, groundwater pumping, overpopulation and rampant ethnocentrism and anthropocentrism. If the damaged deserts of North America are ever to be restored to their wildness and cultural richness we will need a different set of stories and images to guide our conservation and preservation efforts. This is the underlying theme of Desert Legends, which links startling and ironic photographs with ecologically informed parables.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=256385 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=200483 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=30101 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=461748 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=28721 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=286038 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=255713 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=113051