Nature

What separates your mind from an animal's? Maybe you think it's your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future--all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the planet's preeminent species. But in recent decades, these claims have eroded, or even been disproven outright, by a revolution in the study of animal cognition. Take the way octopuses use coconut shells as tools; elephants that classify humans by age, gender, and language; or Ayumu, the young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame. Based on research involving crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, whales, and of course chimpanzees and bonobos, Frans de Waal explores both the scope and the depth of animal intelligence. He offers a firsthand account of how science has stood traditional behaviorism on its head by revealing how smart animals really are, and how we've underestimated their abilities for too long.

People often assume a cognitive ladder, from lower to higher forms, with our own intelligence at the top. But what if it is more like a bush, with cognition taking different forms that are often incomparable to ours? Would you presume yourself dumber than a squirrel because you're less adept at recalling the locations of hundreds of buried acorns? Or would you judge your perception of your surroundings as more sophisticated than that of a echolocating bat? De Waal reviews the rise and fall of the mechanistic view of animals and opens our minds to the idea that animal minds are far more intricate and complex than we have assumed. De Waal's landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal--and human--intelligence.

Make Your Meals the Best Part of Camping

Put away the hot dogs and the sandwich meat. Your next campsite meal will be a culinary delight! Renowned cook, recipe developer, and author Julia Rutland has brought her sensational skills to the great outdoors. The result is a camper-friendly cookbook with more than 100 tasty yet simple recipes for your campsite or cabin. After a bit of prep work at home, you'll create mouthwatering dishes that are sure to please. Full-color photographs reveal every savory option for campers, families, and foodies. Time-saving and make-ahead tips allows for easy campsite cooking and cleanup! Choose your favorites, and prepare to be delighted. You'll wish every meal was cooked at a campfire.

The Happy Camper is back! This time Kevin Callan is equipping campers with all they need to know about how to have fun in the great winter outdoors.

Complete Guide to Winter Camping is the only book on the market that will educate readers on both hot tenting and cold tenting.

Cold tenting -- without a heat source -- has been long considered the only way to winter camp. But Kevin Callan says that "hot tenting," or camping with a small stove in the tent, is a safe and fun way to camp in the winter elements. You're careful -- and you're warm!

Complete Guide to Winter Camping covers nearly every aspect of snow and ice fun and safety. Advice on setting up shelter to choosing a sleep system and warm clothing, gives readers the knowledge to outfit themselves properly to enjoy winter. And with chapters on how to track animals, check ice thickness, operate a snowmobile and catch a fish while ice fishing, the Happy Camper ensures you'll have a good time once you're all bundled up!

Complete with photos and expert advise from other seasoned winter campers and explorers, this book will appeal equally to car-camping families and adventurous individuals looking to extend their outdoors activities into another season.

Whether you need to remedy a leak in your tent, repair flapping boot soles, nurse a cranky stove back to life, unclog a water filter, or revive gunked-up Velcro, you'll find the solution here. And it can all be done with an inexpensive 12-item repair kit that, once assembled, won't weigh more than a pound or two-worth its weight in gorp!

As you'd guess, this pack-it-with-you pocket guide includes many ingenious uses for that most versatile of tools: duct tape! Here's just a few of many tips:

Tip: Make a sturdy zipper pull by threading a thin strip of duct tape through the slider, then wrapping the tails with more duct tape.
Tip: For a more stable stove, cut a square of old closed-cell foam pad sized to fit the base of your backpacking stove. Wrap the foam generously with duct tape for insulation and you have a stable cooking platform that works great in the snow.
Tip: When re-gluing a boot or shoe sole, a few turns of duct tape can keep the toe
area secure while the glue dries.