In this timely and controversial work, Sue Hubbell contends that the concept of genetic engineering is anything but new, for humans have been tinkering with genetics for centuries. Focusing on four specific examples ? corn, silkworms, domestic cats, and apples ? she traces the histories of species that have been fundamentally altered over the centuries by the whims and needs of people.

'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.

When her thirty-year marriage broke up, Sue Hubbell found herself alone and broke on a small Ozarks farm. Keeping bees, she found solace in the natural world. She began to write, challenging herself to tell the absolute truth about her life and the things that she cared about. The result is one of the best-loved books ever written about life on the land, about a woman finding her way in middle age.

'The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.' A book to be read for pleasure as well as a practical identification guide, The Edge of the Sea introduces a world of teeming life where the sea meets the land. A new generation of readers is discovering why Rachel Carson's books have become cornerstones of the environmental and conservation movements. New introduction by Sue Hubbell. (A Mariner Reissue)

'The real masterwork that Sue Hubbell has created is her life,' David Quammen wrote in the New York Times. This book is, like its author, a unique achievement. Weaving a vivid portrait of her own life and her bees' lives through the seasons, Hubbell writes 'about bees to be sure, but also about other things: the important difference between loneliness and solitude . . . the accommodating of oneself to nature' (Philadelphia Inquirer).