Paradise Under Glass is a witty and absorbing memoir about one woman’s unlikely desire to build, stock, and tend a small conservatory in her suburban Maryland home. Ruth Kassinger’s wonderful story of the unique way she chose to cope with the profound changes in her life—a book that will delight readers of Eat, Pray, Love and I Feel Bad About My Neck—is interwoven with the fascinating history of conservatories from the Renaissance orangeries to the glass palaces of Kew.

Paradise Under Glass: An Amateur Creates a Conservatory Garden

History

Kassinger, Ruth

Americas

William Morrow

Paradise Under Glass: The Education of an Indoor Gardener

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

William Morrow Paperbacks

In the tradition of The Botany of Desire and Wicked Plants, a witty and engaging history of the first botanists interwoven with stories of today’s extraordinary plants found in the garden and the lab.
In Paradise Under Glass, Ruth Kassinger recounted with grace and humor her journey from brown thumb to green, sharing lessons she learned from building a home conservatory in the wake of a devastating personal crisis.
In A Garden of Marvels, she extends the story. Frustrated by plants that fail to thrive, she sets out to understand the basics of botany in order to become a better gardener. She retraces the progress of the first botanists who banished myths and misunderstandings and discovered that flowers have sex, leaves eat air, roots choose their food, and hormones make morning glories climb fence posts. She also visits modern gardens, farms, and labs to discover the science behind extraordinary plants like one-ton pumpkins, a truly black petunia, a biofuel grass that grows twelve feet tall, and the world's only photosynthesizing animal. Transferring her insights to her own garden, she nurtures a "cocktail" tree that bears five kinds of fruit, cures a Buddha's Hand plant with beneficial fungi, and gets a tree to text her when it's thirsty.
Intertwining personal anecdote, accessible science, and untold history, the ever-engaging author takes us on an eye-opening journey into her garden—and yours.

A Garden of Marvels: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of Plants

Arts & Literature

Combing the curiosity of The Botany of Desire and the playful spirit of Wicked Plants, a witty and engaging history of botany and gardening memoir from the author of Paradise Under Glass—an easy-to-follow, anecdotal tutorial on the fascinating science of plants.
In Paradise Under Glass, Ruth Kassinger— a self-described "wanton killer of plants"—recounted with grace, humor, and poignancy her moving journey from brown thumb to green, sharing the lessons she learned building a home conservatory in the wake of a devastating personal crisis.
In A Garden of Marvels, she enhances and extends her story. While Kassinger successfully created her dream conservatory and rectified her initial gardening mistakes—the over-watering and under-fertilizing that often kill plants—she realized she had no idea what to do to help them thrive. Until she completely understood how plants actually worked, she couldn’t know exactly what they needed.
In her friendly and reassuring voice Kassinger introduces the basic botany of plants—flowers, roots, stems, and leaves—and explains how they function together. Combining science and botanical knowledge with reflections on her personal quest to become a better gardener, and illustrated with more than two-dozen black and white drawings, Garden of Marvels is a journey of discovery that offers fresh and unexpected insights into the natural.

Reference

“No organisms are more important to life as we know it than algae. In Slime, Ruth Kassinger gives this underappreciated group its due.” — Elizabeth Kolbert\nSay “algae” and most people think of pond scum. What they don’t know is that without algae, none of us would exist.\nThere are as many algae on Earth as stars in the universe, and they have been essential to life on our planet for eons. Algae created the Earth we know today, with its oxygen-rich atmosphere, abundant oceans, and coral reefs. Crude oil is made of dead algae, and algae are the ancestors of all plants. Today, seaweed production is a multibillion-dollar industry, with algae hard at work to make your sushi, chocolate milk, beer, paint, toothpaste, shampoo, and so much more.\nIn Slime we’ll meet the algae innovators working toward a sustainable future: from seaweed farmers in South Korea, to scientists using it to clean the dead zones in our waterways, to the entrepreneurs fighting to bring algae fuel and plastics to market.\nWith a multitude of lively, surprising science and history, Ruth Kassinger takes readers on an around-the-world, behind-the-scenes, and into-the-kitchen tour. Whether you thought algae was just the gunk in your fish tank or you eat seaweed with your oatmeal, Slime will delight and amaze with its stories of the good, the bad, and the up-and-coming.

Slime: How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us

Mariner Books

Discover the secrets behind some amazing inventions! Through observation, experimentation, and perseverance, humansthrough the ages have managed to solve a whole array of perplexingproblems. These solutions have included such incredible inventionsas the parachute, the periscope, the solar water heater, thesuspension bridge, the stethoscope, and many more. Now, with Builda Better Mousetrap in hand, you too can experience your own Eureka!moments of inspiration and sharpen your problem-solving skills aswell, while you explore the history and science behind some of theworld's most exciting inventions. With this collection of fascinating, hands-on projects you'lldiscover the answers to such intriguing questions as: Who inventedthe hovercraft? Why is there a hole in the top of a parachute? Whatis an Aerobie and why does it fly so well? And you'll be encouragedto come up with your own awesome inventions. With easy-to-followinstructions on how to make everything from a rocket, to akaleidoscope, to a bottle organ, Build a Better Mousetrap is filledwith enough exciting projects and challenges to get you started ona lifetime of invention.

Build a Better Mousetrap: Make Classic Inventions, Discover Your Problem Solving Genius, and Take the Inventor's Challenge

Business & Money

Management & Leadership

wiley

LEARN HOW To MAKE GREAT INVENTIONS! Discover the history and the science behind classic inventions and experience your own "Eureka!" moments of inspiration with the projects in this unique book. Through the ages, resourceful humans have found ingenious ways to meet the need of the moment with inventions ranging from catapults to colorful dyes to batteries. With this fantastic collection of fun, hands-on projects, you will uncover the answers to intriguing questions like: Who created ink? Why did Archimedes invent the water screw? And how did cave artists come up with paint? Plus, you will learn how and why these inventors were inspired, and how to come up with your own inventions. With easy-to-follow instructions on how to make some common things we often take for granted, from paper to compasses, Reinvent the Wheel is packed with exciting projects and challenges. There are still many problems to be solved and gadgets to be invented. Maybe you'll be the next great inventor to change the way we live.

Reinvent the Wheel: Make Classic Inventions, Discover Your Problem-Solving Genius, and Take the Inventor's Challenge

Children's Books

Science, Nature & How It Works

“No organisms are more important to life as we know it than algae. In Slime, Ruth Kassinger gives this under-appreciated group its due.” —Elizabeth Kolbert Say “algae” and most people think of pond scum. What they don’t know is that without algae, none of us would exist. There are as many algae on Earth as stars in the universe, and they have been essential to life on our planet for eons. Algae created the Earth we know today, with its oxygen-rich atmosphere, abundant oceans, and coral reefs. Crude oil is made of dead algae, and algae are the ancestors of all plants. Today, seaweed production is a multi-billion dollar industry, with algae hard at work to make your sushi, chocolate milk, beer, paint, toothpaste, shampoo and so much more. In Slime we’ll meet the algae innovators working toward a sustainable future: from seaweed farmers in South Korea, to scientists using it to clean the dead zones in our waterways, to the entrepreneurs fighting to bring algae fuel and plastics to market. With a multitude of lively, surprising science and history, Ruth Kassinger takes readers on an around-the-world, behind-the-scenes, and into-the-kitchen tour. Whether you thought algae was just the gunk in your fish tank or you eat seaweed with your oatmeal, Slime will delight and amaze with its stories of the good, the bad, and the up-and-coming.

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Cooking Education & Reference

Recounts the history of the census in the United States from the eighteenth century to the present and describes the methods used to take it and how they have changed

U.S. Census: A Mirror for America

Literature & Fiction

Heinemann/Raintree

From the air we breathe, to our oceans and plant life, algae has helped create and sustain our world - and may just save it...

Bloom: From food to fuel, the epic story of how algae can save our world

Science & Math

Biological Sciences

Elliott & Thompson Limited

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kassinger, Ruth. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kassinger, Ruth

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kassinger, Ruth. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Paradise Under Glass: An Amateur Creates a Conservatory Garden

Paradise Under Glass: The Education of an Indoor Gardener

A Garden of Marvels: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of Plants

A Garden of Marvels: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of Plants

Slime: How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us

Build a Better Mousetrap: Make Classic Inventions, Discover Your Problem Solving Genius, and Take the Inventor's Challenge

Reinvent the Wheel: Make Classic Inventions, Discover Your Problem-Solving Genius, and Take the Inventor's Challenge

Slime: How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us

U.S. Census: A Mirror for America

Bloom: From food to fuel, the epic story of how algae can save our world