Models of Adaptive Behaviour sets out a framework for adaptive explanations of behaviour, and applies this to give analyses of a range of biological issues such as energetic gain, energy-predation trade-offs, dynamic games, state-dependent life histories, annual routines and fluctuating environments. It gives a definitive account of this exciting field, summarizing previous research, presenting material and suggesting directions for research. Organisms differ in terms of their state - for example in their size, energy relations or temperature - which often affects their behaviour. The framework adopted in this book takes this into account, and provides a common currency for comparing diverse actions. Ultimately this could lead to the development of state-dependent dynamic models. This book will be a revelation for graduate students and researchers interested in behavioural or evolutionary biology.

The principles of game theory apply to a wide range of topics in biology. This book presents the central concepts in evolutionary game theory and provides an authoritative and up-to-date account. The focus is on concepts that are important for biologists in their attempts to explain observations. This strong connection between concepts and applications is a recurrent theme throughout the book which incorporates recent and traditional ideas from animal psychology, neuroscience, and machine learning that provide a mechanistic basis for behaviours shown by players of a game. The approaches taken to modelling games often rest on idealized and unrealistic assumptions whose limitations and consequences are not always appreciated. The authors provide a novel reassessment of the field, highlighting how to overcome limitations and identifying future directions. Game Theory in Biology is an advanced textbook suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers (both empiricists and theoreticians) in the fields of behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology. It will also be of relevance to a broader interdisciplinary audience including psychologists and neuroscientists.

When a Chicago attorney receives a terminal diagnosis, he ignores his wife's pleas and embarks on a solitary odyssey, visiting people who have influenced his life, to thank them and to say goodbye. For 30 days and 6,000 miles he drives through the Western U.S., each night making entries in a journal about the day's events, chronicling the trip and revealing to us how it morphs from the purpose he had intended into something else entirely. He encounters qualities in his friends he had not seen before, and through these revelations, aspects of his own character are revealed to him. He discovers goodbyes are rarely surgical and the precise amputation of his relationships eludes him. No one seems willing to accept his visit as a final farewell. A FINAL REFLECTION affords glimpses into the perceptions and intuitions of a middle-aged man laboring under a death sentence. He has yet to suffer any symptoms of the disease, so his grip on the reality of its progression remains tenuous. One friend tells him to accept the time allowed for his trip as a gift to be used wisely. Another counsels him to kill off his past and revel in the moment, seizing as many moments as he can eke out of his aborted future. Throughout each day of the journey, his love for his wife remains an unassailable constant...he confides in her nearly every night. At a crucial juncture in the trip, he realizes he no longer moves away from home, but toward it. Toward his wife.

A Life Without Grace dissects a tense few days in the life of Grayson Eilers, a successful baby-boomer. Grayson, a freelance speechwriter, receives an urgent message from his sister that their mother has suffered a severe heart attack. She is alive, but her condition remains critical. For more than three decades, Grayson has compartmentalized his life, distancing himself physically and emotionally from the modest origins that his mother, his sister and his two brothers represent, while dedicating himself to his new family: his wife and two children. After a terse conversation with his sister, Grayson, feeling angry and helpless, accepts the inevitable: returning to Omaha to confront family members with whom he has never shared any commonality. He arrives in Omaha on the eve of a spring snowstorm that delays the arrival of his wife and his two children, leaving Grayson isolated to cope with the cascade of both predictable and unexpected emotions inherent in his stressful reunion with his estranged family.

Vietnam veteran Joseph Hunter recalls events from his service as a linguist in the Air Force during the war, as well as his friendship with Badger, a rebel and jester. He reflects on how his life, including his marriage to Lindsay, have been impacted by his experience, and he learns that no one is ever too old to change direction

"Madonna is John M. McNamara’s sixth work of fiction. In this novel, Mary Cottle struggles day-to-day as a widow and the single mother of a 43-year-old son with special needs. She wanders the streets of her town, scavenging abandoned “treasures” that she then sells to an antiques dealer and friend, Karl. From this meager income, she provides a bare-bones life for her son, Jimmy. He is a simple man, but one day he confronts his mother with the revelation that he has a girlfriend...a woman who works nights with him cleaning offices. Dread overcomes Mary. She has feared this day for years and despite all the time she has had to prepare for it, when considering what to do about her son’s announcement, she flounders. At times Jimmy behaves no better than a child; Mary frets about how to dissuade him from this entanglement as she would in denying him a shiny toy. But her son surprises her....and assists Mary in surprising herself.Mary wistfully considers how her deceased husband would manage their son’s desires. Her friendship with Karl blossoms beyond what she ever could have anticipated. She ritually visits the neighborhood tavern, spars with the bartender, sips Scotch for breakfast and predicts his fortune while gazing at a small crystal ball. And then there is the girl...Connie...bent on complicating her life. Mary abandons caution and reacts to Jimmy’s news recklessly, oblivious to the consequences. Her decisions snowball, appropriately she feels, as a winter storm assaults the town in drifts and frigid temperatures. Unexpected events unfold and Mary’s reticence to allow Jimmy the things he has always coveted begins to melt. She spies a light at the end of her tunnel and charges headlong toward it. Never having believed she deserved a happy ending to her life, Mary casts aside her fears and lunges toward one."--Amazon.

In Harmony House, Dan Boyle attempts to adapt to his new life as a recent widower. His serial infidelities and alienation from his wife preceding her death haunt him, and as much as he wants to insulate himself from family, friends and neighbors, "untethering" from relationships proves difficult. Shedding obligations is easier wished than done. As he examines his behavior during his marriage and following his wife's diagnosis and death, Dan accepts that he has failed to live up to his own standards, much less the standards of others. He is torn between admitting his shortcomings and ignoring them. Will he change and live his life as a decent man? Or will he persist in placing his own hedonistic impulses before the needs of others? Is redemption what he needs? Is it what he seeks? Or is it superfluous? A chain that tethers him to a life he wants to forget.

When he's five years old, Billy Phelan discovers he can view the world, literally, through other's eyes. First through his younger sister, Micki, in another room, and then with precision, he borrows people's vision at will and at great distances. The ability alters his life, earning him wealth, (he cheats in high-stakes poker games), but also a degree of loneliness. Isolated on an acreage in the north Omaha suburbs, Billy cares for his bi-polar sister, to whom he confided about his power, and who for decades has resented him for it. She taunts him, challenges his love and loyalty, and begrudges him the life he has procured for himself, even though she benefits from his largesse. Billy befriends an old friend, a fellow veteran who suffers from PTSD, paranoia, and depression. His new neighbor, survivor of a brain tumor, fleeing a marriage that collapsed and has left her doubting many of her decisions, attracts, intrigues, and mystifies him: she's the only person he has ever encountered whose vision he is unable to borrow. Each character converges on Billy's suburban compound, some accidentally, some drawn by him out of love, duty, and a belief that he should use what he has fraudulently accumulated for other's benefit.

"The Dreams of Teddy Schreck, John M. McNamara’s fifth work of fiction and the third to use the Laurel Woods neighborhood of Iske Park as a setting, focuses on a retired salesman, who obsesses about retaining his mental acuity. One website advises writing a long-hand journal to keep the brain elastic and active. The possible subject of this journal eludes Teddy until one night, when he dreams of cataloging his dreams. The following day he makes his first of many entries in his dream journal. He mentions the project to his neighbor, Bill, a retired historian, who suggests expanding the scope to include Teddy’s aspirations from his early life. Teddy agrees. Bill and his wife, Margaret, have been life-long friends of the Schrecks. Margaret anonymously authors an atheist blog; her posts attract the anger of a religious zealot, who in his threatening comments on the blog indicates he not only knows Margaret’s identity, but where she lives. Teddy interjects himself into the conflict, for a variety of aspirational reasons, including an unfulfilled desire to be a hero to someone. His wife and daughters caution him, but he ignores their advice, entangles himself in the back-and-forth between Margaret and “The Lord’s Sword,” as the dangerous zealot labels himself. Events unfold with tragic consequences for both families."--Amazon.