Best of
Ecology

2014

The Incredible Life of a Himalayan Yogi: The Times, Teachings and Life of Living Shiva: Baba Lokenath Brahmachari


Shuddhaanandaa Brahmachari - 2014
    Baba Lokenath, through his amazing penance and practice of hathayoga, rajayoga, and the synthesis of Yoga, reached a state of being one with the Divine. To thousands of followers who came to seek succor from the pains of worldly life, Baba showered his boundless grace and miraculous power, healing and redeeming them, and showing the simplest path of Yoga of Action. He never wanted the seekers to leave their home and comforts of life, but be where they are and practice meditation of self-enquiry and the path of devotional surrender to the Higher Reality. He supported Gnana-mishra-bhakti, the path of a balanced blending of Awareness and Love Divine. As you read this book, please know that very little is known about Baba Lokenath’s long life of 160 years, for he was against any propaganda about him or his incomprehensible powers of manifesting miracles. But this book has his presence, for it is his divine grace that made this book possible. Whoever will read this book will feel the aura of his divine presence surrounding them. It is no coincidence that you have this book and you are reading the life of one who could say, ‘In danger, remember me, I will save you’. Please read his promises, his teachings and the lives of those who came in touch with him and the transformations they attained, particularly, his equanimity, his infinite love for animals and his boundless compassion for mankind. When you read this incredible life, Baba’s Divine Presence works in your heart and soul and creates the ground that attracts his miraculous powers to heal you and bring fulfillment of your coveted desires of life. His Presence will cleanse your inner being to allow the awakening and opening of the petals of divine consciousness so that your human life is fulfilled. You are now on a journey to rediscovering yourself and finding your teacher who guides from within to the world of Eternal light and Joy.

Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island


Will Harlan - 2014
    She eats road kill, wrestles alligators, rides horses bareback, and lives in a ramshackle cabin that she built herself in an island wilderness. She’s had three husbands and many lovers, one of whom she shot and killed in self-defense. A combination of Henry David Thoreau and Jane Goodall, Carol is a self-taught scientist who has become a tireless defender of sea turtles on Cumberland Island, a national park off the coast of Georgia.Cumberland is the country's largest and most biologically diverse barrier island—over forty square miles of pristine wilderness celebrated for its windswept dunes and feral horses. Steel magnate Thomas Carnegie owned much of Cumberland, and his widow Lucy made it a Gilded Age playground. But in recent years, Carnegie heirs and the National Park Service have clashed with Carol over the island’s future. What happens when a dirt-poor naturalist with only a high-school diploma tries to stop one of the wealthiest families in America? Untamed is the story of an American original standing her ground and fighting for what she believes in, no matter the cost.

Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Beyond the Doors of Perception into the Dreaming of Earth


Stephen Harrod Buhner - 2014
    He shows that by consciously opening the doors of perception, we can reconnect with the living intelligences in Nature as kindred beings, become again wild scientists, nondomesticated explorers of a Gaian world just as Goethe, Barbara McClintock, James Lovelock, and others have done. For as Einstein commented, “We cannot solve the problems facing us by using the same kind of thinking that created them.” Buhner explains how to use analogical thinking and imaginal perception to directly experience the inherent meanings that flow through the world, that are expressed from each living form that surrounds us, and to directly initiate communication in return. He delves deeply into the ecological function of invasive plants, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, psychotropic plants and fungi, and, most importantly, the human species itself. He shows that human beings are not a plague on the planet, they have a specific ecological function as important to Gaia as that of plants and bacteria. Buhner shows that the capacity for depth connection and meaning-filled communication with the living world is inherent in every human being. It is as natural as breathing, as the beating of our own hearts, as our own desire for intimacy and love. We can change how we think and in so doing begin to address the difficulties of our times.

A Buzz in the Meadow: The Natural History of a French Farm


Dave Goulson - 2014
    Brilliantly reviewed, it was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for the best nonfiction book of the year, and debuted the already renowned conservationist's ability to charm and educate, and tell an absorbing story. In A Buzz in the Meadow, Goulson returns to tell the tale of how he bought a derelict farm in the heart of rural France. Over the course of a decade, on thirty-three acres of meadow, he created a place for his beloved bumblebees to thrive. But other creatures live there too, myriad insects of every kind, many of which Goulson had studied before in his career as a biologist. You'll learn how a deathwatch beetle finds its mate, why butterflies have spots on their wings, and see how a real scientist actually conducts his experiments. But this book is also a wake-up call, urging us to cherish and protect life in all its forms. Goulson has that rare ability to persuade you to go out into your garden or local park and observe the natural world. The undiscovered glory that is life in all its forms is there to be discovered. And if we learn to value what we have, perhaps we will find a way to keep it.

Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field


John Lewis-Stempel - 2014
    In exquisite prose, John Lewis-Stempel records the passage of the seasons from cowslips in spring to the hay-cutting of summer and grazing in autumn, and includes the biographies of the animals that inhabit the grass and the soil beneath: the badger clan, the fox family, the rabbit warren, the skylark brood and the curlew pair, among others. Their births, lives, and deaths are stories that thread through the book from first page to last.In Meadowland Lewis-Stempel does for meadows what Roger Deakin did for woodland and rivers in his bestselling books Wildwood and Waterlog.

Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation: Simple to Advanced and Experimental Techniques for Indoor and Outdoor Cultivation


Tradd Cotter - 2014
    In Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation, Cotter not only offers readers an in-depth exploration of best organic mushroom cultivation practices; he shares the results of his groundbreaking research and offers myriad ways to apply your cultivation skills and further incorporate mushrooms into your life--whether your goal is to help your community clean up industrial pollution or simply to settle down at the end of the day with a cold Reishi-infused homebrew ale. The book first guides readers through an in-depth exploration of indoor and outdoor cultivation. Covered skills range from integrating wood-chip beds spawned with king stropharia into your garden and building a "trenched raft" of hardwood logs plugged with shiitake spawn to producing oysters indoors on spent coffee grounds in a 4�4 space or on pasteurized sawdust in vertical plastic columns. For those who aspire to the self-sufficiency gained by generating and expanding spawn rather than purchasing it, Cotter offers in-depth coverage of lab techniques, including low-cost alternatives that make use of existing infrastructure and materials. Cotter also reports his groundbreaking research cultivating morels both indoors and out, "training" mycelium to respond to specific contaminants, and perpetuating spawn on cardboard without the use of electricity. Readers will discover information on making tinctures, powders, and mushroom-infused honey; making an antibacterial mushroom cutting board; and growing mushrooms on your old denim jeans. Geared toward readers who want to grow mushrooms without the use of pesticides, Cotter takes "organic" one step further by introducing an entirely new way of thinking--one that looks at the potential to grow mushrooms on just about anything, just about anywhere, and by anyone.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate


Naomi Klein - 2014
    It's not about carbon—it's about capitalism. The good news is that we can seize this crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better. In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein, author of the global bestsellers Shock Doctrine and No Logo, exposes the myths that are clouding climate debate. You have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. You have been told it's impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the 'free-market' playbook. You have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight back is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring. It's about changing the world, before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. Either we leap—or we sink. This Changes Everything is a book that will redefine our era.

The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden


Rick Darke - 2014
    Sure, it’s a tall order, but The Living Landscape shows you how to do it. You’ll learn the strategies for making and maintaining a diverse, layered landscape—one that offers beauty on many levels, provides outdoor rooms and turf areas for children and pets, incorporates fragrance and edible plants, and provides cover, shelter, and sustenance for wildlife. Richly illustrated and informed by both a keen eye for design and an understanding of how healthy ecologies work, The Living Landscape will enable you to create a garden that fulfills both human needs and the needs of wildlife communities.

The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision


Fritjof Capra - 2014
    New emphasis has been given to complexity, networks, and patterns of organisation, leading to a novel kind of 'systemic' thinking. This volume integrates the ideas, models, and theories underlying the systems view of life into a single coherent framework. Taking a broad sweep through history and across scientific disciplines, the authors examine the appearance of key concepts such as autopoiesis, dissipative structures, social networks, and a systemic understanding of evolution. The implications of the systems view of life for health care, management, and our global ecological and economic crises are also discussed. Written primarily for undergraduates, it is also essential reading for graduate students and researchers interested in understanding the new systemic conception of life and its implications for a broad range of professions - from economics and politics to medicine, psychology and law.

A Window on Eternity: A Biologist's Walk Through Gorongosa National Park


Edward O. Wilson - 2014
    Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique was nearly destroyed in a brutal civil war, then was reborn and is now evolving back to its original state. Edward O. Wilson’s personal, luminous description of the wonders of Gorongosa is beautifully complemented by Piotr Naskrecki’s extraordinary photographs of the park’s exquisite natural beauty. A bonus DVD of Academy Award–winning director Jessica Yu’s documentary, The Guide, is also included with the book.Wilson takes readers to the summit of Mount Gorongosa, sacred to the local people and the park’s vital watershed. From the forests of the mountain he brings us to the deep gorges on the edge of the Rift Valley, previously unexplored by biologists, to search for new species and assess their ancient origins. He describes amazing animal encounters from huge colonies of agricultural termites to spe­cialized raider ants that feed on them to giant spi­ders, a battle between an eagle and a black mamba, “conversations” with traumatized elephants that survived the slaughter of the park’s large animals, and more. He pleads for Gorongosa—and other wild places—to be allowed to exist and evolve in its time­less way uninterrupted into the future.As he examines the near destruction and rebirth of Gorongosa, Wilson analyzes the balance of nature, which, he observes, teeters on a razor’s edge. Loss of even a single species can have serious ramifications throughout an ecosystem, and yet we are carelessly destroying complex biodiverse ecosystems with unknown consequences. The wildlands in which these ecosystems flourish gave birth to humanity, and it is this natural world, still evolving, that may outlast us and become our leg­acy, our window on eternity.

Secrets of the Oak Woodlands: Plants and Animals Among California's Oaks


Kate Marianchild - 2014
    Yet, while common, oak woodlands are anything but ordinary. In a book rich in illustration and suffused with wonder, author Kate Marianchild combines extensive research and years of personal experience to explore some of the marvelous plants and animals that the oak woodlands nurture. Acorn woodpeckers unite in marriages of up to ten mates and raise their young cooperatively. Ground squirrels roll in rattlesnake skins to hide their scent from hungry snakes. Manzanita's rust-colored, paper-thin bark peels away in time for the summer solstice, exposing sinuous contours that are cool to the touch even on the hottest day. Conveying up-to-the-minute scientific findings with a storyteller's skill, Marianchild introduces us to a host of remarkable creatures in a world close by, a world that rustles, hums, and sings with the sounds of wild things.

The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet


Kristin Ohlson - 2014
    That carbon is now floating in the atmosphere, and even if we stopped using fossil fuels today, it would continue warming the planet. In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming.As the granddaughter of farmers and the daughter of avid gardeners, Ohlson has long had an appreciation for the soil. A chance conversation with a local chef led her to the crossroads of science, farming, food, and environmentalism and the discovery of the only significant way to remove carbon dioxide from the air—an ecological approach that tends not only to plants and animals but also to the vast population of underground microorganisms that fix carbon in the soil. Ohlson introduces the visionaries—scientists, farmers, ranchers, and landscapers—who are figuring out in the lab and on the ground how to build healthy soil, which solves myriad problems: drought, erosion, air and water pollution, and food quality, as well as climate change. Her discoveries and vivid storytelling will revolutionize the way we think about our food, our landscapes, our plants, and our relationship to Earth.

Pollinators of Native Plants: Attract, Observe and Identify Pollinators and Beneficial Insects with Native Plants


Heather N. Holm - 2014
    Beautifully designed and illustrated with over 1600 photos of plants and insects, it underscores the pivotal role that native plants play in supporting pollinators and beneficial insects. Readers learn to attract and identify pollinators and beneficial insects as well as customize their landscape planting with native plants for a particular type of pollinator. The book includes information on pollination, types of pollinators and beneficial insects, pollinator habitat and conservation as well as pollinator landscape plans. This is an important book for gardeners, native plant enthusiasts, landscape restoration professionals, small fruit and vegetable growers and farmers who are interested in attracting, identifying, supporting or planting for pollinators.More information: www.pollinatorsnativeplants.com

The Killing of Wolf Number Ten: The True Story


Thomas McNamee - 2014
    A manhunt. The triumph of justice and of the wolf.The greatest event in Yellowstone history. Greater Yellowstone was the last great truly intact ecosystem in the temperate zones of the earth—until, in the 1920s, U.S. government agents exterminated its top predator, the gray wolf. With traps and rifles, even torching pups in their dens, the killing campaign was entirely successful. The howl of the “evil” wolf was heard no more. The “good” animals—elk, deer, bison—proliferated, until they too had to be “managed.” Two decades later, recognizing that ecosystems lacking their keystone predators tend to unravel, the visionary naturalist Aldo Leopold called for the return of the wolf to Yellowstone. It would take another fifty years for his vision to come true. In the early 1990s, as the movement for Yellowstone wolf restoration gained momentum, rage against it grew apace. When at last, in February 1995, fifteen wolves were trapped in Alberta and brought to acclimation pens in Yellowstone, even then legal and political challenges continued. There was also a lot of talk in the bars about “shoot, shovel, and shut up.” While the wolves’ enemies worked to return them to Canada, the biologists in charge of the project feared that the wolves might well return on their own. Once they were released, two packs remained in the national park, but one bore only one pup and the other none. The other, comprising Wolves Nine and Ten and Nine’s yearling daughter, disappeared. They were in fact heading home. As they emerged from protected federal land, an unemployed ne’er-do-well from Red Lodge, Montana, trained a high-powered rifle on Wolf Number Ten and shot him through the chest. Number Nine dug a den next to the body of her mate, and gave birth to eight pups. The story of their rescue and the manhunt for the killer is the heart of The Killing of Wolf Number Ten. + Read this book, and if you are ever fortunate enough to hear the howling of Yellowstone wolves, you will always think of Wolves Nine and Ten. If you ever see a Yellowstone wolf, chance are it will be carrying their DNA. The restoration of the wolf to Yellowstone is now recognized as one of conservation’s greatest achievements, and Wolves Nine and Ten will always be known as its emblematic heroes.

Unbranded


Ben Masters - 2014
    For their trail horses, they adopted wild mustangs from the US Bureau of Land Management that were perfectly adapted to the rocky terrain and harsh conditions of desert and mountain travel. A meticulously planned but sometimes unpredictable route brought them face to face with snowpack, downpours, and wildfire; unrelenting heat, raging rivers, and sheer cliffs; jumping cactus, rattlesnakes, and charging bull moose; sickness, injury, and death. But they also experienced a special camaraderie with each other and with the mustangs. Through it all, they had a constant traveling companion—a cameraman, shooting for the documentary film Unbranded. The trip’s inspiration and architect, Ben Masters, is joined here by the three other riders, Ben Thamer, Thomas Glover, and Jonny Fitzsimons; two memorable teachers and horse trainers; and the film’s producers and intrepid cameramen in the telling of this improbable story of adventure and self-discovery.

Money Logging: On the Trail of the Asian Timber Mafia


Lukas Straumann - 2014
    Historian and campaigner Lukas Straumann goes in search not only of the lost forests and the people who used to call them home, but also the network of criminals who have earned billions through illegal timber sales and corruption. Straumann singles out Abdul Taib Mahmud, current governor of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, as the kingpin of this Asian timber mafia. Taib's family – with the complicity of global financial institutions – have profited to the tune of 15 billion US dollars. Money Logging is a story of a people who have lost their ancient paradise to a wasteland of oil palm plantations, pollution, and corruption – and how they hope to take it back. Translated from German.“In thrilling chapters historian Lukas Straumann gives the portrait of a clan of kleptocrats, who, through the granting of timber concessions and export licenses, have managed to become billionaires.“ – Neue Zürcher Zeitung“One of the most comprehensive and brutally honest investigations into the intrigues of the Malaysian and international timber Mafia.“ – Süddeutsche Zeitung“A unique way of life in the rainforests has been destroyed in a single generation. Read this book and weep. But then get angry.“ – Wade Davis

101 Kruger Tales: Extraordinary Stories from Ordinary Visitors to the Kruger National Park


Jeff Gordon - 2014
    A lioness prises open the door of a terrified couple. A leopard helps itself to a family’s picnic breakfast. A fleeing impala leaps through an open car window. A lion charges around inside a busy rest camp. A hyaena snatches a baby from a tent. A tourist takes a bath in a croc-infested dam… These are just a few of the 101 jaw-dropping sightings, scrapes and encounters in this collection of extraordinary true stories from the roads, camps, picnic sites and walking trails of South Africa’s Kruger National Park, as told by the very people who experienced them. There are no game ranger tales here – each and every story happened to an ordinary Kruger visitor doing what over a million tourists do in this spectacular reserve each year. It is a book to keep by your bedside in Kruger, to dip into at home when you’re missing the bush, to lend to friends who’ve never visited Kruger or to pore over before your next trip. Just don’t expect to ever sleep soundly in a safari tent again…

American Catch: The Fight for Our Local Seafood


Paul Greenberg - 2014
    In 2005, the United States imported five billion pounds of seafood, nearly double what we imported twenty years earlier. Bizarrely, during that same period, our seafood exports quadrupled. American Catch examines New York oysters, Gulf shrimp, and Alaskan salmon to reveal how it came to be that 91 percent of the seafood Americans eat is foreign. In the 1920s, the average New Yorker ate six hundred local oysters a year. Today, the only edible oysters lie outside city limits. Following the trail of environmental desecration, Greenberg comes to view the New York City oyster as a reminder of what is lost when local waters are not valued as a food source. Farther south, a different catastrophe threatens another seafood-rich environment. When Greenberg visits the Gulf of Mexico, he arrives expecting to learn of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill’s lingering effects on shrimpers, but instead finds that the more immediate threat to business comes from overseas. Asian-farmed shrimp—cheap, abundant, and a perfect vehicle for the frying and sauces Americans love—have flooded the American market. Finally, Greenberg visits Bristol Bay, Alaska, home to the biggest wild sockeye salmon run left in the world. A pristine, productive fishery, Bristol Bay is now at great risk: The proposed Pebble Mine project could under¬mine the very spawning grounds that make this great run possible. In his search to discover why this pre¬cious renewable resource isn’t better protected, Green¬berg encounters a shocking truth: the great majority of Alaskan salmon is sent out of the country, much of it to Asia. Sockeye salmon is one of the most nutritionally dense animal proteins on the planet, yet Americans are shipping it abroad. Despite the challenges, hope abounds. In New York, Greenberg connects an oyster restoration project with a vision for how the bivalves might save the city from rising tides. In the Gulf, shrimpers band together to offer local catch direct to consumers. And in Bristol Bay, fishermen, environmentalists, and local Alaskans gather to roadblock Pebble Mine. With American Catch, Paul Greenberg proposes a way to break the current destructive patterns of consumption and return American catch back to American eaters. The Washington Post: "Americans need to eat more American seafood. It’s a point [Greenberg] makes compellingly clear in his new book, American Catch: The Fight for our Local Seafood...Greenberg had at least one convert: me.” Jane Brody, New York Times “Excellent.” The Los Angeles Times “If this makes it sound like American Catch is another of those dry, haranguing issue-driven books that you read mostly out of obligation, you needn’t worry. While Greenberg has a firm grasp of the facts, he also has a storyteller’s knack for framing them in an entertaining way.” The Guardian (UK) “A wonderful new book” Tom Colicchio: "This is on the top of my summer reading list. A Fast Food Nation for fish.”

Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love


Elizabeth A. Johnson - 2014
    Focused on the human dilemma of sin and redemptive grace, theology has considered the doctrine of creation to be mainly an overture to the main drama of human being`s relationship to God. What value does the natural world have within the framework of religious belief? The crisis of biodiversity in our day, when species are going extinct at more than 1,000 times the natural rate, renders this question acutely important.Standard perspectives need to be realigned; theology needs to look out of the window, so to speak as well as in the mirror. Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love leads to the conclusion that love of the natural world is an intrinsic element of faith in God and that far from being an add-on, ecological care is at the centre of moral life.

Degenesis: Rebirth Edition


Christian Günther - 2014
    1: Primal Punk (352 Pages, Full Colour)Introduction into the world of Degenesis, it's Cultures, Cults and the history of the worldFeaturing two A3 sized maps: Europe and Africa, and the ProtectorateVol. 2: Katharsys (352 Pages, Full Colour)Fully revised rule system, featuring new game concepts, improved Character Creation, flexible Ranking-System, PotentialsFully revised combat systems: “Primal” & “Focus”. New mechanics for enhanced group play optionsBazaar introduces over 130 unique Cult Weapons and Equipments, Scrapper “Slotting & Salvaging" systems, "Weapon Slots & Mods" and much moreFully revised system for using Burn and other enhancements8 Major Enemy Factions, 21 featured Clans, dozens of minor EnemiesStorytelling Chapter featuring tooltips and help for crafting unique campaigns in the world of DegenesisEmbargo establishes a unique adventure set to introduce new players to the Rebirth Edition

The New Sylva: A Discourse of Forest and Orchard Trees for the Twenty-First Century


Gabriel Hemery - 2014
    It was also the world's earliest forestry book, and the first book ever published by the Royal Society. Evelyn's elegant prose has a lot to tell us today, but the world has changed dramatically since his day. Now authors Gabriel Hemery and Sarah Simblet, taking inspiration from the original work, have masterfully created a contemporary version – The New Sylva. The result is a fabulous resource that describes all of the most important species of tree that populate our landscape.Silvologist Gabriel Hemery explains what trees really mean to us culturally, environmentally and economically in the first part of the book. These chapters are followed by forty-four detailed tree portrait sections that describe the history and the features of trees such as oak, elm, beech, hornbeam, willow, fir, pine, juniper, plane, apple and pear.The pages of The New Sylva are brought to life with truly breathtaking artwork from artist and co-author Sarah Simblet, who captures the delicacy, strength and beauty of the trees through the seasons in 200 exquisite drawings.With an interplay of black and red type on creamy paper, The New Sylva recalls all the charm of traditional bookmaking. And at a moment when it is vitally important for us to rediscover how to treasure our trees, the time for this visionary, beautiful book is now.

Plant a Pocket of Prairie


Phyllis Root - 2014
    Now, in Plant a Pocket of Prairie, Root and Bowen take young readers on a trip to another of Minnesota’s important ecosystems: the prairie.Once covering almost 40 percent of the United States, native prairie is today one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world. Plant a Pocket of Prairie teaches children how changes in one part of the system affect every other part: when prairie plants are destroyed, the animals who eat those plants and live on or around them are harmed as well. Root shows what happens when we work to restore the prairies, encouraging readers to “plant a pocket of prairie” in their own backyards.By growing native prairie plants, children can help re-create food and habitat for the many birds, butterflies, and other animals that depend on them. “Plant cup plants,” Root suggests. “A thirsty chickadee might come to drink from a tiny leaf pool. Plant goldenrod. A Great Plains toad might flick its tongue at goldenrod soldier beetles.” An easy explanation of the history of the prairie, its endangered status, and how to go about growing prairie plants follows, as well as brief descriptions of all the plants and animals mentioned in the story.With Betsy Bowen’s beautiful, airy illustrations capturing the feel of an open prairie and all its inhabitants, readers of all ages will be inspired to start planting seeds and watching for the many fascinating animals their plants attract. What a marvelous transformation could take place if we all planted a pocket of prairie!

The Flower Farmer's Year: How to Grow Cut Flowers for Pleasure and Profit


Georgie Newbery - 2014
    Whether you want to grow for your own pleasure or start your own business, The Flower Farmer’s Year is the perfect guide.

Melting Away: A Ten-Year Journey through Our Endangered Polar Regions


Camille Seaman - 2014
    As an expedition photographer aboard small ships in the Arctic and Antarctic, she has chronicled the accelerating effects of global warming on the jagged face of nearly fifty thousand icebergs. Seaman's unique perspective of the landscape is entwined with her Native American upbringing: she sees no two icebergs as alike; each responds to its environment uniquely, almost as if they were living beings. Through Seaman's lens, each towering chunk of ice—breathtakingly beautiful in layers of smoky gray and turquoise blue—takes on a distinct personality, giving her work the feel of majestic portraiture. Melting Away collects seventy-five of Seaman's most captivating photographs, lifeaffirming images that reveal not only what we have already lost, but more importantly what we still have that is worth fighting to save.

Land and Labour: Marxism, Ecology and Human History


Martin Empson - 2014
    In so doing he shows that human action is key, both to the destruction of nature and to the possibility of a sustainable solution to the ecological crises of the 21st century.Land and Labour has been long-listed for the 2015 Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing.

How the Earth Turned Green: A Brief 3.8-Billion-Year History of Plants


Joseph E. Armstrong - 2014
    Fossil and phylogenetic evidence suggests that chlorophyll, the green pigment responsible for coloring these organisms, has been in existence for some 85% of Earth’s long history—that is, for roughly 3.5 billion years. In How the Earth Turned Green, Joseph E. Armstrong traces the history of these verdant organisms, which many would call plants, from their ancient beginnings to the diversity of green life that inhabits the Earth today. Using an evolutionary framework, How the Earth Turned Green addresses questions such as: Should all green organisms be considered plants? Why do these organisms look the way they do? How are they related to one another and to other chlorophyll-free organisms? How do they reproduce? How have they changed and diversified over time? And how has the presence of green organisms changed the Earth’s ecosystems? More engaging than a traditional textbook and displaying an astonishing breadth, How the Earth Turned Green will both delight and enlighten embryonic botanists and any student interested in the evolutionary history of plants.

Chemtrails, HAARP, and the Full Spectrum Dominance of Planet Earth


Elana Freeland - 2014
    This Space Age is replacing resource wars and redefines planet earth as a "battlespace" in accordance with the military doctrine of "Full-Spectrum Dominance."This book examines how chemtrails and ionospheric heaters like the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP) in Alaska service a full-spectrum dominance. This "Revolution in Military Affairs" needs an atmospheric medium to assure wireless access to the bodies and brains of anyone on Earth—from heat-seeking missiles to a form of mind control.How sinister are these technologies? Are we being prepared for a "global village" lockdown? The recent release of NSA records have reminded Americans that "eyes in the sky" are tracking us as supercomputers record the phone calls, e-mails, internet posts, and even the brain frequencies of millions.Elana M. Freeland's startling book sifts through the confusion surrounding chemtrails-versus-contrails and how extreme weather is being "geo-engineered" to enrich disaster capitalists and intimidate nations.A deconstruction of Bernard J. Eastlund's HAARP patent points to other covert agendas, such as a global Smart Grid infrastructure that enables access to every body and brain on Earth, a "Transhumanist" future that erases lines between human and machine, and Nanobiological hybrids armed with microprocessers that infest and harm human bodies.

Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement


Catherine Keller - 2014
    The experience of the impossible peaked at the end of the last century—politically, sexually, economically, and ecologically. The dream of progress became the trauma of reality, and confidence in better outcomes waned. Yet the connectivity and collectivity of social movements, of the fragile, unlikely webs of an alternative notion of existence, keep materializing—a haunting hope, dense in relationships, suggesting a more convivial, relational world.Catherine Keller brings process, feminist, and ecological theologies into conversation with continental philosophy, the quantum entanglements of a “participatory universe,” and the writings of Walt Whitman, Alfred North Whitehead, and Judith Butler to develop a “theopoetics” for all relations. Global movements, personal embroilments, and the inextricable relationship of humans and nonhumans—these phenomena, in their unsettling togetherness, are exceeding our capacities to know, grasp, and manage. By staging a series of encounters between the relational and the apophatic, the inseparable and the nonknowable, Keller shows what can be born from negative entanglement.-from Columbia University Press

Abayomi, the Brazilian Puma: The True Story of an Orphaned cub


Darcy Pattison - 2014
    A mother puma, an attempt to steal a chicken and an angry chicken farmer—the search is on for orphaned cubs. Will the scientists be able to find the cubs before their time runs out?In this “Biography in Text and Art,” Harvill takes original photos as references to create accurate wildlife illustrations. These aren’t generic cats, but one particular individual in detail. Pattison’s careful research, vetted by scientists in the field, brings to life this this true story of an infant cub that must face a complicated world alone—and find a way to survive. Praise for Wisdom, the Midway Albatross: Surviving the Japanese Tsunami and other Disasters for Over 60 Years★ “. . .Pattison writes crisply and evocatively. . .” “Harvill contributes carefully detailed and naturalistic illustrations. . .”--Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

Sea Turtle Scientist


Stephen R. Swinburne - 2014
    Kimberly Stewart, also known as the Turtle Lady of St. Kitts, is already waiting at midnight when an 800-pound leatherback sea turtle crawls out of the Caribbean surf and onto the sandy beach. The mother turtle has a vital job to do: dig a nest in which she will lay eggs that will hatch into part of the next generation of leatherbacks. With only one in a thousand of the eggs for this critically endangered species resulting in an adult sea turtle, the odds are stacked against her and her offspring. Join the renowned author and photographer Steve Swinburne on a journey through history to learn how sea turtles came to be endangered, and what scientists like Kimberly are doing to save them. For the complete selection of books in this critically acclaimed, award-winning series, visit www.sciencemeetsadventure.com.

Restoring the Soul of the World: Our Living Bond with Nature's Intelligence


David Fideler - 2014
    But with the arrival of the Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries, the world was viewed as a lifeless, clock­like mechanism, bound by the laws of classical physics. Intelligence was a trait ascribed solely to human beings, and thus humanity was viewed as superior to and separate from nature. Today new scientific discoveries are reviving the ancient philosophy of a living, interconnected cosmos, and humanity is learning from and collaborating with nature’s intelligence in new, life-enhancing ways, from ecological design to biomimicry. Drawing upon the most important scientific discoveries of recent times, David Fideler explores the self-organizing intelligence at the heart of nature and humanity’s place in the cosmic pattern. He examines the ancient vision of the living cosmos from its roots in the “world soul” of the Greeks and the alchemical tradition, to its eclipse during the Scientific Revolution, to its return today. He explains how the mechanistic worldview led to humanity’s profound sense of alienation, for if the universe only functioned as a machine, there was no longer any room for genuine creativity or spontaneity. He shows how this isn’t the case and how, even at the molecular level, natural systems engage in self-organization, self-preservation, and creative problem solving, mirroring the ancient idea of a creative intelligence that exists deep within the heart of nature. Revealing new connections between science, religion, and culture, Fideler explores how to reengage our creative partnership with nature and new ways to collaborate with nature’s intelligence.

The Last Beach


Orrin H. Pilkey - 2014
    The geologists Orrin H. Pilkey and J. Andrew G. Cooper sound the alarm in this frank assessment of our current relationship with beaches and their grim future if we do not change the way we understand and treat our irreplaceable shores. Combining case studies and anecdotes from around the world, they argue that many of the world's developed beaches, including some in Florida and in Spain, are virtually doomed and that we must act immediately to save imperiled beaches.After explaining beaches as dynamic ecosystems, Pilkey and Cooper assess the harm done by dense oceanfront development accompanied by the construction of massive seawalls to protect new buildings from a shoreline that encroaches as sea levels rise. They discuss the toll taken by sand mining, trash that washes up on beaches, and pollution, which has contaminated not only the water but also, surprisingly, the sand. Acknowledging the challenge of reconciling our actions with our love of beaches, the geologists offer suggestions for reversing course, insisting that given the space, beaches can take care of themselves and provide us with multiple benefits.

Searching for Pekpek: Cassowaries and Conservation in the New Guinea Rainforest


Andrew L. Mack - 2014
    He and his co-investigator Debra Wright, built a research station by hand and lived there for years. Their mission was to study the secretive and perhaps most dinosaur-like creature still roaming the planet: the cassowary.The ensuing adventures of this unorthodox biologist studying seeds found in cassowary droppings (pekpek), learning to live among the indigenous Pawai'ia, traversing jungles, fighting pests and loneliness, struggling against unscrupulous oil speculators, and more are woven into a compelling tale that spans two decades. Mack shares the insights he garnered about rainforest ecology while studying something as seemingly mundane as cassowary pekpek. He ultimately gained profound insight into why conservation is failing in places like Papua New Guinea and struggled to create a more viable strategy for conserving some of Earth's last wild rainforests.

Natural Rhythms: A Sacred Guide into Nature's Creation Secrets


Lisa Michaels - 2014
     In Natural Rhythms: A Sacred Guide Into Nature's Creation Secrets, bestselling author and Hay House Mover and Shaker Lisa Michaels reveals how to open to the guiding insights of the natural world and honor the sacred in everything you do by directly connecting to the Divine as you go about the practical matters of life. Discover how to: - focus your intentions for creation. - listen to and apply the elemental forces of nature – Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Spirit – to ALL your creations. - deepen your alignment with the natural rhythmic cycles of the sun, moon, and stars in order to gain heightened levels of inner peace and balance. - access your own inner wisdom, knowing, and divinity. Natural Rhythms: A Sacred Guide Into Nature's Creation Secrets is applicable in every area of your life: from home and family, to business and career, to community service and creative expression. Learn how to: - release old emotional baggage - improve relationships - activate your ability to take action - increase your ability to thrive Once you understand the sacred forces of nature, you’ll have a bridge for uniting Spirit and matter. Learn to connect to the forces of nature as your power tool for creation as you go about the practical matters of life - from creating a meal, changing diapers, planting vegetables, paying bills, building wealth, and working in your career.

Introducing Evangelical Ecotheology: Foundations in Scripture, Theology, History, and Praxis


Daniel L. Brunner - 2014
    In the eyes of many, the evangelical community has been slow to take up a call to creation care. How do Christians address this issue in a faithful way? This evangelically centered but ecumenically informed introduction to ecological theology (ecotheology) explores the global dimensions of creation care, calling Christians to meet contemporary ecological challenges with courage and hope. The book provides a biblical, theological, ecological, and historical rationale for Earthcare as well as specific practices to engage both individuals and churches. Drawing from a variety of Christian traditions, the book promotes a spirit of hospitality, civility, honesty, and partnership. It includes a foreword by Bill McKibben and an afterword by Matthew Sleeth.

Zobi and the Zoox


Ailsa Wild - 2014
    It tells the story of the microscopic friends living in a tiny coral polyp.With her home under threat from a warming ocean, Zobi, a brave
rhizobia bacterium, teams up with a family of slow but steady Zoox (zooxanthellae). The coral becomes gravely ill and bacteria around them begin to starve.
Can Zobi and the Zoox work together to save the day?Zobi and the Zoox is the second in the Small Friends series – stories of symbioses between microbes and larger forms of life. Each book is also a kind of symbiosis: a collaboration between writers, scientists, artists, designers and educators. Small Friends was initiated by Scale Free Network, an art-science collective.

A Hippo Love Story


Karen Paolillo - 2014
    With help from the British animal charity Care for the Wild International, she raised over 26 000 pounds to feed them and give them their own artificial water source as their habitat, the Turgwe River, had completely dried up. The husband and wife team, with their Hippo friends, have been through natural disasters such as floods, land invasions and having their lives threatened by guns, mobs and violence. The area they now live in with the hippos is called the Save Valley Conservancy. Since Karen’s intervention and the formation of the Turgwe Hippo Trust, the hippos have prospered, but not without severe stress and pressures upon her and her husband. This is the story of her life, of how an English girl came to womanhood and found her dream, a dream that has at times been harder than one could ever have imagined.

Visual Ecology


Thomas W. Cronin - 2014
    Visual Ecology provides the first up-to-date synthesis of the field to appear in more than three decades. Featuring some 225 illustrations, including more than 140 in color, spread throughout the text, this comprehensive and accessible book begins by discussing the basic properties of light and the optical environment. It then looks at how photoreceptors intercept light and convert it to usable biological signals, how the pigments and cells of vision vary among animals, and how the properties of these components affect a given receptor's sensitivity to light. The book goes on to examine how eyes and photoreceptors become specialized for an array of visual tasks, such as navigation, evading prey, mate choice, and communication.A timely and much-needed resource for students and researchers alike, Visual Ecology also includes a glossary and a wealth of examples drawn from the full diversity of visual systems.The most up-to-date overview of visual ecology availableFeatures some 225 illustrations, including more than 140 in color, spread throughout the textGuides readers from the basic physics of light to the role of visual systems in animal behaviorIncludes a glossary and a wealth of real-world examples

Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology


Andreas Weber - 2014
    Being alive is an erotic process--constantly transforming the self through contact with others, desiring ever more life.In clever and surprising ways, Weber recognizes that love--the impulse to establish connections, to intermingle, to weave our existence poetically together with that of other beings--is a foundational principle of reality. The fact that we disregard this principle lies at the core of a global crisis of meaning that plays out in the avalanche of species loss and in our belief that the world is a dead mechanism controlled through economic efficiency.Although rooted in scientific observation, Matter and Desire becomes a tender philosophy for the Anthropocene, a "poetic materialism," that closes the gap between mind and matter. Ultimately, Weber discovers, in order to save life on Earth--and our own meaningful existence as human beings--we must learn to love.

Dinosaurs of the British Isles


Dean R. Lomax - 2014
    A summary of the history of every known dinosaur species discovered within the British Isles, with photographs of hundreds of fossils, graphics of skeletal reconstructions and vivid lifelike illustrations.

The Animal Sanctuary: The Inspirational Story of a New Zealand Animal and Wildlife Refuge


Shawn Bishop - 2014
    But that's where the similarity with other rural landowners begins and ends, because Shawn had a special purpose in mind when they bought their property: to establish an animal sanctuary.Over the last 10 years she and her husband, aided by a dedicated team of volunteers, have invested huge energy and resources to rescuing and rehabilitating a wide variety of animals in need. Abused farm animals, injured or orphaned native birds, rescued battery hens and other miscellaneous creatures have all come under their care. From ponies to pigs to penguins to parrots, they all receive the love and attention they need to turn their sad stories into happy endings. Written by freelance journalist Allison Jones in conjunction with Shawn, this illustrated account of Shawn and Michael's commitment to providing a better life for so many animals from such a large range of different backgrounds is not just heartwarming, but deeply inspirational.

Farming with Native Beneficial Insects: Ecological Pest Control Solutions


The Xerces Society - 2014
    This comprehensive guide to farming with insects will have you building beetle banks and native plant field borders as you reap a bountiful and pesticide-free harvest. With strategies for identifying the insects you’re trying to attract paired with step-by-step instructions for a variety of habitat-building projects, you’ll soon learn how to employ your own biocontrol conservation tactics. Lay out the brush piles and plant the hedgerows because the insects are going to love it here!

Material Ecocriticism


Serenella Iovino - 2014
    Bringing ecocriticism closer to the material turn, the contributions to this landmark volume focus on material forces and substances, the agency of things, processes, narratives and stories, and making meaning out of the world. This broad-ranging reflection on contemporary human experience and expression provokes new understandings of the planet to which we are intimately connected.

Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made


Gaia Vince - 2014
    But all too often the full picture of change is obstructed by dense data sets and particular catastrophes. Struggling with this obscurity in her role as an editor at Nature, Gaia Vince decided to travel the world and see for herself what life is really like for people on the frontline of this new reality. What she found was a number people doing the most extraordinary things.During her journey she finds a man who is making artificial glaciers in Nepal along with an individual who is painting mountains white to attract snowfall; take the electrified reefs of the Maldives; or the man who's making islands out of rubbish in the Caribbean. These are ordinary people who are solving severe crises in crazy, ingenious, effective ways. While Vince does not mince words regarding the challenging position our species is in, these wonderful stories, combined with the new science that underpins Gaia's expertise and research, make for a persuasive, illuminating — and strangely hopeful — read on what the Anthropocene means for our future.

California Bees & Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists


Gordon W Frankie - 2014
    In this absorbing guidebook, some of the state's preeminent bee and botany experts introduce us to this diverse population. California Bees and Blooms holds a magnifying glass up to the twenty-two most common genera (and six species of cuckoo bees), describing each one's distinctive behaviors, social structures, flight season, preferred flowers, and enemies. Enhancing these descriptions are photographs of bees so finely detailed they capture pollen scattered across gauzy wings and iridescent exoskeletons. Drawing from years of research at the UC Berkeley Urban Bee Lab, California Bees and Blooms presents an authoritative look at these creatures, emphasizing their vital relationship with flowers. In addition to opening our eyes to the beautiful array of wild bees in our midst, this book provides information on fifty-th

A Children's Guide to Arctic Birds (English)


Mia Pelletier - 2014
    In this book, young readers learn about twelve of the birds that call the Arctic home, whether that be for all or part of the year. With a simple layout and easy-to-follow headings for each bird, this beautiful book is filled with fun, useful facts, including where to look for eggs and nests during the short Arctic summer and how to recognize each bird's call on the wind. Because migratory birds live in the Arctic for part of the year, many of the feathered friends covered in A Children's Guide to Arctic Birds can be seen at various times of the year throughout North America.

Alien


Roger Luckhurst - 2014
    Tracing the constellation of talents that came together to produce the film, Roger Luckhurst examines its origins as a monster movie script called Star Beast, dismissed by many in Hollywood as B-movie trash, through to its afterlife in numerous sequels, prequels and elaborations. Exploring the ways in which Alien compels us to think about otherness, Luckhurst demonstrates how and why this interstellar slasher movie, this old dark house in space, came to coil itself around our darkest imaginings about the fragility of humanity. This special edition features original cover artwork by Marta Lech.

Britain's Habitats: A Guide to the Wildlife Habitats of Britain and Ireland


Sophie Lake - 2014
    In essence a field guide, the book leads the reader through all the main habitat types, with information on their characteristics, extent, geographical variation, key species, cultural importance, origins and conservation. It aims to help visitors to the countryside recognize the habitats around them, understand how they have evolved and what makes them special, and imagine how they might change in the future.This book is the perfect companion for anyone travelling in Britain and Ireland, and essential reading for all wildlife enthusiasts, professional ecologists and landscape architects.Individual sections on all the main habitat types found in Britain and IrelandMore than 680 evocative colour photographs, including images from around Britain and Ireland in all seasonsDetails and photographs of key species and features associated with the different habitatsUp-to-date information--including maps--on the distribution, extent and importance of all habitat typesInformation on key nature conservation designations and different systems of habitat classification

The Vegan Book of Permaculture: Recipes for Healthy Eating and Earthright Living


Graham Burnett - 2014
    It doesn't have to be this way! The Vegan Book of Permaculture gives us the tools and confidence to take responsibility for our lives and actions. Creating a good meal, either for ourselves or to share, taking time to prepare fresh, wholesome home- or locally grown ingredients with care and respect can be a deeply liberating experience. It is also a way of taking back some control from the advertising agencies and multinational corporations. In this groundbreaking and original book, Graham demonstrates how understanding universal patterns and principles, and applying these to our own gardens and lives, can make a very real difference to both our personal lives and the health of our planet. This also isn't so very different from the compassionate concern for -animals, people, and environment- of the vegan way.Interspersed with an abundance of delicious, healthy, and wholesome exploitation-free recipes, Graham provides solutions-based approaches to nurturing personal effectiveness and health, eco-friendly living, home and garden design, veganic food growing, reforestation strategies, forest gardening, reconnection with wild nature, and community regeneration with plenty of practical ways to be well fed with not an animal dead! This is vegan living at its best.

Eleven


Paul Hanley - 2014
    But can the planet accommodate an additional 3.7 billion people and a five-fold economic expansion given our current ecological footprint already exceeds Earth's biocapacity by 60%?This question will preoccupy humanity throughout this century. Our mission is daunting: Somehow, we must support 50% more people and raise billions out of poverty and reduce our ecological footprint to a sustainable level last found in 1976, when we were 4 billion. Clearly, humanity has to change direction. Yet every facet of our social-economic-political order—indeed the totality of the dominant global culture—trains us to maintain the status quo: perpetual material growth. ELEVEN considers how we got into this predicament and maps a way forward. It argues that solving this conundrum will require an ethical revolution, one that will wholly transform humankind, reshaping its inner life and external conditions. This process will result in the emergence of a new culture, a new agriculture, and ultimately a new human race. Current models cannot generate the level of change that is demanded. ELEVEN introduces a framework for global transformation: Only a dynamic, grassroots capacity-building process, involving individuals, communities, and institutions, in neighbourhoods and villages everywhere—linked together on a global scale—can make this transformation succeed. Making the world work for 11 billion people will be humanity’s greatest challenge. That we will unite to meet this ultimate challenge is neither a utopian vision, nor even a matter of choice. It is the next, inescapable stage in human evolution.ELEVEN is available from www.friesenpress.com/bookstore, most online booksellers, and select bookstores.

Star's Reach: A Novel Of The Deindustrial Future


John Michael Greer - 2014
    Now, in the ruins of a deserted city, a young man mining metal risks his life to win a priceless clue. That discovery will send him and an unlikely band of seekers on a quest for a place out of legend where human beings might once have communicated with distant worlds - a place called Star's Reach.

The Fish in the Forest: Salmon and the Web of Life


Dale Stokes - 2014
    Dale Stokes shows how nearly all aspects of this fragile ecosystem—from streambeds to treetops, from sea urchins to orcas to bears, from rain forests to kelp forests—are intimately linked with the biology of the Pacific salmon. Illustrated with 70 stunning color photographs by Doc White, The Fish in the Forest demonstrates how the cycling of nutrients between the ocean and the land, mediated by the life and death of the salmon, is not only key to understanding the landscape of the north Pacific coast, but is also a powerful metaphor for all of life on earth.

Malthus: The Life and Legacies of an Untimely Prophet


Robert J. Mayhew - 2014
    Arguing that nature is niggardly and that societies, both human and animal, tend to overstep the limits of natural resources in "perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery," he found himself attacked on all sides--by Romantic poets, utopian thinkers, and the religious establishment. Though Malthus has never disappeared, he has been perpetually misunderstood. This book is at once a major reassessment of Malthus's ideas and an intellectual history of the origins of modern debates about demography, resources, and the environment.Against the ferment of Enlightenment ideals about the perfectibility of mankind and the grim realities of life in the eighteenth century, Robert Mayhew explains the genesis of the Essay and Malthus's preoccupation with birth and death rates. He traces Malthus's collision course with the Lake poets, his important revisions to the Essay, and composition of his other great work, Principles of Political Economy. Mayhew suggests we see the author in his later writings as an environmental economist for his persistent concern with natural resources, land, and the conditions of their use. Mayhew then pursues Malthus's many afterlives in the Victorian world and beyond.Today, the Malthusian dilemma makes itself felt once again, as demography and climate change come together on the same environmental agenda. By opening a new door onto Malthus's arguments and their transmission to the present day, Robert Mayhew gives historical depth to our current planetary concerns.

A Comprehensive Guide to Insects of Britain and Ireland


Paul D. Brock - 2014
    Brock, Scientific Associate of the Natural History Museum, London, and author of the acclaimed 'Photographic Guide to Insects of the New Forest' is the most complete guide to insects of Britain and Ireland ever produced with over 2700 full colour photographs and fully comprehensive sections on all insect groups, including flies, bees and wasps.

Greening the Global Economy


Robert Pollin - 2014
    Yet in Greening the Global Economy, economist Robert Pollin shows that they are attainable through steady, large-scale investments--totaling about 1.5 percent of global GDP on an annual basis--in both energy efficiency and clean renewable energy sources. Not only that: Pollin argues that with the right investments, these efforts will expand employment and drive economic growth.Drawing on years of research, Pollin explores all aspects of the problem: how much energy will be needed in a range of industrialized and developing economies; what efficiency targets should be; and what kinds of industrial policy will maximize investment and support private and public partnerships in green growth so that a clean energy transformation can unfold without broad subsidies.All too frequently, inaction on climate change is blamed on its potential harm to the economy. Pollin shows greening the economy is not only possible but necessary: global economic growth depends on it.

Common Threads: Weaving Community through Collaborative Eco-Art


Sharon Kallis - 2014
    Invasive-species control, green-waste management, urban gardening, and traditional crafts can all be brought together to strengthen community relationships and foster responsible land stewardship. Simple, easily taught, creative techniques applied with shared purpose become the modern-day equivalent of a barn raising or a quilting bee.Common Threads is a unique guide to engaging community members in communal handwork for the greater good. Sharon Kallis provides a wealth of ideas for:Working with unwanted natural materials, with an emphasis on green waste and invasive speciesVisualizing projects that celebrate the human element while crafting works of art or environmental remediationCreating opportunities for individuals to connect with nature in a unique, meditative, yet community-oriented wayCombining detailed, step-by-step instructions with tips for successful process and an overview of completed projects, Common Threads is a different kind of weaving book. This inspirational guide is designed to help artists and activists foster community, build empowerment, and develop a do-it-together attitude while planning and implementing works of collaborative eco-art.Sharon Kallis is a Vancouver artist who specializes in working with unwanted natural materials. Involving community in connecting traditional hand techniques with invasive species and garden waste, she creates site-specific installations that become ecological interventions. Her recent projects include The Urban Weaver Project, Aberthau: flax=food+fibre, and working closely with fiber artists, park ecologists, First Nations basket weavers, and others.

Total Liberation: The Power and Promise of Animal Rights and the Radical Earth Movement


David Naguib Pellow - 2014
    But ELF’s communiqué on the action went beyond the radical group’s customary brief. Drawing connections between the harms facing the myriad animals who make their home in the trees and the struggles for social justice among ordinary human beings resisting exclusion and marginalization, the dispatch declared, “all oppression is linked, just as we are all linked,” and decried the “patriarchal nightmare” in the form of “techno-industrial global capitalism.”In Total Liberation, David Naguib Pellow takes up this claim and makes sense of the often tense and violent relationships among humans, ecosystems, and nonhuman animal species, expanding our understanding of inequality and activists’ uncompromising efforts to oppose it. Grounded in interviews with more than one hundred activists, on-the-spot fieldwork, and analyses of thousands of pages of documents, websites, journals, and zines, Total Liberation reveals the ways in which radical environmental and animal rights movements challenge inequity through a vision they call “total liberation.” In its encounters with such infamous activists as scott crow, Tre Arrow, Lauren Regan, Rod Coronado, and Gina Lynn, the book offers a close-up, insider’s view of one of the most important—and feared—social movements of our day. At the same time, it shows how and why the U.S. justice system plays to that fear, applying to these movements measures generally reserved for “jihadists”—with disturbing implications for civil liberties and constitutional freedom.How do the adherents of “total liberation” fight oppression and seek justice for humans, nonhumans, and ecosystems alike? And how is this pursuit shaped by the politics of anarchism and anticapitalism? In his answers, Pellow provides crucial in-depth insight into the origins and social significance of the earth and animal liberation movements and their increasingly common and compelling critique of inequality as a threat to life and a dream of a future characterized by social and ecological justice for all.

Eddie and Harry


Jane Kretzmann - 2014
    The friendship between Eddie, a Great Egret, and Harry, a Great Blue Heron, fosters an atmosphere of trust where both birds wrestle with their insecurities and come to understand themselves better. The work is beautifully illustrated by artist Diann Ditewig.

Deep Map Country: Literary Cartography of the Great Plains


Susan Naramore Maher - 2014
    Proposing that its roots can be found in Great Plains nonfiction writing, Susan Naramore Maher explores the many facets of this vital form of critique, exploration, and celebration that weaves together such elements of narrative as natural history, cultural history, geography, memoir, and intertextuality.  Maher’s Deep Map Country gives readers the first book-length study of the deep-map nonfiction of the Great Plains region, featuring writers as diverse as Julene Bair, Sharon Butala, Loren Eiseley, Don Gayton, Linda Hasselstrom, William Least Heat-Moon, John Janovy Jr., John McPhee, Kathleen Norris, and Wallace Stegner. Deep Map Country examines the many layers of storytelling woven into their essays: the deep time of geology and evolutionary biology; the cultural history of indigenous and settlement communities; the personal stories of encounters with this expansive terrain; the political and industrial stories that have affected the original biome and Plains economies; and the spiritual dimensions of the physical environment that press on everyday realities.

Urban Ecology: Science of Cities


Richard T.T. Forman - 2014
    The book presents models, patterns, and examples from hundreds of cities worldwide. Numerous illustrations enrich the presentation. Cities are analyzed, not as ecologically bad or good, but as places with concentrated rather than dispersed people. Urban ecology principles, traditionally adapted from natural-area ecology, now increasingly emerge from the distinctive features of cities. Spatial patterns and flows, linking organisms, built structures, and the physical environment highlight a treasure chest of useful principles. This pioneering interdisciplinary book opens up frontiers of insight, as a valuable source and text for undergraduates, graduates, researchers, professionals, and others with a thirst for solutions to growing urban problems.

Dams and Development in China: The Moral Economy of Water and Power


Bryan Tilt - 2014
    The benefits are considerable: dams deliver hydropower, provide reliable irrigation water, protect people and farmland against flooding, and produce hydroelectricity in a nation with a seeimingly insatiable appetite for energy. As hydropower responds to a larger share of energy demand, dams may also help to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, welcome news in a country where air and water pollution have become dire and greenhouse gas emissions are the highest in the world.Yet the advantages of dams come at a high cost for river ecosystems and for the social and economic well-being of local people, who face displacement and farmland loss. This book examines the array of water-management decisions faced by Chinese leaders and their consequences for local communities. Focusing on the southwestern province of Yunnan--a major hub for hydropower development in China--which encompasses one of the world's most biodiverse temperate ecosystems and one of China's most ethnically and culturally rich regions, Bryan Tilt takes the reader from the halls of decision-making power in Beijing to Yunnan's rural villages. In the process, he examines the contrasting values of government agencies, hydropower corporations, NGOs, and local communities and explores how these values are linked to longstanding cultural norms about what is right, proper, and just. He also considers the various strategies these groups use to influence water-resource policy, including advocacy, petitioning, and public protest. Drawing on a decade of research, he offers his insights on whether the world's most populous nation will adopt greater transparency, increased scientific collaboration, and broader public participation as it continues to grow economically.

The Price of Paradise: The Costs of Inequality and a Vision for a More Equitable America


David Dante Troutt - 2014
    In The Price of Paradise, David Dante Troutt argues that it is a lack of what he calls "regional equity" in our local decision making that has led to this looming crisis now facing so many cities and local governments. Unless we adopt policies that take into consideration all class levels, he argues, the underlying inequity affecting poor and middle class communities will permanently limit opportunity for the next generations of Americans. Arguing that there are "structural flaws" in the American dream, Troutt explores the role that place plays in our thinking and how we have organized our communities to create or deny opportunity. Through a careful presentation of this crisis at the national level and also through on-the-ground observation in communities like Newark, Detroit, Houston, Oakland, and New York City that all face similar hardships, he makes the case that America's tendency to separate into enclaves in urban areas or to sprawl off on one's own in suburbs gravely undermines the American dream. Troutt shows that the tendency to separate also has maintained racial segregation in our cities and towns, itself cementing many barriers for advancement. A profound conversation about America at the crossroads, The Price of Paradise is a multilayered exploration of the legal, economic, and cultural forces that contribute to the squeeze on the middle class, the hidden dangers of growing income and wealth inequality, and environmentally unsustainable growth and consumption patterns. David Dante Troutt is Professor of Law and Justice John J. Francis Scholar at the Rutgers University-Newark Law School. He also serves as Director of the Center on Law in Metropolitan Equity at Rutgers Law School. Troutt is a columnist, novelist, and the author of several works of nonfiction, most recently After the Storm: Black Intellectuals Explore the Meaning of Hurricane Katrina.

An Introduction to R for Spatial Analysis and Mapping


Chris Brunsdon - 2014
    This book provides an introduction to the use of R for spatial statistical analysis, geocomputation and the analysis of geographical information for researchers collecting and using data with location attached, largely through increased GPS functionality. Brunsdon and Comber take readers from 'zero to hero' in spatial analysis and mapping through functions they have developed and compiled into R packages. This enables practical R applications in GIS, spatial analyses, spatial statistics, mapping, and web-scraping. Each chapter includes: Example data and commands for exploring it Scripts and coding to exemplify specific functionality Advice for developing greater understanding - through functions such as locator(), View(), and alternative coding to achieve the same ends Self-contained exercises for students to work through Embedded code within the descriptive text. This is a definitive 'how to' that takes students - of any discipline - from coding to actual applications and uses of R.

Virginia Climate Fever: How Global Warming Will Transform Our Cities, Shorelines, and Forests


Stephen Nash - 2014
    Yet the consequences of global warming are of an increasingly acute and serious nature.In Virginia Climate Fever, environmental journalist Stephen Nash brings home the threat of climate change to the state of Virginia. Weaving together a compelling mix of data and conversations with both respected scientists and Virginians most immediately at risk from global warming's effects, the author details how Virginia's climate has already begun to change. In engaging prose and layman's terms, Nash argues that alteration in the environment will affect not only the state's cities but also hundreds of square miles of urban and natural coastal areas, the 60 percent of the state that is forested, the Chesapeake Bay, and the near Atlantic, with accompanying threats such as the potential spread of infectious disease. The narrative offers striking descriptions of the vulnerabilities of the state's many beautiful natural areas, around which much of its tourism industry is built.While remaining respectful of the controversy around global warming, Nash allows the research to speak for itself. In doing so, he offers a practical approach to and urgent warning about the impending impact of climate change in Virginia.

North Shore: A Natural History of Minnesota's Superior Coast


Chel Anderson - 2014
    Some plants and animals have taken up residence in the region’s ancient mountains, others in its lakes and flowing rivers. Together, they weave a living fabric of sublime and fascinating beauty. These organisms come to life in North Shore, a comprehensive environmental history of one of Minnesota’s most beloved places.The story of this region unfolds through the five interconnected areas of Minnesota’s North Shore watershed—the meandering rivers of the Headwaters, the deep and dense forest of the Highlands, the rocky Nearshore, the drama of Lake Superior, and its mysterious islands, including Isle Royale and Susie Island archipelagos. Each section begins with an overview of the forces that have shaped the area, then the focus turns to a wide range of inhabitants, such as chorus frogs and star-nosed moles, butterworts and coaster brook trout, jeweled diatoms and pitcher plants, black bears and blue-spotted salamanders. Each chapter links to the region’s broader history, from the sculpting of the land by mile-high glaciers to the role of scientific exploration, the advent of logging, the development of tourism, and the changing global climate.North Shore reminds us that the natural history of this extraordinary region is still being created and that each of us—individually and collectively—are the authors of this ongoing narrative. Compelling and accessible, the book will provide readers with a science-based knowledge of the Minnesota North Shore watershed so that together we can write a new, hopeful chapter for its inhabitants, both human and wild.

How to Read the Landscape


Patrick Whitefield - 2014
    It is remarkable, therefore, that no one has written about the landscapes they're walking through and enjoying . . . until now.Patrick Whitefield has spent a lifetime living and working in the countryside and twenty years of that taking notes of what he sees, everywhere from the Isle of Wight to the Scottish Highlands. This book is the fruit of those years of experience.In How to Read the Landscape, Patrick explains everything from the details, such as the signs that wild animals leave as their signatures and the meaning behind the shapes of different trees, to how whole landscapes, including woodland, grassland, and moorland, fit together and function as a whole. Rivers and lakes, roads and paths, hedgerows and field walls are also explained, as well as the influence of different rocks, the soil, and the ever-changing climate. There's even a chapter on the fascinating history of the landscape and one about natural succession, how the landscape changes of its own accord when we leave it alone. The landscape will never look the same again. You will not only appreciate its beauty, it will also come alive with a whole new depth of appreciation and understanding.The lively text is supported by 50 color photographs, 140 line drawings by the author, and extracts from his notebooks illustrating actual examples of the landscapes he describes. Opening How to Read the Landscape is like opening a window on a whole new way of seeing the living world around you.

Life on Display: Revolutionizing U.S. Museums of Science and Natural History in the Twentieth Century


Karen A. Rader - 2014
    Karen A. Rader and Victoria E. M. Cain chronicle profound changes in these exhibitions—and the institutions that housed them—between 1910 and 1990, ultimately offering new perspectives on the history of museums, science, and science education.             Rader and Cain explain why science and natural history museums began to welcome new audiences between the 1900s and the 1920s and chronicle the turmoil that resulted from the introduction of new kinds of biological displays. They describe how these displays of life changed dramatically once again in the 1930s and 1940s, as museums negotiated changing, often conflicting interests of scientists, educators, and visitors. The authors then reveal how museum staffs, facing intense public and scientific scrutiny, experimented with wildly different definitions of life science and life science education from the 1950s through the 1980s. The book concludes with a discussion of the influence that corporate sponsorship and blockbuster economics wielded over science and natural history museums in the century’s last decades.             A vivid, entertaining study of the ways science and natural history museums shaped and were shaped by understandings of science and public education in the twentieth-century United States, Life on Display will appeal to historians, sociologists, and ethnographers of American science and culture, as well as museum practitioners and general readers.

Florida's Wetlands


Ellie Whitney - 2014
    Upgraded and revised from the earlier book "Priceless Florida" (and modified for a stand-alone book), this volume discusses Florida's wetlands, including interior wetlands, seepage wetlands, marshes, flowing-water swamps, beaches and marine marshes, and mangrove swamps.

Saving the World's Deciduous Forests: Ecological Perspectives from East Asia, North America, and Europe


Robert A. Askins - 2014
    But today the world s great forests confront more ominous threats than ever before. This visionary book is the first to examine forests consisting of oaks, maples, hickories, beeches, chestnuts, birches and ecologically similar animals and plants on three continentsEast Asia, Europe, and North Americato reveal their common origin back in time, the ecological patterns they share, and the approaches to conservation that have been attempted on their behalf. Although these forests face common problems, threats due to human activities vary. Different land use and agricultural practices on the three continents, as well as different attitudes about what is worth preserving, have led to strikingly different approaches to forest conservation. Robert Askins explores the strengths and weaknesses of conservation efforts across the continents and concludes that the ideal strategy for the future will blend the best ideas from each."

The Compost-Powered Water Heater: How to heat your greenhouse, pool, or buildings with only compost!


Gaelan Brown - 2014
    But it works, and this book is your practical introduction. With detailed case studies of large scale engineered systems and plans for constructing small DIY systems, you'll find step-by-step illustrations and photos to guide you through the process. A review of calculations to help you estimate the heating capabilities of various approaches and other planning tools make this book invaluable for compost heat recovery on any scale.

The Hadal Zone: Life in the Deepest Oceans


Alan Jamieson - 2014
    Despite very little research effort since the 1950s, the last ten years has seen a renaissance in hadal exploration, almost certainly as a result of technological advances that have made this otherwise largely inaccessible frontier, a viable subject for research. Providing an overview of the geology involved in trench formation, the hydrography and food supply, this book details all that is currently known about organisms at hadal depths and linkages to the better known abyssal and bathyal depths. New insights on how, where and what really survives and thrives in the deepest biozone are provided, allowing this region to be considered when dealing with sustainability and conservation issues in the marine environment.

Saving Beauty: A Theological Aesthetics of Nature


Kathryn B. Alexander - 2014
    Alexander argues that natural beauty is a source of religious insight into the need and way of salvation, and this project develops a theological aesthetics of nature and beauty with an aim toward cultivating a theological and ethical framework for redeemed life as participation in ecological community.With interdisciplinary verve, engaging systematic, philosophical, and art theory systems of aesthetics, the volume fosters the cultivation of the sense of beauty through creative, religious, and sacramental experience. All three types, in fact, are critically necessary, as the author argues, in eliciting hope for ecological redemption. This volume makes a vital contribution to the systematic and philosophical framework for ecological theology, aesthetics, and theological ethics.

Dark Mountain: Issue 6


Nick Hunt - 2014
    For the first time, the photographs, colour plates, line drawings and etchings have made their way beyond the familiar colour plates into the rest of the book, interweaving with the text.As explained in the editorial, ‘The Rising of the Waters’, this issue began with an invitation to imagine a future other than the fantasies of instant apocalypse or sustained development with which our culture is obsessed. A future in which the gradual grinding-down of our civilisation by floods and other natural events goes on for decades or even centuries. What does such a slow decline mean for us psychologically, politically, economically and ecologically?The writers and artists featured here respond to that invitation from many angles and from many parts of the world. Tom Smith’s opening essay, ‘The Focal and the Flask’, begins in the peat country of Ireland, taking us deep into the politics and the psychology of technological civilisation. Then Michael McLane’s summer trip to the dry lakes of Utah is shadowed by predator drones and nuclear test sites. Nick Hunt takes us across ‘Six Deserts’ and Charlotte Du Cann takes off ‘Seven Coats’, unpeeling the layers of a personal story that deepens into a reliving of the oldest myth we have of a journey through the underworld, that taken by the Sumerian goddess Inanna.There are shrines and farms, Malaysian dragons and Zen temples, a chronicle of self-burial beneath an ancient fire, the drowning ecological soundscapes recorded by Bernie Krause, raft building, intertidal cities, Alaskan quests and much more, before the book finally comes to a close with David Schuman’s ‘Squirrel’, a story about the smallness of a modern life before the greatness and sadness of the natural world.Contributors to Dark Mountain: Issue 6 also include John Haines, Jeppe Dyrendom Graugaard, Anne-Marie Culhane, Edward Chell, Deanne Belinoff, Julie Gabrielli, Zedeck Siew, Nancy Campbell, Joan Menefee, Robert Alcock, Patrik Qvist, Massimo Angèi, Brian Beatty, Hila Ratzabi, Sarah Gittins, Kirsty Logan, Em Strang, Kim Moore, Kate Walters, Dougie Strang, Kim Goldberg, Mandy Henk, Sarah Sadie, Daniel Mack, Franciszka Voeltz, Sarah Rae, Jeffrey Flannery, Monique Besten, Nick Stewart, Clint Stevens, Florence Caplow, Corrina Ulrich, David Kenkel, Cate Chapman, Jethro Brice, Andrew Macrae, Adam Weymouth, Neale Jones, Carla Stang, Grace Wells and Steve Wheeler.Dark Mountain: Issue 6 is 270 pages long, with 42 stories, essays and poems and 16 colour plates.

Gaia’s Dance: The Story of Earth & Us


Elisabet Sahtouris - 2014
    Looking now through a telescope powerful enough to see Earth from a planet a few thousand light years away from us, we might see an ancient Greek storyteller relating the creation story of Gaia’s Dance. Evolution biologist Elisabet Sahtouris takes us through the scientific story of evolution showing parallels with the ancient story while unfoding it scientifically to reveal how our own amazing bodies trace their roots to ancient bacterial cooperatives and how the essence of biological evolution is a repeating maturation process in which youthful competition gives way to mature cooperation. Learning how our own smart molecule proteins manage our cellular economies shows how we ourselves can navigate the perfect storm of crises we face and mature quickly into a healthy, cooperative human future. Comments on Gaia’s Dance:Elisabet's vision of evolution as an endlessly repeating cycle of maturation from competition to cooperation at all levels reinforced the same beliefs I had acquired through my stem cell research. Her research and profoundly important conclusions mesmerized me. Elisabet's vision and beautiful mind resolve massive complexities into elegant simplicity.—Bruce Lipton, pioneer in epigenetics, author of The Biology of Belief, Spontaneous Evolution and The Honeymoon EffectA splendid book!—Jean Houston, founder of Human Potential Movement and Mystery Schools; author of The Wizard of Us, along with 25 other books In Gaia's Dance, Sahtouris leads us to experience the difference it makes when we see Earth not as a machine, but as a living being. If we all made that one, profound shift, the world would be transformed. —Betty Sue Flowers, editor of Global Scenarios for Shell Oil, and books including Campbell's The Power of Myth, Jaworski's Synchronicity, and co-author of Presence; Human Purpose and the Field of the Future.

Thomas Templeton and the Year of the Vivificus


Diana Wurfbain - 2014
    During a yearlong journey across the Pacific Ocean, Thomas encounters not only unexpected dangers, uncharted islands and amazing creatures unknown to the rest of the world, but also a terrifying secret and a shocking truth about his own family that will change his life forever. Subject & Themes: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Monsters, Leadership and Responsibility and Perseverance, Courage and Honor. Genres: General Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure.

Native Trees of Western Washington: A Photographic Guide


Kevin W Zobrist - 2014
    Fortunately these magical places are abundant, covering half the state's soil. The author examines regional indigenous trees from a forestry specialist's unique perspective. He explains basic tree physiology and a key part of their ecology--forest stand dynamics. Grouping distinctive varieties into sections, he describes common lowland conifers and broadleaved trees, high-elevation species found in the Olympic Mountains and western side of the Cascades, and finally, trees with a limited natural range and small, isolated populations. Numerous full-color photographs illustrate key traits. Zobrist also includes notable features, where to find particular species, and brief lists of some common human uses, citing Native American medicines, food, and materials, as well as commercial utilization from the time of European settlement to the present day. The result is a delightful and enlightening exploration of western Washington timberlands.