Best of
Environment

1978

Of Wolves and Men


Barry Lopez - 1978
    Lopez’s classic, careful study has won praise from a wide range of reviewers and improved the way books on wild animals are written. Of Wolves and Men explores the uneasy interaction between wolves and civilization over the centuries, and the wolf's prominence in our thoughts about wild creatures. Drawing upon an impressive array of literature, history, science, and mythology as well as extensive personal experience with captive and free-ranging wolves, Lopez argues for the wolf's preservation and immerses the reader in its sensory world, creating a compelling portrait of the wolf both as a real animal and as imagined by different kinds of men. A scientist might perceive the wolf as defined by research data, while an Eskimo hunter sees a family provider much like himself. For many Native Americans the wolf is also a spiritual symbol, a respected animal that can strengthen the individual and the community. With irresistible charm and elegance, Of Wolves and Men celebrates careful scientific fieldwork, dispels folklore that has enabled the Western mind to demonize wolves, explains myths, and honors indigenous traditions, allowing us to understand how this remarkable animal has become so prominent for so long in the human heart.

Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare: An Ecologist's Perspective


Paul Colinvaux - 1978
    Paul Colinvaux takes a penetrating look at the science of ecology, bringing to his subject both profound knowledge and an enthusiasm that will encourage a greater understanding of the environment and of the efforts of those who seek to preserve it.

Killing the Hidden Waters


Charles Bowden - 1978
    The faucet in the kitchen always becomes the reality we believe, and the periodic droughts, one of which for much of the nineties savaged the West, remain a fantasy. This happens each and every day as the water roars from the faucet and the skies remain dangerously blue.”—Charles BowdenIn the quarter-century since his first book, Killing the Hidden Waters, was published in 1977, Charles Bowden has become one of the premier writers on the American environment, rousing a generation of readers to both the wonder and the tragedy of humanity’s relationship with the land. Revisiting his earliest work with a new introduction, “What I Learned Watching the Wells Go Down,” Bowden looks back at his first effort to awaken people to the costs and limits of using natural resources through a simple and obvious example—water. He drives home the point that years of droughts, rationing, and even water wars have done nothing to slake the insatiable consumption of water in the American West. Even more timely now than in 1977, Killing the Hidden Waters remains, in Edward Abbey’s words, “the best all-around summary I’ve read yet, anywhere, of how our greed-driven, ever-expanding urban-industrial empire is consuming, wasting, poisoning, and destroying not only the resource basis of its own existence, but also the vital, sustaining basis of life everywhere.”

River of No Return


Johnny Carrey - 1978
    Guide book - 382 Pages

Yosemite National Park: A Complete Hiker's Guide


Jeffrey P. Schaffer - 1978
    View the soaring granite cliffs and waterfalls of Yosemite Valley, or take in the breathtaking vista from Glacier Point. Explore the impressive groves of giant sequoias and hike the spectacular, glacier-carved backcountry. The major trails leading into the park are also described in equal detail—trails in the Emigrant, Hoover, and Ansel Adams wildernesses. Also included is the most up-to-date, topographic map available of Yosemite and vicinity, showing over 1000 miles of trails, all of them personally hiked by the author or his assistant.

Water in Environmental Planning


Thomas Dunne - 1978
    The focus is on maintenance or reclamation of environmental quality, with the text, examples, and exercises emphasizing early identification of problems and address nonstructural solutions

For Spacious Skies: A Sketchbook of American Weather


Eric Sloane - 1978
    Examining old records, he learned that most farmers kept daily weather reports, which they referred to year after year to help them decide when to plant, harvest, and perform other farm chores.Combining elements of meteorology and Americana, this book features dozens of Sloane's excellent black-and-white illustrations and sixteen splendid full-color paintings. They complement a text about American weather, and in particular, American skies--from Vermont's swirling clouds and Florida thunderheads to New Mexico cloudscapes and Maine fogs. "You can almost tell where you are by looking upward," he says. In this unique book, he explains why.

All Colour World of Cats


Peter McHoy - 1978
    If you've long since been converted, then you'll know most of the answers, but like any true cat lover you'll always be on the search for something new and will enjoy the sheer pleasure of seeing cats in pictures.