Best of
Environment

1998

Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas


Carl Safina - 1998
    Scientist and fisherman Carl Safina takes readers on a global journey of discovery, probing for truth about the world's changing seas, deftly weaving adventure, science, and political analysis.

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late


Thom Hartmann - 1998
    The inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio’s web movie Global Warning, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight details what is happening to our planet, the reasons for our culture’s blind behavior, and how we can fix the problem. Thom Hartmann’s comprehensive book, originally published in 1998, has become one of the fundamental handbooks of the environmental activist movement. Now, with fresh, updated material and a focus on political activism and its effect on corporate behavior, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight helps us understand--and heal--our relationship to the world, to each other, and to our natural resources.

Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat


Howard F. Lyman - 1998
    It not only led to Oprah's declaration that she'd never eat a burger again, it sent shock waves through a concerned and vulnerable public.A fourth-generation Montana rancher, Lyman investigated the use of chemicals in agriculture after developing a spinal tumor that nearly paralyzed him. Now a vegetarian, he blasts through the propaganda of beef and dairy interests - and the government agencies that protect them - to expose an animal-based diet as the primary cause of cancer, heart disease, and obesity in this country. He warns that the livestock industry is repeating the mistakes that led to Mad Cow disease in England while simultaneously causing serious damage to the environment.Persuasive, straightforward, and full of the down-home good humor and optimism of a son of the soil, Mad Cowboy is both an inspirational story of personal transformation and a convincing call to action for a plant-based diet - for the good of the planet and the health of us all.

Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson


Rachel Carson - 1998
    This trove of previously uncollected writings is a priceless addition to our knowledge of Rachel Carson, her affinity with the natural world, and her life.

All My Rivers Are Gone: A Journey of Discovery Through Glen Canyon


Katie Lee - 1998
    It is a journal filled with strong emotions about a wondrous place on the American landscape. Her entries tell the sad saga of the decision to flood Glen Canyon on the Colorado River. Her words and songs make the canyon come alive and they provide a vivid picture of what has been lost.

Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West


Timothy Egan - 1998
    In a unique blend of travel writing, historical reflection, and passionate polemic, Egan has produced a moving study of the West: how it became what it is, and where it is going.Winner of the Mountains and Plains Book Seller's Association Award

Earth Odyssey: Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future


Mark Hertsgaard - 1998
    But in 1991, he decided to act on his own concern and investigate the escalating crisis for himself. Traveling on his own dime, he embarked on an odyssey lasting most of the decade and spanning nineteen countries. Now, in Earth Odyssey he reports on our environmental predicament through the eyes of the people who live it.Earth Odyssey is a vivid, passionate narrative about one man's journey around the world in search of the answer to the essential question of our time: Is the future of the human species at risk? Combining first-rate reportage with irresistible storytelling, Mark Hertsgaard has written an essential--and ultimately hopeful--book about the uncertain fate of humankind.

Holistic Management: A New Framework for Decision Making


Allan Savory - 1998
    This work shows that on the most fundamental level, environmental problems are cuased by human management decisions rather than the commonly blamed culprits of environmental degradation, overpopulation, poor farming practices and lack of financial support.

Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World


Joanna Macy - 1998
    Noted spiritual and environmental thinkers Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown contend that this crippling response to world crisis is a psychological defense mechanism that has been endemic since the years of the Cold War arms race, when we had to adapt within a single generation to the horrific possibility of nuclear holocaust.Since its publication in 1983, Joanna Macy's book, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age has sold nearly 30,000 copies and has been the primary resource for groups of men and women confronting the challenging realities of our time without succumbing to paralysis or panic. Coming Back to Life provides a much needed update and expansion of this pioneering work. At the interface between spiritual breakthrough and social action, Coming Back to Life is eloquent and compelling as well as being an inspiring and practical guide. The first third of the book discusses with extraordinary insight the angst of our era, and the pain, fear, guilt and inaction it has engendered; it then points forward to the way out of apathy, tio "the work that reconnects". The rest of the book offers both personal counsel and easy-to-use methods for working with groups in a number of ways to profoundly affect peoples' outlook and ability to act in the world.Table of ContentsForeword by Mathew Fox1. To Choose Life2. The Greatest Danger: Apatheia, The Deadening of Mind & Heart3. The Basic Miracle: Our True Nature & Power4. The Work that Reconnects5. Guiding Group Work6. Affirmation: Coming from Gratitude7. Despair Work: Owning & Honoring Our Pain for the World8. The Shift: Seeing with New Eyes9. Deep Time: Drawing on Past & Future Generations10. The Council of All Beings: Rejoining the Natural World11. Going Forth12. Meditations for Coming Back to LifeJoanna Macy has developed an international following over the course of 40 years as a speaker and workshop leader on Buddhist philosophy and the deep ecology movement

The Green Halo: A Bird's-Eye View of Ecological Ethics


Erazim V. Kohák - 1998
    The author looks at the views of thinkers including John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Al Gore, and suggests alternative ways to view nature, assign it value, and respond to ecological crises.

Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice


Bent Flyvbjerg - 1998
    . . has to set the church clock. So he calls the telephone exchange and asks what time it is, and the telephone operator looks out the window towards the church clock and says, 'It's five o'clock.' 'Good,' says the bell ringer, 'then my clock is correct.'"In the Enlightenment tradition, rationality is considered well-defined, independent of context; we know what rationality is, and its meaning is constant across time and space. Bent Flyvbjerg shows that rationality is context-dependent and that the crucial context is determined by decision-makers' power. Power blurs the dividing line between rationality and rationalization. The result is a rationality that is often as imaginary as the time in Little Town, yet with very real social and environmental consequences.Flyvbjerg takes us behind the scenes to uncover the real politics—and real rationality—of policy-making, administration, and planning in an internationally acclaimed project for environmental improvement, auto traffic reduction, land use, and urban renewal. The action takes place in the Danish city of Aalborg, but it could be anywhere. Aalborg is to Flyvbjerg what Florence was to Machiavelli: a laboratory for understanding power and what it means for our more general concerns of social and political organization. Policy-making, administration, and planning are examined in ways that allow a rare, in-depth understanding. The reader is a firsthand witness to the classic, endless drama that defines what democracy and modernity are, and what they can be. The result is a fascinating narrative that is both concrete and general, current and timeless. Drawing on the ideas of Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Habermas, Flyvbjerg reads the Aalborg case as a metaphor of modernity and of modern politics, administration, and planning. Flyvbjerg uncovers the interplay of power and rationality that distorts policy deliberation. He demonstrates that modern "rationality" is but an ideal when confronted with the real rationalities involved in decision making by central actors in government, economy, and civil society. Flyvbjerg then elaborates on how this problem can be dealt with so that more fruitful deliberation and action can occur. If the new millennium marks a recurrence of the real, Flyvbjerg's Rationality and Power epitomizes this development, setting new standards for social and political inquiry. Richly informed, powerfully argued, and clearly written, this is a book that no one trying to understand policy-making, administration, and planning can afford to overlook."Flyvbjerg employs a wide-ranging intellect, an enthusiastic and persuasive voice, academic rigor, and great discipline to distill years of research into an outstanding and accessible 250-page civics lesson. It begs for a readership outside academic and professional circles . . . Rationality and Power's value is undeniable as a handbook and forensic tool for anyone seeking a better understanding of and access to the democratic process."—Arkansas Democrat-Gazette"It makes an extremely strong, and to the reviewer's mind incontrovertible, argument for placing the analysis of planning within the context of power relations. As a result it will also make a significant mark on the development of planning theory."—Geographical Journal"A book that is to be recommended doubly, first to all those engaged in planning and implementation in a democratic context, and also to all those interested in empirical power research. Rationality and Power is rewarding even enthralling reading, a seminal contribution to its field."—European Societies"This book is a must for anyone interested in how planning works . . . a reality shock . . . excellent and illuminating."—International Planning Studies

Coming Home to the Pleistocene


Paul Shepard - 1998
    Seminal works like The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game, Thinking Animals, and Nature and Madness introduced readers to new and provocative ideas about humanity and its relationship to the natural world. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Paul Shepard returned repeatedly to his guiding theme, the central tenet of his thought: that our essential human nature is a product of our genetic heritage, formed through thousands of years of evolution during the Pleistocene epoch, and that the current subversion of that Pleistocene heritage lies at the heart of today's ecological and social ills.Coming Home to the Pleistocene provides the fullest explanation of that theme. Completed just before his death in the summer of 1996, it represents the culmination of Paul Shepard's life work and constitutes the clearest, most accessible expression of his ideas. Coming Home to the Pleistocene pulls together the threads of his vision, considers new research and thinking that expands his own ideas, and integrates material within a new matrix of scientific thought that both enriches his original insights and allows them to be considered in a broader context of current intellectual controversies. In addition, the book explicitly addresses the fundamental question raised by Paul Shepard's work: What can we do to recreate a life more in tune with our genetic roots? In this book, Paul Shepard presents concrete suggestions for fostering the kinds of ecological settings and cultural practices that are optimal for human health and well-being.Coming Home to the Pleistocene is a valuable book for those familiar with the life and work of Paul Shepard, as well as for new readers seeking an accessible introduction to and overview of his thought.

Fandex Family Field Guides: Trees


Steven Aronson - 1998
    Four visual keys--die-cut leaf, bark pattern, flower, nut or seed, and photo of the full tree--plus descriptions of habitat and more combine to give a complete picture of North America's forest and backyard trees. In addition, TREES is a cultural history--of the mighty White Oak, California Redwood, Aillanthus, the tree that grows in Brooklyn, and the stately White Ash, as important for the bows of early Native Americans as for the baseball bats of today.50 DIE-CUT CARDSFULL COLOR THROUGHOUTKNOWLEDGE AT YOUR FINGERTIPSFOR THE WHOLE FAMILY

The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West


Valerie Kuletz - 1998
    Now, another nuclear crisis looms over this region: the storage of tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste. Tainted Desert maps the nuclear landscapes of the US inter-desert southwest, a land sacrificed to the Cold-War arms race and nuclear energy policy.

Salamanders of the United States and Canada


James W. Petranka - 1998
    This comprehensive volume, the first survey published since 1943, describes the ecology, evolution, biodiversity, behavior, and natural history of 127 recognized species of salamanders found in the United States and Canada, from newts and sirens to waterdogs and hellbenders. Drawing on more than 2,100 research publications, the book includes detailed life history accounts, nearly 500 color and black-and-white photographs, identification keys for larvae as well as adults, and up-to-date distribution maps.James W. Petranka presents a wealth of information on each species: identification, systematics, courtship and breeding, diet and predation, and the ecology of larval and adult stages are all described. He summarizes major patterns of geographic variation within species to emphasize differences between local and regional populations and to provide a realistic view of intraspecific life history diversity.With its comprehensive coverage and extensive references, this volume is an indispensable guide not only for herpetologists but also for teachers, naturalists, conservation biologists, environmental planners, and anyone who needs detailed information on the diverse salamander fauna of the United States and Canada.

Kinship with Animals


Kate Solisti-Mattelon - 1998
    Our understanding of animals has increased greatly in just the last few years. This updated edition of Kinship with Animals contains new research findings and new contributors.

Miracle at Willowcreek


Annette LeBox - 1998
    Then she learns that her uncle is supporting a plan to turn their sanctuary into a golf course. Things become even more complicated when the marsh's infamous ghost appears.

The Enchanted Braid: Coming to Terms with Nature on the Coral Reef


Osha Gray Davidson - 1998
    It is probably in our nature. Itis also, apparently, in our nature to destroy that which we hold inawe. --from The Enchanted BraidOf the myriad ecosystems populating the underwater world, coralreefs are by far the most complex. While their stunning beauty hasbeen extolled for centuries, the intricate workings of reefenvironments remained largely hidden from view. In fact, until theadvent of scuba diving just fifty years ago, corals have been amongthe last natural histories to be extensively explored. The highpassion with which scientists have greeted this particularinvestigation --beginning with the foundational theories of CharlesDarwin in 1842--is perhaps unprecedented, but hardly difficult tounderstand. A phenomenon of both awesome beauty and vitalimportance, the coral reef is home to the most diverse range ofspecies of any environment on the planet, including fish, shrimps, worms, snails, crabs, sea cucumbers, sea stars, urchins, anemones, and sea squirts.The crux of reef life, scientists have discovered, lies in nature'smost intimate example of symbiosis: the mutually beneficialrelationship between the coral polyp and its tenant, thezooxanthellate algae. Davidson's history begins with thisdeceptively diminutive hybrid, the engine behind the constructionof the limestone-based coral structure. Together, the threeelements comprise a unique zoophytalite (animal-plant-mineral)form, or an enchanted braid.Aided by an eight-page, full-color photographic insertdemonstrating the incredible intricacies of the reef and its uniqueinhabitants, The Enchanted Braid identifies the approximately240,000 square miles of coral reef on the planet today asindispensable not only to the livelihood of the oceans but also tohumans. The reef is, after all, the soul of the sea, the spawningground for tens of thousands of marine species. As sources of food(many islands rely on reefs for all their protein), medicine(corals are used in bone grafts and to fight cancer and leukemia), and detailed insight into the history of climatic conditions, coralreefs are critically important to human life on Earth. However, ina world of oil tanker disasters, global warming, and dwindlingnatural resources, they are also in grave danger ofextinction.Osha Gray Davidson's urgent clarion call to halt today's man-madedegradation of coral reefs is both alarming and persuasive, effectively underscored by the rich historical context of passagesfrom Darwin's captivating diary of his seminal work on reefs 150years ago. Like the coral reef, The Enchanted Braid is itself arare hybrid, a graceful combination of aesthetic appreciation, scientific inquiry, and environmental manifesto.

Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia, 1900-50


Mary-Ellen Kelm - 1998
    Aboriginal access to medical care and the transfer of funds and responsibility for health from the federal government to individual bands and tribal councils are also bones of contention. Comprehensive discussion of such issues, however, has often been hampered by a lack of historical analysis."Colonizing Bodies" examines the impact of colonization on Aboriginal health in British Columbia during the first half of the twentieth century. Mary-Ellen Kelm explores how Aboriginal bodies were materially affected by Canadian Indian policy, which placed restrictions on fishing and hunting, allocated inadequate reserves, forced children into unhealthy residential schools, and criminalized Indigenous healing. She goes on to consider how humanitarianism and colonial medicine were used to pathologize Aboriginal bodies and institute a regime of doctors, hospitals, and field matrons, all working to encourage assimilation. Finally, Kelm reveals how Aboriginal people were able to resist and alter these forces in order to preserve their own cultural understanding of their bodies, disease, and medicine.

Hidden World: Under the Ground (A First Discovery Book)


Claude Delafosse - 1998
    

Linus Pauling on Peace: A Scientist Speaks Out on Humanism and World Survival


Linus Pauling - 1998
    In more than 50 essays, Nobel Prize-winning Linus Pauling's brilliance, conviction, and passion for saving humankind and the planet are eloquently expressed.

Art of Bird Photography: The Complete Guide to Professional Field Techniques


Arthur Morris - 1998
    Whether one photographs songbirds in the backyard, or travels to wildlife refuges to observe them in their natural habitat, this hands-on guide to capturing gorgeous images of avian subjects covers all the bases, from buying the right camera equipment to composing the perfect picture.

Backpacker's Leave No Trace: A Practical Guide to the New Wilderness Ethic


Annette McGivney - 1998
    Written by a contributing editor of "Backpacker" Magazine.

Ecological Footprint: Managing Our Biocapacity Budget


Mathis Wackernagel - 1998
    We use future resources to run the present, using more than Earth can replenish. Like any such scheme, this works for a limited time, followed by a crash.Avoiding ecological bankruptcy requires rigorous resource accounting -- a challenging task, but doable with the right tools.Ecological Footprint provides a complete introduction, covering:Footprint and biocapacity accounting Data and key findings for nations Worldwide examples including businesses, cities, and countries Strategies for creating regenerative economies Whether you're a student, business leader, future-oriented city planner, economist, or have an abiding interest in humanity's future, Footprint and biocapacity are key parameters to be reckoned with and Ecological Footprint is your essential guide.

Vanishing Treasures of the Philippine Rain Forest


Lawrence R. Heaney - 1998
    This forest is home to one of the greatest concentrations of unique species of terrestrial vertebrates of any place on earth—more than 510 unique species are found here. Unfortunately, nearly half of the mammals and birds are endangered; acre for acre, the Philippines may have the world's most seriously threatened flora and fauna.Vanishing Treasures of the Philippine Rain Forest relates how this profusion of life came to exist in the islands, and explains why the imminent destruction of this forest threatens not only its unique plants and animals but also the economic and social well-being of the Philippine nation. Profusely illustrated with full-color photographs, maps, and drawings, this book identifies crucial steps the Filipino people must take to protect both their magnificent natural heritage and their country's future.

Process Plants: A Handbook for Inherently Safer Design


Trevor A. Kletz - 1998
    By designing friendlier plants, human error, or equipment failure will not have the serious effects on safety, output or efficiency that older, less modern plans would have. In the second edition of this illustrated text, Trevor Kletz has enhanced his guide to safe plant design, featuring increased coverage of design procedures. These plants contain little inventory of hazardous materials, are simple and easy to control, and are hard to assemble incorrectly. They can be constructed, dismantled, and disposed of safely.

A Reunion of Trees: The Discovery of Exotic Plants and Their Introduction Into North American and European Landscapes


Stephen A. Sponberg - 1998
    This work provides a travel story of trees and shrubs, recounting the journeys and work of explorers who were responsible for introducing exotic plants into the landscapes of North America and Europe.

Narratives and Spaces: Technology and the Construction of American Culture


David E. Nye - 1998
    Nye also turns his attention to the Internet, where technology has not simply transformed space, but created a whole new kind of space, and with it, new stories. Nye analyzes the transformation of the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls into tourist sites, the history of light shows at world's fairs, the New Deal programs designed to provide electricity to rural areas, the Apollo 11 moon landing, and the new narratives of the Internet to reveal how the spaces we live in and the technology we use are integral to American identity, and a key part of American self-representation. In examining the interaction of technology, space, and American narrative, Nye argues against the idea that technology is an inevitable and insidious controller of our lives.

Virgin Forest: Meditations on History, Ecology, and Culture


Eric Zencey - 1998
    “The ecological crisis is also a historical crisis,” he writes. “If we are out of place in nature, we are also out of place in time, and the two kinds of exile are related.”Zencey’s way home takes us many places: to a starlit mountaintop, where a nineteenth-century sect awaits the second coming; to the northern woods during hunting season; to the salt marshes of a Delaware childhood; to the softball games and abandoned mill ponds of his adopted Vermont. Always we are shown a world outside our preconceptions. In the essay “In Search of Virgin Forest” we see that virgin forest is not the pure escape from civilization that romantics make of it. Like the second-growth forest around it, virgin forest too is a human construct, one whose “different disturbance history” is not natural but is equally the product of human perception and appropriation.A nationally acclaimed novelist, Zencey has brought together autobiography and philosophy to produce a work at once accessible and intellectually rigorous. Perceptive, urgent, and lyrical, these essays are alive with warmth and wit and the occasional glint of melancholy. Virgin Forest is a passionate call for ecological health. It amply demonstrates (as the final essay has it) “Why History Is Sublime”: if we suffer a postmodern lack of grounding, only a rooted-in-place ecological sensibility can supply our need, and historical understanding is its inescapable prerequisite.

Light Shining Through the Mist: A Photobiography of Dian Fossey


Tom L. Matthews - 1998
    Sponsored by Dr. Louis Leakey, the 34-year-old Fossey had embarked on a 19-year project that began as a field study of gorillas but expanded into a labor of love and a mission to protect the magnificent species from extinction. No human ever came closer to the mysterious mountain gorillas than Fossey, but as her relationship with the animals grew, her fierce battle against poachers did also. Fossey was murdered in 1985, but her legacy endures. This dramatic story of her vital work is an important record for a new generation of readers.

Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans


Mary Evelyn Tucker - 1998
    This second volume in the series on religions of the world and the environment includes sixteen essays that address the ecological crisis and the question of Confucianism from three perspectives: the historical describes this East Asian tradition's views of nature, social ethics, and cosmology, which may shed light on contemporary problems; a dialogical approach links Confucianism to other philosophic and religious traditions; an examination of engaged Confucianism looks at its involvement in concrete ecological issues.

Field Notes from the Northern Forest (Revised)


Curt Stager - 1998
    These twenty natural science essays take us down to ground level to explore the lives of animals, plants, and fungi commonly encountered in the conifer, hardwood, and mixed wood forests of northeastern North America.

Land and Environmental Art


Jeffrey Kastner - 1998
    Essential reading for both art enthusiasts and anyone concerned with the environment, the book is the most comprehensive and beautifully illustrated book on the subject.The traditional landscape genre was radically transformed in the 1960s when many artists stopped merely representing the land and made their mark directly in the environment. Drawn by the vast uncultivated spaces of the desert and mountain as well as post-industrial wastelands, artists such as Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson moved the earth to create colossal primal symbols. Others punctuated the horizon with man-made signposts, such as Christo's Running Fence or Walter de Maria's Lightning Field. Journeys became works of art for Richard Long while Dennis Oppenheim and Ana Mendieta immersed their bodies in the contours of the land.This book traces early developments to the present day, as artists are exploring eco-systems and the interface between industrial, urban and rural cultures. Survey Brian Wallis discusses the key artists, works and issues that define Land Art historically, as well as its later ramifications.Works This book fully documents the 1960s Land Art movement and surveys examples of Environmental Art to the present day. Earthworks, environments, performances and actions by artists ranging from Ana Mendieta in the 1970s and 80s to Peter Fend in the 1990s are illustrated with breathtaking photographs, sketches and project notes. Documents Jeffrey Kastner has compiled an invaluable archive of statements by all the featured artists alongside related texts by art historians, critics, philosophers and cultural theorists including Jean Baudrillard, Edmund Burke, Guy Debord, Michael Fried, Dave Hickey, Rosalind Krauss, Lucy R Lippard, Thomas McEvilley and Simon Schama.

The Oceanic Circle: Governing The Seas As A Global Resource


Elisabeth Mann Borgese - 1998
    In much the same way, the governance of the world's oceans--as generated by the United Nations' 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the subsequent conventions, agreements, and programs following the 1992 Rio Earth Summit--is now affecting the social order of the individual, the village, the nation, the region, and the global community. It is non-hierarchical, participatory, and multidisciplinary, and includes the private sector as well as governments. This emerging order has social, economic, cultural, environmental, and ethical aspects, and requires profound changes in the ways we deal with each other and with nature. An understanding of this new order is needed to solve urgent problems: over-fishing and stock depletion; pollution from oceanic, atmospheric, and land-based sources; climate and sea-level changes; and biodiversity conservation. Like life itself, the new order started in the ocean, which has been declared the common heritage of humanity, and is expanding to embrace the whole biosphere in "the majesty of the oceanic circle," leading to a more peaceful and equitable world order.

Saving the Marin-Sonoma Coast: The Battles for Audubon Canyon Ranch, Point Reyes, & California's Russian River


L. Martin Griffin - 1998
    Griffin documents the creation of the magnificent Audubon Canyon Ranch wildlife preserves on Bolinas Lagoon and Tomales Bay and their crucial role in rescuing the Pt. Reyes National Seashore, preserving California's unspoiled North Coast, and transforming the political landscape of Marin County.

Ecoregions: The Ecosystem Geography of the Oceans and Continents


Robert G. Bailey - 1998
    Robert Bailey's system for classifying ecoregions has had a major influence, and has been adopted by major organizations such as the US Forest Service and The Nature Conservancy. This book includes numerous photographs of representative ecoregions, and outstanding color figures are complemented by two full-color maps showing the major ecoregions of the continents and of the oceans.