Best of
Green

1998

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.

Songs for Relinquishing the Earth


Jan Zwicky - 1998
    Winner of the 1999 Governor General's Award for Poetry and shortlisted for the 1999 Pat Lowther Award and the 1999 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry (BC Book Prize). SONGS FOR RELINQUISHING THE EARTH contains many poems of praise and grief for the imperiled earth drawing frequently on Jan Zwicky's experience as a musician and philosopher and on the landscapes of the prairies and rural Ontario.SONGS FOR RELINQUISHING THE EARTH was first published by the author in 1996 as a handmade book, each copy individually sewn for its reader in response to a request. It appeared between plain covers on recycled stock, with a small photo (of lavender fields) pasted into each copy. The only publicity was word of mouth.Part of Jan Zwicky's reason for having the author be the maker and distributor of the book was a desire to connect the acts of publication and publicity with the initial act of composition, to have a book whose public gestures were in keeping with the intimacy of the art. She also believed the potential audience was small enough that she could easily sew enough copies to fill requests as they came in. While succeeding in recalling poetry's public life to its roots, she was wrong about the size of that audience and her ability to keep up with demand as word spread, Hence, this facsimile edition. In publishing it, Brick Books has attempted to remain as faithful as possible to the spirit of those original gestures, while making it possible for more readers to have access to this remarkable book.

The Overload Syndrome: Learning to Live Within Your Limits


Richard A. Swenson - 1998
    You feel tired, stressed, and burned out. These symptoms are signs that you're suffering from the Overload Syndrome. This book of the same name examines where overload comes from and what it can lead to, while offering prescriptions to counteract its effects and restore time to rest and space to heal. Find the secrets of time management while examining your priorities and seeking God's will.

Plant Kingdoms: The Photographs of Charles Jones


Sean Sexton - 1998
    We know that he was born in England in 1866, the son of a master butcher. We know that he must have trained as a gardener and was employed on a number of private estates before retiring. We shall probably never know exactly how and why he came so obsessively and so brilliantly to photograph the plants he encountered in everyday life at the turn of the century. Yet Charles Jones did not photograph his vegetables, fruits, and flowers within nature. On the contrary, he isolated his works against neutral backgrounds- beguiling studio ""portraits" of beans and onions, squashes and turnips, tulips and sunflowers, plums and pears. His techniques- close-up viewpoint, long exposure, and spare composition- anticipate by decades the later achievements of modernist masters, for here was an "outsider" genius, who was saved from obscurity only by the photographic collector Sean Sexton's chance discovery of his surviving prints in a London market.The photographs themselves are Jones' only statement. He left no notes, diaries, or writings to explain his reasons for the creation of such a prodigious and concentrated body of work, superbly reproduced in this volume. Revealing art in nature, Jones' images have a wider significance in the history of both photography and still-life, brilliantly explored and explained here by renowned expert Robert Flynn Johnson.

Secrets to Great Soil: A Grower's Guide to Composting, Mulching, and Creating Healthy, Fertile Soil for Your Garden and Lawn


Elizabeth Stell - 1998
    She provides all the information you need to give your garden a healthy foundation of rich, nutrient-filled soil that will ensure bountiful harvests and beautiful plants.

Home Composting Made Easy


C. Forrest McDowell - 1998
    Step-bystep instructions help you divert over 30% of your total home waste from landfills, simply by composting kitchen, yard, and garden waste. Learn from your reknown compost educators, Dr. C. Forrest McDowell and Tricia Clark-McDowell, as they show you how easy home composting is!

Life in the Balance: Humanity and the Biodiversity Crisis


Niles Eldredge - 1998
    Writing for general readers, he reviews compelling evidence for this "biodiversity crisis," showing that species are dying out at an unnaturally rapid rate. He demonstrates the importance of maintaining biodiversity, taking the reader on a journey that reveals the twin faces of biodiversity--over thirteen million living species and the ecosystems through which these species transform the sun's energy into life-sustaining matter. Throughout, Eldredge shows how our own fate is intricately linked with that of other species.Eldredge, one of the world's foremost paleontologists, begins by taking us to the heart of Botswana's Okavango Delta, considered by many to be among the last "Edens" left on Earth--a place where a rich assortment of organisms exist in natural equilibrium. However, it is also a place where the results of human activity--pollution, clear-cutting, water-diversion, encroaching agriculture, disease--now pose the same ecological threats that, on a worldwide scale, put the entire planet at risk. Eldredge then leads us on a fascinating exploration of the Earth's organisms--animals, plants, fungi, the microbes that underpin all life--and of the diverse ecosystems from the tundra to the tropics in which these organisms live. It is a journey that demonstrates the inherent value of the millions of species and ecosystems on Earth, and the importance of biodiversity to the entire biosphere and to humans' continued existence.Eldredge concludes that humans not only are responsible for the biodiversity crisis but also hold the key to preventing an impending Sixth Extinction. He argues that we must, among other strategies, pledge ourselves to sustainable development and the conservation of wild places. An eloquent and passionate account by one of today's leading scientists, Life in the Balance will draw new attention to one of the most pressing problems now facing the world. In this book, Eldredge explores the same themes that illuminate The American Museum of Natural History's new Hall of Biodiversity, for which he is Scientific Curator. The Hall is scheduled to open in spring 1998.