Book picks similar to
Trees, Truffles, and Beasts: How Forests Function by Chris Maser
mushrooms
fungi
environment
forest-ecology
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
David Wallace-Wells - 2019
If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible. In California, wildfires now rage year-round, destroying thousands of homes. Across the US, "500-year" storms pummel communities month after month, and floods displace tens of millions annually.This is only a preview of the changes to come. And they are coming fast. Without a revolution in how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth could become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.In his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await--food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will be all-encompassing, shaping and distorting nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today.Like An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring before it, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation.
Laboring: Stories of a New York City Hospital Midwife
Ellen Cohen - 2013
In this compelling first-person narrative she transports you into her world at the bedside in the maternity wards where childbirth dramas take place. In the challenging environment of urban clinics and crowded labor rooms the midwife strives to bring personalized care, dignity and a sense of empowerment to every patient. Like an updated U.S. version of "Call the Midwife," the British best seller and television series, this book describes some of the most unforgettable births, the most heartwarming -- and the rare heartbreaking -- experiences of her career. Memorable patients include Mia, a mentally ill woman whose stomach ache turns out to be a baby; teenager Shaniqua who breezes through birth despite her youth; and Jeremiah, a little boy born HIV-infected who captures the love of the entire staff. Through these stories, readers will gain insight into many variations in pregnancy and birth, and learn what is special about the midwifery approach to care. You may be surprised to learn how similar Cohen's patients' childbirth experiences were to your own, and where they differed.
The Case for the Green New Deal
Ann Pettifor - 2019
In 2008, the first Green New Deal was devised by Pettifor and a group of English economist and thinkers, but was ignored within the tumults of the financial crash. A decade later, the ideas was revived within the democratic socialists in the US, forefront by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. The Green New Deal demands a radical and urgent reversal of the current state of the global economy: including total de-carbonisation and a commitment to fairness and social justice. Critics on all sides have been quick to observe that the GND is a pipe dream that could never be implemented, and would cost the earth. But, as Ann Pettifor shows, we need to rethink the function of money, and how it works within the global system. How can we bail out the banks but not the planet? We have to stop thinking about the imperative of economic growth-nothing grows for ever. The program will be a long term project but it needs to start immediately.
The Ultimate Guide to Raising a Puppy: How to Train and Care for Your New Dog
Victoria Stilwell - 2019
In this fun and informative guide, her first for puppies, she teaches you how to navigate each stage of a puppy's growth, from the first weeks through adolescence. You'll learn:- puppy-proofing your home- toilet training- building leash-walking and play skills- preventing nipping and excessive barking- caring for your puppy's health- and more!
Bull Canyon: A Boatbuilder, a Writer and Other Wildlife
Lin Pardey - 2011
First there were the rats in the pantry, then the floods, then the fires, then the visiting cougar. Life in Bull Canyon was daunting and dangerous. Often Lin wondered just what in the world they were doing so far from their customary home on the open seas. Bull Canyon joins the canon of great tales of homesteading, told in the warm, funny, and insightful voice of a true storyteller.
The Goshawk
T.H. White - 1951
White, the author of The Once and Future King and Mistress Masham's Repose, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. A particular sentence — "the bird reverted to a feral state" — seized his imagination, and, White later wrote, "A longing came to my mind that I should be able to do this myself. The word 'feral' has a kind of magical potency which allied itself to two other words, 'ferocious' and 'free.'" Immediately, White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and Gos was free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, though he did not know it, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest. Slowly man and bird entered a state of delirium and intoxication, of attraction and repulsion that looks very much like love. White kept a daybook describing his volatile relationship with Gos — at once a tale of obsession, a comedy of errors, and a hymn to the hawk. It was this that became The Goshawk, one of modern literature's most memorable and surprising encounters with the wilderness — as it exists both within us and without.
Nature is Awesome: Fun Facts and Pictures for Kids
Speedy Publishing - 2015
Children are interested in things like where do certain animal come from and where does the rain come from. Children are also interested in the sky and how far away it is from the ground. Nature will also teach children how animals and insects get their food. This will force children to paint a picture of this in their mind. This picture will become real to children of all ages.
Cry of the Kalahari
Mark Owens - 1984
Here they met and studied unique animals and were confronted with danger from drought, fire, storms, and the animals they loved. This best-selling book is for both travelers and animal lovers.
The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
Alfred W. Crosby - 1972
The book told the story of how 1492 sparked the movement of organisms, both large and small, in both directions across the Atlantic. This Columbian exchange, between the Old World and the New, changed the history of our planet drastically and forever.The book The Columbian Exchange changed the field of history drastically and forever as well. It has become one of the foundational works in the burgeoning field of environmental history, and it remains one of the canonical texts for the study of world history. This 30th anniversary edition of The Columbian Exchange includes a new preface from the author, reflecting on the book and its creation, and a new foreword by J. R. McNeill that demonstrates how Crosby established a brand new perspective for understanding ecological and social events. As the foreword indicates, The Columbian Exchange remains a vital book, a small work that contains within the inspiration for future examinations into what happens when two peoples, separated by time and space, finally meet.
How to Raise a Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature
Scott D. Sampson - 2015
Yet recent research indicates that experiences in nature are essential for healthy growth. Regular exposure to nature can help relieve stress, depression, and attention deficits. It can reduce bullying, combat illness, and boost academic scores. Most critical of all, abundant time in nature seems to yield long-term benefits in kids’ cognitive, emotional, and social development. Yet teachers, parents, and other caregivers lack a basic understanding of how to engender a meaningful, lasting connection between children and the natural world. How to Raise a Wild Child offers a timely and engaging antidote, showing how kids’ connection to nature changes as they mature. Distilling the latest research in multiple disciplines, Sampson reveals how adults can help kids fall in love with nature—enlisting technology as an ally, taking advantage of urban nature, and instilling a sense of place along the way.
How to Forage for Mushrooms without Dying: An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Identifying 29 Wild, Edible Mushrooms
Frank Hyman - 2021
But for beginner foragers who just want to answer the question “Can it eat it?”, most of the books on the subject are dry, dense, and written by mycologists for other mycologists. Frank Hyman to the rescue! How to Forage for Mushrooms without Dying is the book for anyone who walks in the woods and would like to learn how to identify just the 21 edible mushrooms they’re likely to come across. In it, Hyman offers his expert mushroom foraging advice, distilling down the most important information for the reader in colorful, folksy language that’s easy to remember when in the field. Want an easy way to determine if a mushroom is a delicious morel or a toxic false morel? Slice it in half – “if it’s hollow, you can swallow,” Hyman says. With Frank Hyman’s expert advice and easy-to-follow guidelines, readers will be confident in identifying which mushrooms they can safely eat and which ones they should definitely avoid.
Clicking with Your Dog: Step-By-Step in Pictures
Peggy Tillman - 2000
This well presented book guides the reader through the ins and outs of clicker training with graphic step by step illustrations that are ideal for beginners and intermediate clicker trainers. These books will show you the clicker way to train your dog to: Sit to greet people instead of jumping up Walk on the lead without pulling Come when called - everytime Stay home alone quietly Find the right place to "go" Play hide and seek and other fun games and tricks
Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History
Lewis Dartnell - 2019
But how has the earth itself determined our destiny? Our planet wobbles, driving changes in climate that forced the transition from nomadism to farming. Mountainous terrain led to the development of democracy in Greece. Atmospheric circulation patterns later on shaped the progression of global exploration, colonization, and trade. Even today, voting behavior in the south-east United States ultimately follows the underlying pattern of 75 million-year-old sediments from an ancient sea. Everywhere is the deep imprint of the planetary on the human.From the cultivation of the first crops to the founding of modern states, Origins reveals the breathtaking impact of the earth beneath our feet on the shape of our human civilizations.
The Path of the Puma: The Mountain Lion's Survival in the Shadow of Decline
Jim Williams - 2018
What makes this cat, the fourth carnivore in the food chain -- just ahead of humans - so resilient and resourceful? And what can conservationists and wild life managers learn from them about the web of biodiversity that is in desperate need of protection? Their story is fascinating for the lessons it can afford the protection of all species in times of dire challenge and decline.
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
Charles C. Mann - 2011
More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans. The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. More important, creatures the colonists knew nothing about hitched along for the ride. Earthworms, mosquitoes, and cockroaches; honeybees, dandelions, and African grasses; bacteria, fungi, and viruses; rats of every description—all of them rushed like eager tourists into lands that had never seen their like before, changing lives and landscapes across the planet. Eight decades after Columbus, a Spaniard named Legazpi succeeded where Columbus had failed. He sailed west to establish continual trade with China, then the richest, most powerful country in the world. In Manila, a city Legazpi founded, silver from the Americas, mined by African and Indian slaves, was sold to Asians in return for silk for Europeans. It was the first time that goods and people from every corner of the globe were connected in a single worldwide exchange. Much as Columbus created a new world biologically, Legazpi and the Spanish empire he served created a new world economically.As Charles C. Mann shows, the Columbian Exchange underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest research by ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world. In such encounters, he uncovers the germ of today’s fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars.In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination
