This is a how-to book on meadow-making that's also about sustainability, regeneration, and beauty.In a world where lawns have wreaked havoc on our natural ecosystems, meadows offer a compelling solution. It is garden landscaping that is beautiful, all year round. Meadows establish wildlife and pollinator habitats, are low-maintenance and low-cost, have a built-in resilience that helps them weather climate extremes, and can draw down and store far more carbon dioxide than any manicured lawn. Wormser describes how to plant an organic meadow garden or traditional meadow, that’s right for your site. His book includes guidance on:-Preparing your plot-Designing your meadow-Planting without using synthetic chemicals-Growing 21 starter native grasses and wildflowers, including butterfly weed, smooth blue aster, purple coneflower, wild bergamot, and many more.He also includes tips on building support in neighborhoods where a tidy lawn is the standard, and how to become a meadow activist. To illuminate the many joys of meadow-building, Wormser draws on his own stories, including how growing up off the grid in northern Maine, with no electricity or plumbing, prepared him for his work."It’s time to rebuild meadows wherever we can, including the deadscape we call lawn. Owen Wormser explains why, and how to do this, with oodles of highly readable, ecologically sound advice." -Douglas W. Tallamy, Professor of Entomology, author of Bringing Nature Home and Nature's Best Hope"The author tells us how to grow a meadow, and become a positive force on behalf of the planet. I highly recommend this book." -Dr. John Todd, Ecologist, author of Healing Earth

    The unique five-year calendar format of The Naturalist’s Notebook helps you create a long-term record and point of comparison for memorable events, such as the first songbird you hear in spring, your first monarch butterfly sighting of summer, or the appearance of the northern lights. Biologist Nathaniel T. Wheelwright and best-selling author Bernd Heinrich teach nature lovers of all ages what to look for outdoors no matter where you live, using Heinrich’s classic illustrations as inspiration. As you jot down one observation a day, year after year, your collected field notes will serve as a valuable record of your piece of the planet. This deluxe book, with a three-piece case, gilt edges, a burgundy ribbon bookmark, and a belly band with gold foil stamping, is a perfect gift for all nature lovers.

    

    Yet this enigmatic animal is more complex than the legends that surround it. With a shrinking wilderness and global warming, the future of the wolverine is uncertain. The Wolverine Way reveals the natural history of this species and the forces that threaten its future, engagingly told by Douglas Chadwick, who volunteered with the Glacier Wolverine Project. This five-year study in Glacier National Park – which involved dealing with blizzards, grizzlies, sheer mountain walls, and other daily challenges to survival – uncovered key missing information about the wolverine’s habitat, social structure and reproduction habits. Wolverines, according to Chadwick, are the land equivalent of polar bears in regard to the impacts of global warming. The plight of wolverines adds to the call for wildlife corridors that connect existing habitat that is proposed by the Freedom to Roam coalition.

    It shows how human-engineered dams, canals and farms replaced nature's beaver dams, prairie dog tunnels, and buffalo wallows. Step by step, Outwater makes clear what should have always been obvious: while engineering can de-pollute water, only ecologically interacting systems can create healthy waterways. Important reading for students of environmental studies, the heart of this history is a vision of our land and waterways as they once were, and a plan that can restore them to their former glory: a land of living streams, public lands with hundreds of millions of beaver-built wetlands, prairie dog towns that increase the amount of rainfall that percolates to the groundwater, and forests that feed their fallen trees to the sea.

    A sci-fi writer finds a set of quatrains that foretell a horrible catastrophe, a mass murder that will change the course of history. He races against time to decipher the quatrains and stop the slaughter. The next prophecy has begun, and there’s only one man who can stop The First Face of Janus.

    This green landscape, however, is not the work of nature. It s the work of history. In the years after the Gold Rush, American settlers remade the California landscape, harnessing nature to their vision of the good life. Horticulturists, boosters, and civic reformers began to "improve" the bare, brown countryside, planting millions of trees to create groves, wooded suburbs, and landscaped cities. They imported the blue-green eucalypts whose tangy fragrance was thought to cure malaria. They built the lucrative "Orange Empire" on the sweet juice and thick skin of the Washington navel, an industrial fruit. They lined their streets with graceful palms to announce that they were not in the Midwest anymore. To the north the majestic coastal redwoods inspired awe and invited exploitation. A resource in the state, the durable heartwood of these timeless giants became infrastructure, transformed by the saw teeth of American enterprise. By 1900 timber firms owned the entire redwood forest; by 1950 they had clear-cut almost all of the old-growth trees.In time California s new landscape proved to be no paradise: the eucalypts in the Berkeley hills exploded in fire; the orange groves near Riverside froze on cold nights; Los Angeles s palms harbored rats and dropped heavy fronds on the streets below. Disease, infestation, and development all spelled decline for these nonnative evergreens. In the north, however, a new forest of second-growth redwood took root, nurtured by protective laws and sustainable harvesting. Today there are more California redwoods than there were a century ago.Rich in character and story, Trees in Paradise is a dazzling narrative that offers an insightful, new perspective on the history of the Golden State and the American West."

    But as the twentieth century progressed, the people of Galloway deserted the land and the moors have been transformed into commercial forest. Born and brought up in Dumfries and Galloway, author Patrick Laurie wonders whether or not the land of his ancestors is fated to fade away entirely.Desperate to connect with his native lands, Laurie plunges into work on his family farm in the hills of southwest Scotland. Investing in the oldest and most traditional breeds of Galloway cattle, he begins to discover how cows once shaped people, places and nature in this remote and half-hidden place. This traditional breed requires different methods of care from modern farming on an industrial, totally unnatural scale. As the cattle begin to dictate the pattern of his life, Laurie stumbles upon the passing of an ancient rural heritage. The new forests have driven the catastrophic decline of the much-loved curlew, a bird which features strongly in Galloway's consciousness. These deteriorating links between people, cattle, and wild birds become a central theme as Laurie begins to face the reality of life in a vanishing landscape.Exploring the delicate balance between farming and conservation while recounting an extraordinarily powerful personal story, Galloway delves into the relationship between people and places under pressure in the modern world.

    Now, with Organic Manifesto, Maria Rodale, chairman of Rodale, sheds new light on the state of 21st century farming. She examines the unholy alliances that have formed between the chemical companies that produce fertilizer and genetically altered seeds, the agricultural educational system that is virtually subsidized by those same companies, and the government agencies in thrall to powerful lobbyists, all of which perpetuate dangerous farming practices and deliberate misconceptions about organic farming and foods. Interviews with government officials, doctors, scientists, and farmers from coast to coast bolster her position that chemical-free farming may be the single most effective tool we have to protect our environment and, even more important, our health.

    Through engaging anecdotes and inspired advice, profiles of home gardeners throughout the country, and interviews with scientists and horticulturalists, Lawson applies the broader lessons of ecology to our own outdoor spaces. Detailed chapters address planting for wildlife by choosing native species; providing habitats that shelter baby animals, as well as birds, bees, and butterflies; creating safe zones in the garden; cohabiting with creatures often regarded as pests; letting nature be your garden designer; and encouraging natural processes and evolution in the garden. The Humane Gardener fills a unique niche in describing simple principles for both attracting wildlife and peacefully resolving conflicts with all the creatures that share our world.

    By sharing tips, tricks and techniques with the QVC customers while equipping their kitchens with QVC’s professional Technique® and Blue Jean Chef® cookware, Meredith has helped people become comfortable in their kitchens. Now, in this cookbook, Meredith gives you a wide variety of delicious recipes for the pressure cooker, so you can get meals on the table in one third of the time it would normally take. Her recipes, tips, and techniques will help make any cook more Comfortable Under Pressure. With 125 recipes and over 100 tips and explanations, Blue Jean Chef: Comfortable Under Pressure will help you create delicious meals while becoming more versatile and at ease with your pressure cooker. Don’t let the pressure get to you! Get Comfortable Under Pressure!

    Winner of the Francis Parkman PrizeIn this landmark work of environmental history, William Cronon offers an original and profound explanation of the effects European colonists' sense of property and their pursuit of capitalism had upon the ecosystems of New England. Reissued here with an updated afterword by the author and a new preface by the distinguished colonialist John Demos, Changes in the Land, provides a brilliant inter-disciplinary interpretation of how land and people influence one another. With its chilling closing line, "The people of plenty were a people of waste," Cronon's enduring and thought-provoking book is ethno-ecological history at its best.

    Together Okefenokee, Osceola, and Pinhook form one of the largest expanse of protected wild land east of the Mississippi River. This is one of America's last truly wild places, and Pinhook takes us into its heart.Ray comes to know Pinhook intimately as she joins the fight to protect it, spending the night in the swamp, tasting honey made from its flowers, tracking wildlife, and talking to others about their relationship with the swamp. Ray sees Pinhook through the eyes of the people who live there--naturalists, beekeepers, homesteaders, hunters, and locals at the country store. In lyrical, down-home prose, she draws together the swamp's need for restoration and the human desire for wholeness and wildness in our own lives and landscapes.

    Friedman, New York Times Big World, Small Planet probes the urgent predicament of our times: how is it possible to create a positive future for both humanity and Earth? We have entered the Anthropocene—the era of massive human impacts on the planet—and the actions of over seven billion residents threaten to destabilize Earth’s natural systems, with cascading consequences for human societies. In this extraordinary book, the authors combine the latest science with compelling storytelling and amazing photography to create a new narrative for humanity’s future. Johan Rockström and Mattias Klum reject the notion that economic growth and human prosperity can only be achieved at the expense of the environment. They contend that we have unprecedented opportunities to navigate a “good Anthropocene.” By embracing a deep mind-shift, humanity can reconnect to Earth, discover universal values, and take on the essential role of planetary steward. With eloquence and profound optimism, Rockström and Klum envision a future of abundance within planetary boundaries—a revolutionary future that is at once necessary, possible, and sustainable for coming generations.

    . . meticulously researched and packed with documentary evidence (Publishers Weekly), Sonia Shah's riveting journalistic account shines a much-needed spotlight on a disturbing new global trend. Drawing on years of original research and reporting in Africa and Asia, Shah examines how the multinational pharmaceutical industry, in its quest to develop lucrative drugs, has begun exporting its clinical research trials to the developing world, where ethical oversight is minimal and desperate patients abound. As the New England Journal of Medicine notes, it is critical that those engaged in drug development, clinical research and its oversight, research ethics, and policy know about these stories, which tell of an impossible choice being faced by many of the world's poorest patients--be experimented upon or die for lack of medicine.