Book picks similar to
The Sustainable Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Achieving Long-Term Profitability and Competitiveness by Jonathan T. Scott
giving-away
work-sustainability
ecology
Dress [with] Sense: The Practical Guide to a Conscious Closet
Christina Dean - 2017
On a broader scale, initiatives to promote a more sustainable approach to fashion have made headlines and grown like never before, from the release of the high-profile documentary The True Cost to the launch of the worldwide “Fashion Revolution” campaign.This timely book is organized into four chapters—Buy, Wear, Care, and Dispose—each containing a short introduction with essential information followed by practical tips and illustrated case studies to help you make the first step toward a more sustainable wardrobe. A detailed reference section recommends not only the best ethical fashion labels and collections but also eco-friendly fabrics, standards, and certifications; cleaning methods; renting, swapping, and recycling initiatives; and much more.
River Notes: The Dance of Herons
Barry Lopez - 1979
In its companion volume River Notes, Lopez takes us into a different country where a nameless river flows through an animated world of herons, bears, and human beings.There is violence here, in the conflict of natural forces, in the people touching the river. There are landscapes, physical and spiritual, that we have not sensed, rituals we have not understood. Like the earlier peoples of our land, and like few American writers who have reentered this world, Barry Lopez respects the river and its imperatives, understands the language of cottonwoods and the salmon, and brings us in an extraordinary dance with a heron to the oneness with nature which is our heritage. ... [i]n these haunting, passionate stories Lopez brings us home to a deeply comforting unity with the natural world.From the first-edition dustjacket.
Cumberland Island: Strong Women, Wild Horses
Charles Seabrook - 2002
When the flotilla of writers and photographers arrived on the island a few days later only to find themselves itching, sweating, and swatting at pestiferous gnats and bloodthirsty mosquitoes, they wondered why such a worldly and sophisticated couple had chosen such a tick-infested spot. In Cumberland Island, Charles Seabrook uses his talent as an award-winning environmental writer to describe the island's natural bounty and to tell its long and intriguing history. You'll meet Catherine "Caty" Greene Miller, the widow of Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene and the woman who inspired Eli Whitney to invent the cotton gin. There's Miss Lucy Ferguson, considered by many to be the toughest and orneriest of all the strong women who inhabited the island, reigning over it during the 1960s and '70s. The present-day generation is represented by Janet "GoGo" Ferguson, Miss Lucy's granddaughter, who made the arrangements for the Kennedy and Bessette wedding and crafted their wedding rings as well. Today, the island serves as a lightning rod for controversy. Although the island is currently under the purview of the National Park Service, some descendants still reside on the island. The dispute over the sale of land by cash-strapped landowners to commercial developers creates as much heated debate as the discussion of how the Park Service should balance the management of a wilderness area with the privileges accorded the residents. Included in these two debates are the questions of whether the island's signature wild-horse herd should be dispersed because of the environmental damage it wreaks and whether the historic mansions that still pepper the island be allowed to crumble to ruin for the sake of wilderness preservation.Charles Seabrook has been a long-time environmental writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His popular weekly column called "Wild Georgia" was the victim of cutbacks. However, in 2008, the paper reinstituted the column due to reader demand. In 1981, Seabrook was one of the first reporters in the world to write about a mysterious and burgeoning disease that would soon be known as AIDS. In addition, he has written extensively on global warming, air and water pollution, and songbird decline. He has won awards from the National Wildlife Federation, the Southern Environmental Law Center, and various press organizations. His newspaper series about Georgia's mining industry won the Investigative Reporters and Editors "Best Story of the Year" award in 1994. In 2001, the state of Georgia gave him the R. L. "Rock" Howard Award, its highest conservation award. He lives in Decatur, Georgia.
The Lions of Tsavo: Exploring the Legacy of Africa's Notorious Man-Eaters
Bruce D. Patterson - 2004
. . Patterson's book must now be considered the definitive Tsavo lion study... one of the world's leading experts on lions as well as an important conservationist.--Publishers WeeklyThrough field research and forensic evidence, a scientist reveals his theory on why two Kenyan lions killed humans and then ate their preyIn March 1898, the British began building a bridge over the Tsavo River in East Africa. In nine months, two male lions killed and ate nearly 135 workers, halting construction.After a long hunt Colonel J. H. Patterson killed the lions, which are now on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.As codirector of the Tsavo Research Project, Bruce Patterson has conducted extensive fieldwork throughout the region on these lions. In The Lions of Tsavo, Patterson retells the harrowing story of those bloody nights in Kenya. He presents new forensic evidence on these maneless lions and argues that the man-eating behavior exhibited in 1898 came from the encroachment of human populations on wild habitats.Patterson continues this theory by exploring man's interaction with the changing Kenyan environment, creating a complete, up-to-date, and scientific look behind this intriguing murder mystery.
Ecology: Concepts and Applications
Manuel C. Molles Jr. - 1999
An evolutionary perspective forms the foundation of the entire discussion. The book begins with the natural history of the planet, considers portions of the whole in the middle chapters, and ends with another perspective of the entire planet in the concluding chapter. Its unique organization of focusing only on several key concepts in each chapter sets it apart from the competition. .
Habit of Rivers: Reflections on Trout Streams and Fly Fishing
Ted Leeson - 1994
Taking his fishing hobby to near metaphysical levels, Ted Leeson tells about his passions: rivers, trout, and fly fishing. With wry humor and rare insight, he explores questions that engage most fishermen: What is it about rivers that draws us so irresistibly, and why does fly fishing seem such an aptly suited response? Above all, The Habit of Rivers is about ways of seeing the wonderfully textured world that emanates from a river.
Arizona: A History
Thomas E. Sheridan - 1995
Sheridan has spent a lifetime in Arizona, "living off it and seeking refuge from it." He knows firsthand its canyons, forests, and deserts; he has seen its cities exploding with new growth; and, like many other people, he sometimes fears for its future. In this book, Sheridan sets forth new ideas about what a history should be. Arizona: A History explores the ways in which Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos have inhabited and exploited Arizona from the pursuit of the Naco mammoth 11,000 years ago to the financial adventurism of Charles Keating and others today. It also examines how perceptions of Arizona have changed, creating new constituencies of tourists, environmentalists, and outside business interests to challenge the dominance of ranchers, mining companies, and farmers who used to control the state. Sheridan emphasizes the crucial role of the federal government in Arizona's development throughout the book. As Sheridan writes about the past, his eyes are on the inevitable change and compromise of the present and future. He balances the gains and losses as global forces interact more and more with local cultural and environmental factors.
The Feather Quest
Pete Dunne - 1992
Among them were Pete and Linda Dunne, who set off from there on a year-long odyssey. Dunne has poured the most remarkable stories, birds, and characters into this unforgettable book about their once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
When the Water Runs Out
David Canford - 2015
Drought threatens to destroy the livelihood of millions and result in the biggest forced migration in history. The President needs to find a solution quickly while keeping the true scale of the problem secret to avoid panic and his plan confidential to prevent opposition to it. Witnessing a murder, Angel Tarak discovers he now has become a target. He embarks on a dangerous quest to reveal the truth to try and change the future. Events spiral out of control propelling America and Canada towards war. A thriller that flows from Arizona to Northern Canada and DC to Ottawa, with conspiracy, murder and a hunt through uncompromising wilderness. Set only a few years in the future, a novel of what could happen. Will the water run out?
Client Earth
James Thornton - 2017
Every new year is the hottest in human history, while forest, reef, ice, tundra, and species are disappearing forever. It is easy to lose all hope.Who will stop the planet from committing ecological suicide? The UN? Governments? Activists? Corporations? Engineers? Scientists? Whoever, environmental laws need to be enforceable and enforced. Step forward a fresh breed of passionately purposeful environmental lawyers. They provide new rules to legislatures, see that they are enforced, and keep us informed. They tackle big business to ensure money flows into cultural change, because money is the grammar of business just as science is the grammar of nature.At the head of this new legal army stands James Thornton, who takes governments to court, and wins. And his client is the Earth.With Client Earth, we travel from Poland to Ghana, from Alaska to China, to see how citizens can use public interest law to protect their planet. Foundations and philanthropists support the law group ClientEarth because they see, plainly and brightly, that the law is a force all parties recognize. Lawyers who take the Earth as their client are exceptional and inspirational. They give us back our hope.
Conservation Is Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea
Paige West - 2006
Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted over a period of seven years, Paige West focuses on the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area, the site of a biodiversity conservation project implemented between 1994 and 1999. She describes the interactions between those who ran the program—mostly ngo workers—and the Gimi people who live in the forests surrounding Crater Mountain. West shows that throughout the project there was a profound disconnect between the goals of the two groups. The ngo workers thought that they would encourage conservation and cultivate development by teaching Gimi to value biodiversity as an economic resource. The villagers expected that in exchange for the land, labor, food, and friendship they offered the conservation workers, they would receive benefits, such as medicine and technology. In the end, the divergent nature of each group’s expectations led to disappointment for both.West reveals how every aspect of the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area—including ideas of space, place, environment, and society—was socially produced, created by changing configurations of ideas, actions, and material relations not only in Papua New Guinea but also in other locations around the world. Complicating many of the assumptions about nature, culture, and development underlying contemporary conservation efforts, Conservation Is Our Government Now demonstrates the unique capacity of ethnography to illuminate the relationship between the global and the local, between transnational processes and individual lives.
My Fellow Prisoners
Mikhail Khodorkovsky - 2014
Written during this time, this is the account of prison life and the people he encountered.There is the guard who delivers blows with no visible traces. The fraudster stitched up by the police for murder. The man who refuses to lie for a packet of cigarettes. The abandoned teenager, the down-and-out, the grass... He describes a hidden world of brutality and corruption, yet one where moments of humanity still manage to shine through.One in ten Russian men pass through prison at some point in their lives. This book is a denunciation of an entire system of bureaucratic criminality, and a passionate call to recognise a human tragedy.
Perfect Lives
Polly Samson - 2010
A wife stalks her husband and his new lover; a broken egg through a letterbox tells a story that will not go away; the cat thinks he knows best. Threaded throughout are longings for love and poignant disappointments, surprising pleasures and temptations. Some will fall but some, like the small boy at the circus who sees his babysitter fly past on a trapeze wearing little more than a blue bra and spangles, will retain their feeling of awe.PERFECT LIVES, follows Polly Samson's rapturously received first collection, LYING IN BED. They are rueful, knowing, witty, poignant, bashful, bold. Her genius is in the nuance.
Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf: The Story of One Man, Two Cows, and the Feeding of a Nation
Peter Lovenheim - 2002
Determined to understand the process by which living animals become food, Lovenheim did the only thing he could think of: He bought a calf—make that twin calves, number 7 and number 8—from the dairy farm where they were born and asked for permission to spend as much time as necessary hanging around and observing everything that happened in the lives of these farm animals. Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf is the provocative true story of Peter Lovenheim’s hands-on journey into the dairy and beef industries as he follows his calves from conception to possible consumption. In the process, he gets to know the good, hard-working people who raise our cattle and make milk products, beef, and veal available to consumers like you and me. He supplies us with a “fly on the wall” view of how these animals are used to put food on America’s very abundant tables.Constantly vigilant about wanting to be an observer who never interferes, Lovenheim allows the reader to see every aspect of a cow’s life, without passing judgment. Reading this book will forever change the way you think about food and the people and animals who provide it for us.From the Hardcover edition.
Birdsong
Don Stap - 2005
Why does the chestnut-sided warbler sing one song before dawn and another after sunrise? Why does the brown thrasher have a repertoire of two thousand songs when the chipping sparrow has only one? And how is the hermit thrush able to sing a duet with itself, producing two sounds simultaneously to create its beautiful, flutelike melody?Stap's lucid prose distills the complexities of the study of birdsong and unveils a remarkable discovery that sheds light on the mystery of mysteries: why young birds in the suborder oscines -- the "true songbirds" -- learn their songs but the closely related suboscines are born with their songs genetically encoded. As the story unfolds, Stap contemplates our enduring fascination with birdsong, from ancient pictographs and early Greek soothsayers, who knew that bird calls represented the voices of the gods, to the story of Mozart's pet starling.In a modern, noisy world, it is increasingly difficult to hear those voices of the gods. Exploring birdsong takes us to that rare place -- in danger of disappearing forever -- where one hears only the planet's oldest music.