Book picks similar to
New Lives for Ancient and Extinct Crops by Paul E. Minnis


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The Forgotten Exodus: The Into Africa Theory of Human Evolution


Bruce R. Fenton - 2017
    Each clique of scientists has a part of the story correct, but new evidence shows they are all fundamentally wrong.On the one side, we have academics highlighting the astonishing fossil record of China with multiple sites now producing modern human fossils aged between 80 - 120 thousand years, or older. Several extremely ancient fossil finds in China, including Dali, Maba and Jinniushan, place archaic Homo sapiens in this region up to 260,000 years ago.On the other side, we have scientists pointing to Africa's impressive fossil record with its evidence of potential ancestors going back around 6 million years. The evidence of extreme genetic diversity among Africans and the discovery of 300,000-year-old archaic Homo sapiens fossils in Morocco tends to further support the idea that humans came out from Africa. We can understand why both sides are so sure of their positions, and why the debate continues. While leading academics focussed on their own agendas, they overlooked significant evidence. Between the two poles of Out of Africa and Out of Asia Theory, exists a 'Middle Way'. The Forgotten Exodus: The Into Africa Theory of Human Evolution, reveals that within the known fossil record, the current genetic studies and recent paleoclimate models there is compelling evidence for a superior theory of human origins, representing a paradigm displacement.The Into Africa Theory does not dispute the evidence placing the earliest hominins in Africa.However, it does not agree with the consensus view that Homo sapiens emerged there first and later migrated to Eurasia.The Into Africa Theory recognises the extraordinary evidence for critical stages in our development occurring in East and Southeast Asia. It is abundantly clear that as a new concerted effort to gather and evaluate fossil evidence begins in earnest we see astonishing new discoveries. The Into Africa Theorydisputes the claims of Out of Africa and Out of Asia(or Europe) adherents over the starting point for the migration which populated Eurasia approximately 60,000 years ago and identifies the actual location.Amazing facts that you will encounter:-Homo heidelbergensis was not ancestral to modern humans -Denisovan fossils in Siberia carried DNAfrom Australian Aboriginals-An Indonesian supervolcano brought about the end for multiple hominin species-Climate catastrophe locked humans in Africa from 73,000 to 59,000 years ago-There is no African fossil DNA over 10,000 years in age-While supposedly isolated, Aboriginal Australians interbred with Denisovans 44,000 years agoYou will gain access to a long-forgotten conversation involving the famous evolutionary scientists Allan Wilson and Rebecca Cann, in which they admitted that their data suggested Aboriginal Australians were ancestral to all modern humans.Learn why the appearance of the haplogroups foundational to Eurasians, L3 and CT, had to come from a population incursion rather than an in-situ mutation.Explore the cutting-edge scientific findings of 2016 and 2017 alongside a broad range of anomalies long suppressed or ignored in academic circles.The Forgotten Exodus' author Bruce R. Fenton began his journey towards a new understanding of human origins after an expedition to a mysterious megalithic complex in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The Information Systems professional and lifelong scholar of ancient cultures, found himself tracing the threads of the human story across six continents and through 6,000,000 years of history. You will come away with a unique view of humanity and a sense of excitement for revelations still set to arrive. This book reminds all of us that we have a collective ability to overcome enormous obstacles.

A Short History of Progress


Ronald Wright - 2004
    The twentieth century—a time of unprecedented progress—has produced a tremendous strain on the very elements that comprise life itself: This raises the key question of the twenty-first century: How much longer can this go on? With wit and erudition, Ronald Wright lays out a-convincing case that history has always provided an answer, whether we care to notice or not. From Neanderthal man to the Sumerians to the Roman Empire, A Short History of Progress dissects the cyclical nature of humanity's development and demise, the 10,000-year old experiment that we've unleashed but have yet to control. It is Wright's contention that only by understanding and ultimately breaking from the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we avoid the onset of a new Dark Age. Wright illustrates how various cultures throughout history have literally manufactured their own end by producing an overabundance of innovation and stripping bare the very elements that allowed them to initially advance. Wright's book is brilliant; a fascinating rumination on the hubris at the heart of human development and the pitfalls we still may have time to avoid.

Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food


Paul Greenberg - 2010
    He visits Norwegian megafarms that use genetic techniques once pioneered on sheep to grow millions of pounds of salmon a year. He travels to the ancestral river of the Yupik Eskimos to see the only Fair Trade–certified fishing company in the world. He makes clear how PCBs and mercury find their way into seafood; discovers how Mediterranean sea bass went global; challenges the author of Cod to taste the difference between a farmed and a wild cod; and almost sinks to the bottom of the South Pacific while searching for an alternative to endangered bluefin tuna.Fish, Greenberg reveals, are the last truly wild food — for now. By examining the forces that get fish to our dinner tables, he shows how we can start to heal the oceans and fight for a world where healthy and sustainable seafood is the rule rather than the exception.

Ishmael


Daniel Quinn - 1992
    He answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a full-grown gorilla who is nibbling delicately on a slender branch. "You are the teacher?" he asks incredulously. "I am the teacher," the gorilla replies. Ishmael is a creature of immense wisdom and he has a story to tell, one that no other human being has ever heard. It is a story that extends backward and forward over the lifespan of the earth from the birth of time to a future there is still time save. Like all great teachers, Ishmael refuses to make the lesson easy; he demands the final illumination to come from within ourselves. Is it man's destiny to rule the world? Or is it a higher destiny possible for him-- one more wonderful than he has ever imagined?

All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis


Ayana Elizabeth JohnsonCamille T Dungy - 2020
    While it's clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it's a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone.All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States--scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race--and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.Intermixing essays with poetry and art, this book is both a balm and a guide for knowing and holding what has been done to the world, while bolstering our resolve never to give up on one another or our collective future. We must summon truth, courage, and solutions to turn away from the brink and toward life-giving possibility. Curated by two climate leaders, the book is a collection and celebration of visionaries who are leading us on a path toward all we can save. With essays and poems by: Emily Atkin • Xiye Bastida • Ellen Bass • Colette Pichon Battle • Jainey K. Bavishi • Janine Benyus • adrienne maree brown • Régine Clément • Abigail Dillen • Camille T. Dungy • Rhiana Gunn-Wright • Joy Harjo • Katharine Hayhoe • Mary Annaïse Heglar • Jane Hirshfield • Mary Anne Hitt • Ailish Hopper • Tara Houska, Zhaabowekwe • Emily N. Johnston • Joan Naviyuk Kane • Naomi Klein • Kate Knuth • Ada Limón • Louise Maher-Johnson • Kate Marvel • Gina McCarthy • Anne Haven McDonnell • Sarah Miller • Sherri Mitchell, Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset • Susanne C. Moser • Lynna Odel • Sharon Olds • Mary Oliver • Kate Orff • Jacqui Patterson • Leah Penniman • Catherine Pierce • Marge Piercy • Kendra Pierre-Louis • Varshini Prakash • Janisse Ray • Christine E. Nieves Rodriguez • Favianna Rodriguez • Cameron Russell • Ash Sanders • Judith D. Schwartz • Patricia Smith • Emily Stengel • Sarah Stillman • Leah Cardamore Stokes • Amanda Sturgeon • Maggie Thomas • Heather McTeer Toney • Alexandria Villaseñor • Alice Walker • Amy Westervelt • Jane Zelikova

Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage - Revised and Updated Edition


Kenneth S. Deffeyes - 2001
    King Hubbert predicted in 1956 that U.S. oil production would reach its highest level in the early 1970s. Though roundly criticized by oil experts and economists, Hubbert's prediction came true in 1970.In this revised and updated edition reflecting the latest information on the world supply of oil, Kenneth Deffeyes uses Hubbert's methods to find that world oil production will peak in this decade--and there isn't anything we can do to stop it. While long-term solutions exist in the form of conservation and alternative energy sources, they probably cannot--and almost certainly will not--be enacted in time to evade a short-term catastrophe.

The Religion of Ancient Egypt


William Matthew Flinders Petrie - 1906
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Jungle of Stone: The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya


William Carlsen - 2016
    Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood—both already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece, and Rome—sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would upend the West’s understanding of human history.In the tradition of Lost City of Z and In the Kingdom of Ice, former San Francisco Chronicle journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist William Carlsen reveals the remarkable story of the discovery of the ancient Maya. Enduring disease, war, and the torments of nature and terrain, Stephens and Catherwood meticulously uncovered and documented the remains of an astonishing civilization that had flourished in the Americas at the same time as classic Greece and Rome—and had been its rival in art, architecture, and power. Their masterful book about the experience, written by Stephens and illustrated by Catherwood, became a sensation, hailed by Edgar Allan Poe as “perhaps the most interesting book of travel ever published” and recognized today as the birth of American archaeology. Most important, Stephens and Catherwood were the first to grasp the significance of the Maya remains, understanding that their antiquity and sophistication overturned the West’s assumptions about the development of civilization.By the time of the flowering of classical Greece (400 b.c.), the Maya were already constructing pyramids and temples around central plazas. Within a few hundred years the structures took on a monumental scale that required millions of man-hours of labor, and technical and organizational expertise. Over the next millennium, dozens of city-states evolved, each governed by powerful lords, some with populations larger than any city in Europe at the time, and connected by road-like causeways of crushed stone. The Maya developed a cohesive, unified cosmology, an array of common gods, a creation story, and a shared artistic and architectural vision. They created stucco and stone monuments and bas reliefs, sculpting figures and hieroglyphs with refined artistic skill. At their peak, an estimated ten million people occupied the Maya’s heartland on the Yucatan Peninsula, a region where only half a million now live. And yet by the time the Spanish reached the “New World,” the Maya had all but disappeared; they would remain a mystery for the next three hundred years.Today, the tables are turned: the Maya are justly famous, if sometimes misunderstood, while Stephens and Catherwood have been nearly forgotten. Based on Carlsen’s rigorous research and his own 1,500-mile journey throughout the Yucatan and Central America, Jungle of Stone is equally a thrilling adventure narrative and a revelatory work of history that corrects our understanding of Stephens, Catherwood, and the Maya themselves.

Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization


Steven Solomon - 2009
    Four hundred million people depend on it, and there's no backup plan. As Steven Solomon makes clear, the same is true the world over; this volume will give you the background to understand the forces that will drive much of 21st century history.” —Bill McKibbenIn Water, esteemed journalist Steven Solomon describes a terrifying—and all too real—world in which access to fresh water has replaced oil as the primary cause of global conflicts that increasingly emanate from drought-ridden, overpopulated areas of the world. Meticulously researched and undeniably prescient, Water is a stunningly clear-eyed action statement on what Robert F Kennedy, Jr. calls “the biggest environmental and political challenge of our time.”

Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued from the Brink


Jane Goodall - 2009
    With the insatiable curiosity and conversational prose that have made her a bestselling author, Goodall - along with Cincinnati Zoo Director Thane Maynard - shares fascinating survival stories about the American Crocodile, the California Condor, the Black-Footed Ferret, and more; all formerly endangered species and species once on the verge of extinction whose populations are now being regenerated.Interweaving her own first-hand experiences in the field with the compelling research of premier scientists, Goodall illuminates the heroic efforts of dedicated environmentalists and the truly critical need to protect the habitats of these beloved species. At once a celebration of the animal kingdom and a passionate call to arms, Hope For Animals Their World presents an uplifting, hopeful message for the future of animal-human coexistence.Praise for Hope For Animals Their World"Goodall's intimate writing style and sense of wonder pull the reader into each account...The mix of personal and scientific makes for a compelling read."-Booklist"These accounts of conservation success are inspirational."-Publishers Weekly

Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet-One Bite at a Time


Mark Hyman - 2020
    What we eat has tremendous implications not just for our waistlines, but also for the planet, society, and the global economy. What we do to our bodies, we do to the planet; and what we do to the planet, we do to our bodies.In Food Fix, #1 bestselling author Mark Hyman explains how our food and agriculture policies are corrupted by money and lobbies that drive our biggest global crises: the spread of obesity and food-related chronic disease, climate change, poverty, violence, educational achievement gaps, and more.Pairing the latest developments in nutritional and environmental science with an unflinching look at the dark realities of the global food system and the policies that make it possible, Food Fix is a hard-hitting manifesto that will change the way you think about -- and eat -- food forever, and will provide solutions for citizens, businesses, and policy makers to create a healthier world, society, and planet.

Sitopia: How to Live Well on a Hungry Planet


Carolyn Steel - 2020
    Food, and how we search for and consume it, has defined our human journey. From our foraging hunter-gatherer ancestors to the enormous appetites of modern cities, food has shaped our bodies and homes, our politics and trade, and our climate. Whether it's the daily decision of what to eat, or the monopoly of industrial food production, food touches every part of our world. But by forgetting its value, we have drifted into a way of life that threatens our planet and ourselves.Yet food remains central to addressing the predicaments and opportunities of our urban, digital age. Drawing on insights from philosophy, history, architecture, literature, politics and science, as well as stories of the farmers, designers and economists who are remaking our relationship with food, Sitopia is a provocative and exhilarating vision for change, and how to thrive on our crowded, overheating planet. In her inspiring and deeply thoughtful new book Carolyn Steel, points the way to a better future.*A DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020*

Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made


Gaia Vince - 2014
    But all too often the full picture of change is obstructed by dense data sets and particular catastrophes. Struggling with this obscurity in her role as an editor at Nature, Gaia Vince decided to travel the world and see for herself what life is really like for people on the frontline of this new reality. What she found was a number people doing the most extraordinary things.During her journey she finds a man who is making artificial glaciers in Nepal along with an individual who is painting mountains white to attract snowfall; take the electrified reefs of the Maldives; or the man who's making islands out of rubbish in the Caribbean. These are ordinary people who are solving severe crises in crazy, ingenious, effective ways. While Vince does not mince words regarding the challenging position our species is in, these wonderful stories, combined with the new science that underpins Gaia's expertise and research, make for a persuasive, illuminating — and strangely hopeful — read on what the Anthropocene means for our future.

The Re/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids


Paul Spinrad - 1994
    Each bodily function is discussed from a variety of viewpoints: scientific, anthropological, historical, mythological, sociological, and artistic. Topics include constipation, the history and evolution of toilet paper, farting, urine, earwax, smegma, and many other engrossing topics!You think you know shit? How about: Scatological Lives of the Greats; Thomas Crapper, Closet Genius; Excrement in Psychoanalysis; Excretal Customs Worldwide; Bodily Functions in Literature & Cinema; Historical Applications of Excrement....Spend a little time getting to know yourself! Read all about Feces, Flatus, Vomit, Urine, Mucus, Menstruation, Saliva, Sweat, & more!

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic


David Quammen - 2012
    In this gripping account, David Quammen takes the reader along on this astonishing quest to learn how, where from, and why these diseases emerge and asks the terrifying question: What might the next big one be?