Book picks similar to
Amazonia in the Anthropocene: People, Soils, Plants, Forests by Nicholas C. Kawa
history
lookout
hunting
ethnography
Green Living: The E Magazine Handbook for Living Lightly on the Earth
E Magazine - 2005
As temperatures rise--and icecaps shrink and storms lash our coastal areas into oblivion--being smart about carbon footprints, waste streams and consumer choices becomes increasingly important for all of us.Green Living, from the award-winning editors of E: The Environmental Magazine, offers a thorough, step-by-step plan for every making aspect of your life earth-friendly, from the laundry room to the kitchen: -Maintaining a healthy home-Going organic and avoiding genetically modified food-Finding a planet-friendly car-Making socially responsible investments-Using personal-care products free of damaging chemicalsWith advice on everything from planet-friendly cosmetics to home-based renewable energy, and straight talk on hemp, hybrids and hair dye, Green Living is the ideal reference for both the neophyte and the experienced environmentalist.
Oak: The Frame of Civilization
William Bryant Logan - 2005
For centuries these supremely adaptable, generous trees have supported humankind in nearly every facet of life. From the ink of Bach’s cantatas to the first boat to reach the New World, the wagon, the barrel, and the sword, oak trees have been a constant presence in our past. Yet we’ve largely forgotten the oak’s role in civilization. With reverence, humor, and compassion, Logan awakens us to the vibrant presence of the oak throughout our history and in today’s world.
Tinkering with Eden: A Natural History of Exotics in America
Kim Todd - 2001
A natural history of non-native species of animals currently living and thriving in America focuses on the various experiments, most well-intentioned, that introduced many foreign life forms to the continent.
Energy and Civilization: A History
Vaclav Smil - 2017
The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization.Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.
Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind
Brian M. Fagan - 2011
As Brian Fagan shows, every human society has been shaped by its relationship toour most essential resource. Fagan's sweeping narrative moves across the world, from ancient Greece and Rome, whose mighty aqueducts still supply modern cities, to China, where emperors marshaled armies of laborers in a centuries-long struggle to tame powerful rivers. He sets out three ages of water: In the first age, lasting thousands of years, water was scarce or at best unpredictable-so precious that it became sacred in almost every culture. By the time of the Industrial Revolution, human ingenuity had made water flow even in the most arid landscapes.This was the second age: water was no longer a mystical force to be worshipped and husbanded, but a commodity to be exploited. The American desert glittered with swimming pools- with little regard for sustainability. Today, we are entering a third age of water: As the earth's population approaches nine billion and ancient aquifers run dry,we will have to learn once again to show humility, even reverence, for this vital liquid. To solve the water crises of the future, we may need to adapt the water ethos of our ancestors.
Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School
C.J. Pascoe - 2007
Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the "specter of the fag" becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the "fag discourse" is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.
Bridging English
Joseph O. Milner - 1993
This book has been praised for its unique components: discussion of "four stages" of reading texts and "three phases" of teaching texts. The authors' many years of experience teaching English are obvious throughout the material, but nowhere more so than in their straightforward presentation of organization and planning for instruction and their firm stand on teaching grammar. This book covers the challenging and the controversial in English instruction and explores censorship, national standards, high-stakes testing, multi-lingual students, and multicultural literature. For professionals in the field of teaching.
Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life
Annette Lareau - 2003
Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security. Lareau shows how middle-class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of "concerted cultivation" designed to draw out children's talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on "the accomplishment of natural growth," in which a child's development unfolds spontaneously—as long as basic comfort, food, and shelter are provided. Each of these approaches to childrearing brings its own benefits and its own drawbacks. In identifying and analyzing differences between the two, Lareau demonstrates the power, and limits, of social class in shaping the lives of America's children.The first edition of Unequal Childhoods was an instant classic, portraying in riveting detail the unexpected ways in which social class influences parenting in white and African-American families. A decade later, Annette Lareau has revisited the same families and interviewed the original subjects to examine the impact of social class in the transition to adulthood.
Sonny's Blues
James Baldwin - 1957
This collects "Sonny's Blues", "The Rockpile" and "Previous Condition", all taken from Going to Meet the Man (Penguin, 1991).
Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media
Susan J. Douglas - 1994
Photos.
Practice of the Wild
Gary Snyder - 1990
These essays, first published in 1990, stand as the mature centerpiece of Snyder’s work and thought, and this profound collection is widely accepted as one of the central texts on wilderness and the interaction of nature and culture. As the Library Journal affirmed, This is an important book for anyone interested in the ethical interrelationships of things, places, and people, and it is a book that is not just read but taken in.”
Theater: The Lively Art
Edwin Wilson - 1995
Created for Theater Appreciation courses that cover both history and elements, Theater: The Lively Art, 6/e remains a comprehensive introductory theater text: an introduction to the audience's experience of theater, an investigation of the elements of theater, and a study of the important developments in the history of theater.
Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance
Heldris de Cornualles
This bilingual edition, a parallel text in Old French and English, is based on a reexamination of the Old French manuscript, and makes Silence available to specialists and students in various fields of literature and women's studies. The Roman de Silence, an Arthurian romance of the thirteenth century, tells of a girl raised as a boy, equally accomplished as a minstrel and knight, whose final task, the capture of Merlin, leads to her unmasking.
The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century
Alex Prud'Homme - 2011
Alex Prud'homme's remarkable work of investigative journalism shows how fresh water is the pressing global issue of the twenty-first century.
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992
Anna Deavere Smith - 1994
From nine months of interviews with more than two hundred people, Smith has chosen the voices that best reflect the diversity and tension of a city in turmoil: a disabled Korean man, a white male Hollywood talent agent, a Panamanian immigrant mother, a teenage black gang member, a macho Mexican-American artist, Rodney King's aunt, beaten truck driver Reginald Denny, former Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates, and other witnesses, participants, and victims. A work that goes directly to the heart of the issues of race and class, Twilight ruthlessly probes the language and the lives of its subjects, offering stark insight into the complex and pressing social, economic, and political issues that fueled the flames in the wake of the Rodney King verdict and ignited a conversation about policing and race that continues today.
