Del Weniger presents a beautifully illustrated account of all the cacti found in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Cactus blossoms often rival the most exotic hothouse plants for delicate beauty. Depending upon the species, they range in color from white through almost the entire spectrum of the rainbow. Nearly every plant in the five-state area is here pictured in color, usually in full bloom.
The cactus was one of the most completely new and different plants encountered by Europeans in the Americas, and the larger species, at least, easily made their presence known to even the most unobservant passerby. To the observant the cactus in its surprising variety of forms has from the beginning exercised a strong fascination. The casual student may easily identify most specimens from these illustrations, and the more serious student will find detailed keys to all of the cacti of the area.
An exploration of the explosive illegal trade in succulents and the passion that drives it
Cacti and succulents are phenomenally popular worldwide among plant enthusiasts, despite being among the world’s most threatened species. The fervor driving the illegal trade in succulents might also be driving some species to extinction. Delving into the strange world of succulent collecting, The Cactus Hunters takes us to the heart of this conundrum: the mystery of how and why ardent lovers of these plants engage in their illicit trade. This is a world of alluring desires, where collectors and conservationists alike are animated by passions that at times exceed the limits of law.
What inspires the desire for a plant? What kind of satisfaction does it promise? The answer, Jared D. Margulies suspects, might be traced through the roots and workings of the illegal succulent trade—an exploration that traverses the fields of botany and criminology, political ecology and human geography, and psychoanalysis. His globe-spanning inquiry leads Margulies from a spectacular series of succulent heists on a small island off the coast of Mexico to California law enforcement agents infiltrating a smuggling ring in South Korea, from scientists racing to discover new and rare species before poachers find them to a notorious Czech “cacto-explorer” who helped turn a landlocked European country into the epicenter of the illegal succulent trade.
A heady blend of international intrigue, social theory, botanical lore, and ecological study, The Cactus Hunters offers complex insight into species extinction, conservation, and more-than-human care.
Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.
When the cactuses bloom in Big Bend National Park, their vivid pinks and purples, reds and yellows bring an unforgettable beauty to the rugged Chihuahuan Desert landscape. In fact, many people visit the park just see the cactus blossoms and the wildflowers. If you're one of them, this book will increase your enjoyment by helping you identify the wonders at your feet. And if you've never been to Big Bend when the cactuses are blooming, you'll discover here what you've been missing.
Douglas B. Evans describes twelve kinds of cactus—living rock, topflower, stout-spined, hedgehog, pineapple, button, barrel, fishhook, nipple, chollas and pricklypears, and Texas nipple—and their individual species known to occur in the park. Color photographs taken by Doris Evans and Ro Wauer accompany the species descriptions. As you hike or drive through the park, you can identify most of the cactuses you see simply by leafing through these splendid pictures and then checking the descriptions, which indicate the cactuses' characteristic features and habitat.
To make the book even more useful, Evans also briefly defines the parts of a cactus, explains how scientific names work, and offers a quick introduction to the geography and ecology of Big Bend National Park and the Chihuahuan Desert. With this information, you'll enjoy not only seeing the cactuses of the Big Bend but also being able to tell one from another and knowing just what makes each one special.
The vast North Woods, a land magnificently arrayed in the deep greens of pine, spruce, and fir and the brilliant blues of crystal clear lakes, spans the area from Minnesota to Maine and from Michigan to Hudson Bay. With a little help fromCanoe Country Flora, keen explorers will discover a world full of life and wonder in the plants that thrive in this beautiful lake country.
Canoe Country Flora, a friendly field guide, introduces you to ninety-six of the most common trees, shrubs, wildflowers, fungi, ferns, lichens, and other plants you’re likely to encounter during your travels north. Detailed line drawings and brief plant profiles help you recognize what you’re seeing, while “Sparky” Stensaas’s intriguing tales draw you into a deeper study of the plants’s natural and cultural histories.
Each plant is made identifiable and memorable by fascinating facts, handy checklists, diagrams and charts, and interesting activities that help adults and children learn by discovery.
Use this book as a companion to Canoe Country Wildlife or alone as your guide to a unique North Woods adventure.
Warblers, wolves, and whirligig beetles—the creatures of the canoe countrywilderness come alive in Canoe Country Wildlife. In this read-aloud treasure, “Sparky” Stensaas, naturalist and storyteller, intrigues you with his tales of encounters with the forest inhabitants—from tiny toads to majestic moose.
Canoe Country Wildlife, a friendly field guide, introduces you to the wildlife you are most likely to see as you travel in the North Woods. It describes these creatures and their habits accurately so you’ll know where and when to look for them. Detailed line drawings illustrate each animal clearly so you’ll recognize what you’re seeing.
The book is filled with fascinating little-known facts: Did you know that wood frogs can freeze solid, only to live again? That loons can fly a hundred miles an hour? That chipmunks can carry seventy sunflower seeds in their cheeks?
Canoe Country Wildlife includes handy checklists to help you keep track of the critters you encounter, a calendar for you to record the natural events you witness, and activities—one for each animal—that will help both adults and children learn by discovery.
Carry Canoe Country Wildlife in your pack. Your trip will be more enjoyable and your memories will last forever. It’s a great gift for anyone who loves the outdoors.
In this inviting guide, June Osborne and Barbara Garland follow a year in the life of the Northern Cardinal with a fact-filled text and glowing color photographs. They describe how cardinals stake out territory and choose mates, find a nesting site and incubate their eggs, feed the young and prepare them for full-fledged independence. The Cardinal also explores the special relationship that humans have with their favorite redbirds. Osborne traces the symbolic use of cardinals as state birds (Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia) and athletic mascots and shows how they appear on everything from postage stamps to Christmas cards, as well as in fine art, literature, and Native American folklore.
Drawing on the study of thousands of specimens, Carex of Illinois and Surrounding States: The Oval Sedges is an invaluable resource for botanists, ecologists, environmental engineers, and professional and amateur environmentalists interested in a deeper understanding of these essential plants.
In his final, major publication Ernest S. “Tiger” Burch Jr. reconstructs the distribution of caribou herds in northwest Alaska using data and information from research conducted over the past several decades as well as sources that predate western science by more than one hundred years. Additionally, he explores human and natural factors that contributed to the demise and recovery of caribou and reindeer populations during this time. Burch provides an exhaustive list of published and unpublished literature and interviews that will intrigue laymen and experts alike. The unflinching assessment of the roles that humans and wolves played in the dynamics of caribou and reindeer herds will undoubtedly strike a nerve. Supplemental essays before and after the unfinished work add context about the author, the project of the book, and the importance of both.
The transformational possibilities of everyday hygiene and care practices
In order to mitigate the worst forecasts of climate change, many of us need to make drastic adjustments to how we live and what we consume. For Kelly Dombroski, these changes must also happen in the home: in rethinking routines of care and hygiene that still rely on disposable and plastic products. Caring for Life examines the remarkable evolution in Asia-Pacific hygiene practices and amplifies the creative work of ordinary people guarding human and more-than-human life in their everyday practices of care.
Dombroski develops the concept of “guarding life,” a viewpoint that counters homogenous cultural practices and imposed sanitation standards and instead embraces diverse hygiene practices that are networked across varying wisdoms and bodies. She traces how the Chinese diaper-free infant toilet training practice of baniao has traveled to Australia and New Zealand, and she explores the practice of elimination communication, in which babies learn to communicate to their caregivers when they need to eliminate, thus removing the need for diapers. A mother herself, Dombroski conducted ethnographic research while mothering to examine how collectives of mothers draw on Chinese knowledge and their own embodied practices of childcare to create new hybrid forms of infant care.
Caring for Life is a call to action, a theory of change, and a fascinating account of the transformational possibilities of care practices. It shows how experiments in personal care can lead to collective, widespread change, ultimately providing a practical and hopeful vision for environmental action.
Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.
Over the past two decades, concern about the environment has brought with it a tremendous increase in recycling in the United States and around the world. For many, it has become not only a civic, but also a moral obligation. Long before our growing levels of waste became an environmental concern, however, recycling was a part of everyday life for many Americans, and for a variety of reasons. From rural peddlers who traded kitchen goods for scrap metal to urban children who gathered rags in exchange for coal, individuals have been finding ways to reuse discarded materials for hundreds of years.
In Cash for Your Trash, Carl A. Zimring provides a fascinating history of scrap recycling, from colonial times to the present. Moving beyond the environmental developments that have shaped modern recycling enterprises, Zimring offers a unique cultural and economic portrait of the private businesses that made large-scale recycling possible. Because it was particularly common for immigrants to own or operate a scrap business in the nineteenth century, the history of the industry reveals much about ethnic relationships and inequalities in American cities. Readers are introduced to the scrapworkers, brokers, and entrepreneurs who, like the materials they handled, were often marginalized.
Integrating findings from archival, industrial, and demographic records, Cash for Your Trash demonstrates that over the years recycling has served purposes far beyond environmental protection. Its history and evolution reveals notions of Americanism, the immigrant experience, and the development of small business in this country.
A sophisticated ecological analysis of ranching in northern Nevada featuring a new chapter and new epilogue by the authors.First published in 1985, Cattle in the Cold Desert has become a classic in the environmental history of the Great Basin, brilliantly combining a lively account of the development of the Great Basin grazing industry with a detailed scientific discussion of the ecology of its sagebrush/grassland plant communities. The volume traces the history of white settlement in the Great Basin from about 1860, along with the arrival of herds of cattle and sheep to exploit the forage resources of a pristine environment and, through the history of John Sparks, a pioneer cattleman, illustrates how the herdsmen interacted with the sagebrush/grasslands of the cold desert West. As the story unfolds on two levels—that of the herdsmen adapting their livelihood to the challenging conditions of the Great Basin's scanty forage, aridity, and fierce winters, and that of the fragile ecology of the desert plant communities responding to the presence of huge herds of livestock—we see the results of a grand experiment initiated by men willing to venture beyond the limits of accepted environmental potential to settle the Great Basin, as well as the often ruinous consequences of the introduction of domestic livestock into the plant communities of the region. The result is a remarkably balanced and insightful discussion of the grazing industry in the Intermountain West. This new paperback edition includes an additional chapter that addresses the impact of wild mustangs on the Great Basin rangelands, and an epilogue that discusses changes in rangeland management and in rangeland conditions, especially the impact of recent wildfires. As concern over the future of the Great Basin's unique rangeland environment and its principal agricultural industry grows, Cattle in the Cold Desert remains essential reading for everyone who cares about this underappreciated region of the American West.
A New Edition of One of the Great Military Treatises of the Nineteenth Century
First published in 1853, Cavalry: Its History and Tactics had a major impact on military theorists and officers for decades—it was reprinted as a manual during the American Civil War—and its influence on European cavalry performance can be traced into World War I. It is an intelligent work which discusses the history and development of cavalry over the ages, advocates a program of reform for Britain’s horsed troops, and covers many aspects of equipment, training, drill, organization, formation, and battlefield tactics. The author, an experienced and gifted cavalryman, first served in the Austrian army, then joined the British army’s 15th Hussars in 1839, fought in India, and became the regimental riding master. Captain Nolan’s 1852 tour of European armies, wide reading in many languages, and service in Europe and India makes Cavalry an extraordinary statement on mid-nineteenth-century theory and practice.
As historian Jon Coulston explains in his introduction, Nolan was writing at the cusp of technological change, drawing upon the experiences of the Napoleonic Wars, continental suppression of the 1848 Revolutions, and Britain’s wars in India, but with an eye to firepower developments on the eve of the Crimean War. In 1854, at the Battle of Balaklava, Nolan rode with the written order which unleashed the Charge of the Light Brigade, an action in which he lost his life. Presented here as the first modern reprint, complete with a new introduction and further reading, Nolan’s Cavalry remains a hallmark of military history.
Nine Historians and Writers Investigate the Role of Cavalry in the War for Independence
From the bitterly contested no-man’s-land between American and British lines in New York and New Jersey to the scorching pine forests of the South, the cavalry of both armies fought valiantly throughout the American Revolution. This volume explores several aspects of cavalry’s role in the war, which has often been overlooked in general histories. The topics covered include the development of the Continental Army’s cavalry arm, European influences on American cavalry training and tactics, accounts of several important cavalry raids and battles, and histories of mounted units such as the Continental Light Dragoons, American rangers in the South Carolina backcountry, and the British army’s Queen’s Rangers and “Black Dragoons,” the latter force composed entirely of former slaves. The essays also examine the roles of important commanders, including Brigadier General Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion, Lieutenant Colonel William Washington, and Colonel Anthony Walton White of the American army, and British cavalry leaders Banastre “Bloody Ban” Tarleton and John Graves Simcoe, as well as the American prisoners of war who switched sides and served in the “British Legion.” The authors of the essays include acclaimed military historians Gregory J. W. Urwin and Lawrence E. Babits. Readers with a general interest in military history, as well as those with more specific interests in the American Revolution or the history of the cavalry arm, and anyone who wishes to undertake further study of these subjects, will find the essays fresh, engaging, and informative.
@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman";}@font-face { font-family: "HelveticaNeue-LightCond";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
Contents
Gregory J. W. Urwin: The Continental Light Dragoons, 1776-1783
Lee F. McGee: European Influences on Continental Cavalry
John M. Hutchins: Cavalry Action at Poundridge, New York
Donald J. Gara: Cavalry Battles in New York and New Jersey
Scott A. Miskimon: Anthony Walton White: A Revolutionary Dragoon
Michael C. Scoggins: South Carolina’s Backcountry Rangers
Lawrence E. Babits and Joshua B. Howard: Continentals in Tarleton’s
British Legion
Charles F. Price: Cavalry Operations at Eutaw Springs
Jim Piecuch: The “Black Dragoons”
Contributors. Neel Ahuja, Lauren Derby, Regina Horta Duarte, Martha Few, Erica Fudge, León García Garagarza, Reinaldo Funes Monzote, Heather L. McCrea, John Soluri, Zeb Tortorici, Adam Warren, Neil L. Whitehead
In Champion Trees of Arkansas, Linda Williams Palmer explores the state’s largest trees of their species, registered with the Arkansas Forestry Commission as “champions.” Through her beautiful colored-pencil drawings, each magnificent tree is interpreted through the lens of season, location, history, and human connection.
Readers will get to know the cherrybark oak, rendered in fall colors, an avatar for the passing of seasons. The sugar maple, with its bare limbs and weather-beaten trunk, stands sentry over the headstones in a confederate cemetery. The 350-year-old white oak was once dubbed the Council Oak by Native Americans, and the post oak, cared for by generations of the same family, has its own story to tell.
Palmer travelled from Delta swamps to Ozark and Ouachita mountain ridges over a seven-year period to see and document the champions and to talk with property owners and others willing to share the stories of how these trees are beloved and protected by the community, and often entwined with its history. Champion Trees of Arkansas is sure to inspire art and nature lovers everywhere.
Northern Michigan is undergoing unprecedented changes in land use, climate, resource extraction, and species distributions. For the last hundred years, the University of Michigan Biological Station has monitored these environmental transformations. Stretching 10,000 acres along Burt and Douglas Lakes in the northern Lower Peninsula and 3,200 acres on Sugar Island near Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, the station has played host to nearly 10,000 students and a steady stream of top scientists in the fields of biology, ecology, geology, archeology, and climatology.
The Changing Environment of Northern Michigan collects essays by some of these scientists, who lead readers on virtual field trips exploring the history of people and science at the station itself, the relations of indigenous people to the land, the geophysical history of the region, characteristics of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, key groups of organisms and their relations to local habitats, and perspectives on critical environmental challenges of today and their effects on the region. Accompanying the chapters are color illustrations and photographs that bring the station's pristine setting to life.
Like the station itself, the book provides a solid background for better appreciating the relationships among living and nonliving parts of northern Michigan, for anyone interested in exploring the region's forests, fields, and wetlands; wading or paddling down its rivers; or swimming or floating across its lakes.
Knute J. Nadelhoffer is Director of the University of Michigan Biological Station and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan.
Alan J. Hogg, Jr., teaches science writing at the University of Michigan as a faculty member of the Sweetland Writing Center. His Ph.D. research explored the effects of ozone and nitrogen oxides on University of Michigan Biological Station forests.
Brian A. Hazlett is Professor Emeritus of Zoology at the University of Michigan.
Contributors. Charles S. Backman, Thomas R. Cox, John Dargavel, Elizabeth Flint, Lim Hin Fui, G. R. Henning, Kenneth E. Jackson, Hiroaki Kakizawa, Nicholas K. Menzies, Andrew Price, John F. Richards, Jr., M. M. Roche, I. Gustin M. Tantra, Conrad Totman, Richard P. Tucker, Thomas R. Waggener
Contributors. William Balée, James R. Barborak, Peter Boomgaard, Larissa V. Brown, Gerardo Budowski, John Dargavel, Warren Dean, Silvia del Amo R., Elizabeth Graham, J. Régis Guillaumon, Rhena Hoffmann, Sally P. Horn, Sebastião Kengen, Herman W. Konrad, Mary Pamela Lehmann, Robert D. Leier, Murdo J. MacLeod, M. Patricia Marchak, Elinor G. K. Melville, David M. Pendergast, Susan M. Pierce, Leslie E. Sponsel, Richard P. Tucker, Terry West
“I will make bold to say that Bowden is America’s most alarming writer. Just when you think you’ve heard it all you learn you haven’t in the most pungent manner possible. . . . With The Charles Bowden Reader in hand you get a taste of it all, and any literate resident or visitor should want this book. It will lead them back to a close, alarming reading of the entire oeuvre. It is to ride in a Ferrari without brakes. There’s lots of oxygen but no safe way to stop. . . . Read him at your risk. You have nothing to lose but your worthless convictions about how things are.” —Jim Harrison, from the foreword
From his first book, Killing the Hidden Waters, to his most recent, Murder City: Cuidad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields, Charles Bowden has been sounding an alarm about the rapacious appetites of human beings and the devastation we inflict on the natural world we arrogantly claim to possess. His own corner of the world, the desert borderlands between the United States and Mexico, is Bowden's prime focus, and through books, magazine articles, and newspaper journalism he has written eloquently about key issues roiling the border—drug-related violence that is shredding civil society, illegal immigration and its toll on human lives and the environment, destruction of fragile ecosystems as cities sprawl across the desert and suck up the limited supplies of water.
This anthology gathers the best and most representative writing from Charles Bowden's entire career. It includes excerpts from his major books—Killing the Hidden Waters, Blue Desert, Desierto: Memories of the Future, Blood Orchid,Blues for Cannibals, A Shadow in the City, Inferno, Exodus, and Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing—as well as articles that appeared in Esquire, Harper's, Mother Jones, and other publications. Imbued with Bowden's distinctive rhythm and lyrical prose, these pieces also document his journey of exploration—a journey guided, in large part, by the question posed in Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing: "How do we live a moral life in a culture of death?" This is no metaphor; Bowden is referring to the people, history, animals, and ecosystems that are being extinguished in the onslaught of twenty-first-century culture.
The perfect introduction to his work, The Charles Bowden Reader is also essential for those who know him well and want to see the whole panorama of his passionate, intense writing.
Chasing Dragonflies: A Natural, Cultural, and Personal History is an engaging, beautifully illustrated introduction to these remarkable insects. Drawing on her experiences as a natural history instructor, dragonfly monitor, cancer survivor, grandmother, and steward, Crosby tells the stories of dragonflies: their roles in poetry and art, their fascinating sex life—unique within the animal kingdom—and their evolution from dark-water dwellers to denizens of the air. We follow Crosby and other citizen-scientists into the prairies, wetlands, and woodlands of the Midwest, where they observe the environment and chronicle dragonfly populations and migration to decipher critical clues about our changing waterways and climate.
Woven throughout are personal stories: reflections on the author’s cancer diagnosis and recovery, change, loss, aging, family, joy, and discovering what it means to be at home in the natural world. Crosby draws an intimate portrait of a landscape teeming with variety and mystery, one that deserves our attention and conservation. As warm as it is informative, this book will interest gardeners, readers of literary nonfiction, and anyone intrigued by transformation, whether in nature or our personal lives.
From Belize to Brazil, the forests of the American neotropics are home to an astonishing array of birds—over 3,700 different species, or nearly 40 percent of all the birds on earth. Because of this overwhelming abundance, birders come from all over the world to try to catch glimpses of species that can be found nowhere else, such as toucans and antbirds, motmots and manakins, bellbirds and cocks-of-the-rock, and practically all of the planet's hummingbirds. Two such birding enthusiasts are Vera and Bob Thornton, who have spent fifteen years photographing these special and exotic birds in the rainforests of eleven different countries of Central and South America. In this book, you'll find more than a hundred spectacular color photographs they took during their travels, along with a highly entertaining account of their adventures—and misadventures—in chasing these exotic neotropicals.
The birds pictured here are among the Thorntons' personal favorites—birds that, in their words, "either dazzled us with their beauty, or charmed us by their behavior, or, in a few cases, simply challenged us by the mystique of their rarity." This latter category includes such elusive and sought-after birds as the Black-crowned Antpitta, the Zigzag Heron, the Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo, the Bare-necked Umbrellabird, and the monkey-eating Harpy Eagle. In the accompanying text, Bob Thornton engagingly describes the challenges as well as the magic of negotiating the neotropical rainforests in search of colorful birds to photograph. For those who would like to follow in the Thorntons' footsteps, there are also helpful tips about photographic gear and techniques, preferred places to see the birds, lodging, and guides. For everyone who enjoys excellent nature photography, Chasing Neotropical Birds is a must-have volume on the coffee table or in the library.
In 1987, zoologist Alan Rabinowitz was invited by the Thai government to study leopards, tigers, and other wildlife in the Huai Kha Khaeng valley, one of Southeast Asia's largest and most prized forests. It was hoped his research would help protect the many species that live in that fragile reserve, which was being slowly depleted by poachers, drug traffickers, and even the native tribes of the area. Chasing the Dragon's Tail is the remarkable story of Rabinowitz's life and adventures in the forest as well as the streets of Bangkok, as he works to protect Thailand's threatened wildlife.
Based on Rabinowitz's field journals, the book offers an intimate and moving look at a modern zoologist's life in the field. As he fights floods, fire-ant infestations, elephant stampedes, and a request to marry the daughter of a tribal chief, the difficulties that come with the demanding job of species conservation are dramatically brought to life. First published in 1991, this edition of Chasing the Dragon's Tail includes a new afterword by the author that brings the story up to date, describing the surprising strides Thailand has made recently in conservation.
Other titles by Alan Rabinowitz include Beyond the Last Village and Jaguar.
Honorable Mention, Southern Books Competition, 1999
Known to many as "the butterflies of the bird world," wood warblers allure even the most experienced and discriminating birders. Their annual migrations to and from nesting areas in the United States and Canada draw thousands of birders to places such as High Island, Texas; Crane Creek, Ohio; and Point Pelee, Ontario, where warblers stop to rest and feed during the long journey. There birders have a chance to see and photograph these colorful, elusive songbirds whose quick, darting flight among high branches and thick cover makes them some of the most challenging birds to observe and identify.
In this entertaining, beautifully illustrated book, Bob Thornton recounts his and Vera Thornton's cross-continent adventures in finding and photographing all 52 species of wood warblers that nest in the United States. In addition to describing where and how they photographed each species, Thornton tells marvelous stories of the colorful characters they encountered along the way. He also touches on the current human threats to wood warblers that come from loss of habitat.
Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) is an exotic species that appeared in North America in the late nineteenth century and has since become a dominant plant in the arid and semiarid rangelands between the Sierra Nevadas, Cascades, and Rocky Mountains. It is the first grass to appear after the region's long, cold winters and thus has become an important forage plant for livestock and wildlife. Cheatgrass is also a major environmental hazard in the sagebrush plant communities where it has established itself, providing highly combustible fuel for the wildfires that have ravaged so much of the Great Basin since the mid-twentieth century. Cheatgrass is the first comprehensive study of this highly invasive plant that has changed the ecology of millions of acres of western rangeland. Authors Young and Clements have researched the biology and impact of cheatgrass for four decades. Their book addresses the subject from several perspectives: the history of the invasion; the origins and biology of cheatgrass; its genetic variations, breeding systems, and patterns of distribution; its impact on grazing management; and the role it plays, both positive and negative, in the lives of high desert wildlife.
In the 1978 Love Canal toxic waste crisis, concerned citizens "did a far better job of evaluating the health of the community than did the professionals of the New York Health Department," asserts Marvin Legator. In Chemical Alert! A Community Action Handbook, he and coeditor Sabrina Strawn offer a step-by-step guide that can be used by any lay person or citizens' group to determine whether a health risk exists in their area.
Writing for the general reader with no scientific expertise, environmental, medical, and legal professionals instruct communities on the organizational and investigative techniques that will produce a valid, scientific case study. With these tools, citizens living near petrochemical plants or waste disposal areas—or who may have simply noticed a high incidence of certain health problems in their community—can determine for themselves whether a problem really exists and seek remediation. Given the reality that government agencies often lack the resources—or the will—to detect health hazards before they affect a community, an informed citizenry should be its own best environmental watchdog.
Hereis the first historical and sociological account of the formation of an interdisciplinary science known as genetic toxicology, and of the scientists’ social movement that created it.
After research geneticists discovered that synthetic chemicals were capable of changing the genetic structure of living organisms, scientists began to explore how these chemicals affected gene structure and function. In the late 1960s, a small group of biologists became concerned that chemical mutagens represented a serious and possibly global environmental threat.
Genetic toxicology is nurtured as much by public culture as by professional practices, reflecting the interplay of genetics research and environmental politics. Drawing on a wealth of resources, Scott Frickel examines the creation of this field through the lens of social movement theory. He reveals how a committed group of scientist-activists transformed chemical mutagens into environmental problems, mobilized existing research networks, recruited scientists and politicians, secured financial resources, and developed new ways of acquiring knowledge. The result is a book that vividly illustrates how science and activism were interwoven to create a discipline that remains a defining feature of environmental health science.
In this book, agronomist Ricardo Ayerza and agricultural engineer Wayne Coates trace the long and fascinating history of chia’s use, then reveal the scientific story of the plant and its modern potential. They compare fatty acid profiles of chia with our other major sources—fish oil, flaxseed, and marine algae—and provide evidence that chia is superior in many ways.
Here are just some of the benefits that chia provides:
- chia has the highest known percentage of alpha-linolenic acid, and the highest combined alpha-linolenic and linoleic fatty acid percentage of all crops
- chia has more protein, lipids, energy, and fiber—but fewer carbs—than rice, barley, oats, wheat, or corn—and its protein is gluten-free
- chia is an excellent source of calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, iron, zinc, and copper
- chia is low in sodium: salmon has 78 times as much, tuna 237 times as much
- chia exhibits no evidence of allergic response, even in individuals with peanut and tree-nut allergies
- chia doesn’t give off a “fishy flavor,” unlike some other sources of omega-3 fatty acid
Our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, are familiar enough--bright and ornery and promiscuous. But they also kill and eat their kin, in this case the red colobus monkey, which may say something about primate--even hominid--evolution. This book, the first long-term field study of a predator-prey relationship involving two wild primates, documents a six-year investigation into how the risk of predation molds primate society. Taking us to Gombe National Park in Tanzania, a place made famous by Jane Goodall's studies, the book offers a close look at how predation by wild chimpanzees--observable in the park as nowhere else--has influenced the behavior, ecology, and demography of a population of red colobus monkeys.
As he explores the effects of chimpanzees' hunting, Craig Stanford also asks why these creatures prey on the red colobus. Because chimpanzees are often used as models of how early humans may have lived, Stanford's findings offer insight into the possible role of early hominids as predators, a little understood aspect of human evolution.
The first book-length study in a newly emerging genre of primate field study, Chimpanzee and Red Colobus expands our understanding of not just these two primate societies, but also the evolutionary ecology of predators and prey in general.
Knowledge of chimpanzees in the wild has expanded dramatically in recent years. This comprehensive volume, edited by Martin Muller, Richard Wrangham, and David Pilbeam, brings together scientists who are leading a revolution to discover and explain what is unique about humans, by studying their closest living relatives. Their observations and conclusions have the potential to transform our understanding of human evolution.
Chimpanzees offer scientists an unmatched view of what distinguishes humanity from its apelike ancestors. Based on evidence from the hominin fossil record and extensive morphological, developmental, and genetic data, Chimpanzees and Human Evolution makes the case that the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans was chimpanzee-like. It most likely lived in African rainforests around eight million years ago, eating fruit and walking on its knuckles. Readers will learn why chimpanzees are a better model for the last common ancestor than bonobos, gorillas, or orangutans. A thorough chapter-by-chapter analysis reveals which key traits we share with chimpanzees and which appear to be distinctive to Homo sapiens, and shows how understanding chimpanzees helps us account for the evolution of human uniqueness. Traits surveyed include social behaviors and structures, mating systems, diet, hunting practices, tool use, culture, cognition, and communication.
Edited by three of primatology’s most renowned experts, with contributions from 32 scholars drawing on decades of field research, Chimpanzees and Human Evolution provides readers with detailed up-to-date information on what we can infer about our chimpanzee-like ancestors and points the way forward for the next generation of discoveries.
“Since long before medieval times cranes have been considered messengers of the gods, calling annually from on high to remind humans below of the passing years and of their own mortality. Now it is up to humans to take responsibility for controlling our own fate—and also to cry out to protect not only cranes but all the other wonderful creatures that share our increasingly fragile and threatened planetary ecosystem with us."
—Paul A. Johnsgard, from the acknowledgments
Accompanied by the stunning photography of Thomas D. Mangelsen, A Chorus of Cranes details the natural history, biology, and conservation issues surrounding the abundant sandhill crane and the endangered whooping crane in North America. Author Paul A. Johnsgard, one of the leading authorities on cranes and crane biology, describes the fascinating social behaviors, beautiful natural habitats, and grueling seasonal migrations that have stirred the hearts of people as far back as medieval times and garnered the crane a place in folklore and mythology across continents.
Johnsgard has substantially updated and significantly expanded his 1991 work Crane Music, incorporating new information on the biology and status of these two North American cranes and providing abbreviated summaries on the other thirteen crane species of the world. The stories of these birds and their contrasting fates provide an instructive and moving history of bird conservation in North America. A Chorus of Cranes is a gorgeous and invaluable resource for crane enthusiasts, birders, natural historians, and conservationists alike.
What can Christianity as a tradition contribute to the struggle to secure the future well-being of the earth community? This collaborative volume, the third in the series on religions of the world and the environment, announces that an ecological reformation, an eco-justice reorientation of Christian theology and ethics, is prominent on the ecumenical agenda.
The authors explore problematic themes that contribute to ecological neglect or abuse and offer constructive insight into and responsive imperatives for ecologically just and socially responsible living.
A religious studies scholar argues that in antebellum America, evangelicals, not Transcendentalists, connected ordinary Americans with their spiritual roots in the natural world.
We have long credited Emerson and his fellow Transcendentalists with revolutionizing religious life in America and introducing a new appreciation of nature. Breaking with Protestant orthodoxy, these New Englanders claimed that God could be found not in church but in forest, fields, and streams. Their spiritual nonconformity had thrilling implications but never traveled far beyond their circle. In this essential reconsideration of American faith in the years leading up to the Civil War, Brett Malcolm Grainger argues that it was not the Transcendentalists but the evangelical revivalists who transformed the everyday religious life of Americans and spiritualized the natural environment.
Evangelical Christianity won believers from the rural South to the industrial North: this was the true popular religion of the antebellum years. Revivalists went to the woods not to free themselves from the constraints of Christianity but to renew their ties to God. Evangelical Christianity provided a sense of enchantment for those alienated by a rapidly industrializing world. In forested camp meetings and riverside baptisms, in private contemplation and public water cures, in electrotherapy and mesmerism, American evangelicals communed with nature, God, and one another. A distinctive spirituality emerged pairing personal piety with a mystical relation to nature.
As Church in the Wild reveals, the revivalist attitude toward nature and the material world, which echoed that of Catholicism, spread like wildfire among Christians of all backgrounds during the years leading up to the Civil War.
Film is often used to represent the natural landscape and, increasingly, to communicate environmentalist messages. Yet behind even today’s “green” movies are ecologically unsustainable production, distribution, and consumption processes. Noting how seemingly immaterial moving images are supported by highly durable resource-dependent infrastructures, The Cinematic Footprint traces the history of how the “hydrocarbon imagination” has been central to the development of film as a medium.
Nadia Bozak’s innovative fusion of film studies and environmental studies makes provocative connections between the disappearance of material resources and the emergence of digital media—with examples ranging from early cinema to Dziga Vertov’s prescient eye, from Chris Marker’s analog experiments to the digital work of Agnès Varda, James Benning, and Zacharias Kunuk. Combining an analysis of cinema technology with a sensitive consideration of film aesthetics, The Cinematic Footprint offers a new perspective on moving images and the natural resources that sustain them.
Civic movements are essential to Americans’ freedom and quality of life. Active citizens have led the way from the American Revolution to urban renewal. But fiery emotions and good intentions without skillful organization can lead to frustrated civic involvement. How can individual concerns be transformed into effective community action?
Jan Barry provides a pragmatic, common-sense handbook to civic action. Using case studies from his home state of New Jersey, Barry has crafted what he calls a “guidebook for creative improvement on the American dream.” He dissects civic actions such as environmental campaigns, mutual-help groups, neighborhood improvement projects, and a grassroots peace mission to Russia. Looking for patterns to explain successes and failures, Barry includes his own experiences as a Vietnam veteran peace activist to inspire and coach fledgling activists. The result is a wealth of practical, non-partisan information on membership recruitment, organizational skills, public speaking, lobbying, publicity, conflict resolution, and more. Rising above any particular political, social, or religious beliefs, Barry shows would-be activists how to confront one enduring truth —“Democracy is a lot harder to do than it is to talk about or fight over.”Is there anything you can do when development threatens your local forest, beach, prairie, or wetland? Yes, there is. Across America, citizen activists are fighting and winning battles against unwanted development in their own communities. To help you resist the urban sprawl and absentee landowners that can wreck small towns and cities alike, this book is a practical, hands-on guide for building a grassroots campaign to defeat undesirable development.
Written by a successful activist, Citizen's Primer for Conservation Activism takes you through all the steps necessary to stop unplanned development in your community:
With the proven strategies in this easy-to-access book, you can quickly gear up to challenge unwanted development and preserve the character of your local community.
The American West, from the beginning of Euro-American settlement, has been shaped by diverse ideas about how to utilize physical space and natural environments to create cohesive, sometimes exclusive community identities. When westerners developed their towns, they constructed spaces and cultural identities that reflected alternative understandings of modern urbanity. The essays in City Dreams, Country Schemes utilize an interdisciplinary approach to explore the ways that westerners conceptualized, built, and inhabited urban, suburban, and exurban spaces in the twentieth century.
The contributors examine such topics as the attractions of open space and rural gentrification in shaping urban development; the role of tourism in developing national parks, historical sites, and California's Napa Valley; and the roles of public art, gender, and ethnicity in shaping urban centers. City Dreams, Country Schemes reveals the values and expectations that have shaped the West and the lives of the people who inhabit it.
Fairmount Park is the municipal park system of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It consists of more than one hundred parks, squares, and green spaces totaling about 11,000 acres, and is one of the largest landscaped urban park systems in the world. In City in a Park, James McClelland and Lynn Miller provide an affectionate and comprehensive history of this 200-year-old network of parks.
Originated in the nineteenth century as a civic effort to provide a clean water supply to Philadelphia, Fairmount Park also furnished public pleasure grounds for boat races and hiking, among other activities. Millions travel to the city to view its eighteenth-century villas, attend boat races on the Schuylkill River, hike the Wissahickon Creek, visit the Philadelphia Zoo, hear concerts in summer, stroll the city’s historic squares and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and enjoy its enormous collection of public art. Green initiatives flower today; Philadelphia lives amidst its parks.
Filled with nearly 150 gorgeous full-color photographs, City in a Park chronicles the continuing efforts to create what founder William Penn desired: a “greene countrie town.”
The weekly magazine Garden and Forest existed for only nine years (1888–1897). Yet, in that brief span, it brought to light many of the issues that would influence the future of American environmentalism. In The City Natural, Shen Hou presents the first “biography” of this important but largely overlooked vehicle for individuals with the common goal of preserving nature in American civilization.
As Hou’s study reveals, Garden and Forest was instrumental in redefining the fields of botany and horticulture, while also helping to shape the fledgling professions of landscape architecture and forestry. The publication actively called for reform in government policy, urban design, and future planning for the preservation and inclusion of nature in cities. It also attempted to shape public opinion on these issues through a democratic ideal that every citizen had the right (and need) to access nature. These notions would anticipate the conservation and “city beautiful” movements that followed in the early twentieth century.
Hou explains the social and environmental conditions that led to the rise of reform efforts, organizations, and publications such as Garden and Forest. She reveals the intellectual core and vision of the magazine as a proponent of the city natural movement that sought to relate nature and civilization through the arts and sciences. Garden and Forest was a staunch advocate of urban living made better through careful planning and design. As Hou shows, the publication also promoted forest management and preservation, not only as a natural resource but as an economic one. She also profiles the editors and contributors who set the magazine’s tone and follows their efforts to expand America’s environmental expertise.
Through the pages of Garden and Forest, the early period of environmentalism was especially fruitful and optimistic; many individuals joined forces for the benefit of humankind and helped lay the foundation for a coherent national movement. Shen Hou’s study gives Garden and Forest its due and adds an important new chapter to the early history of American environmentalism.
Part of the massive relief effort of Roosevelt’s New Deal, the CCC was created in 1933 to give young men an opportunity to work and make money to help families devastated by the Great Depression, and to participate in forest and conservation projects across the country. In Arizona, thousands of young men, many of them from the industrial Northeast, served in the state’s CCC forest camps. Arizona’s Mogollon Rim is a spectacular expanse of cliffs that slices through half the state, stretching from Sedona eastward to New Mexico. Along with the White Mountains, it includes the largest contiguous forest of ponderosa pine in America. Remote and little-visited in the 1930s, the Rim Country offered copious outlets for the CCC men’s energies: building roads, public campsites, hiking trails, fire lookout towers, and administration buildings; fighting fires; controlling erosion; eliminating vermin; and restoring damaged soils. The CCC enrollees were also given an opportunity to continue interrupted educations, learn useful skills and self-discipline, participate in sports and other leisure activities, and meet local residents. Author Robert J. Moore interviewed a number of CCC veterans who served in the Rim Country, and their stories are part of this book. So too are photographs—many of them from veterans’ personal collections—of Rim Country camps and workers, and such ephemera as camp newspapers. This is an engrossing account of several thousand young men who came to Arizona to escape the misery of the Great Depression, whose work in the woods changed the state, and who in the process were themselves changed. Here is the human face of Arizona’s CCC, the men’s experiences, their work, and their lasting impact on the forests of the Rim Country.
Drawing on more than thirty years of meticulous research, Kay Rippelmeyer details the Depression-era history of the simultaneous creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois. Through the stories of the men who worked in CCC camps devoted to soil and forest conservation projects, she offers a fascinating look into an era of utmost significance to the identity, citizens, wildlife, and natural landscape of the region.
Rippelmeyer outlines the geologic and geographic history of southern Illinois, from Native American uses of the land to the timber industry’s decimation of the forest by the 1920s. Detailing both the economic hardships and agricultural land abuse plaguing the region during the Depression, she reveals how the creation of the CCC under Franklin Delano Roosevelt coincided with the regional campaign for a national forest and how locals first became aware of and involved with the program.
Rippelmeyer mined CCC camp records from the National Archives, newspaper accounts and other correspondence and conducted dozens of oral interviews with workers and their families to re-create life in the camps. An extensive camp compendium augments the volume, featuring numerous photographs, camp locations and dates of operation, work history, and company rosters. Satisfying public curiosity and the need for factual information about the camps in southern Illinois, this is an essential contribution to regional history and a window to the national impact of the CCC.
READERS
Browse our collection.
PUBLISHERS
See BiblioVault's publisher services.
STUDENT SERVICES
Files for college accessibility offices.
UChicago Accessibility Resources
home | accessibility | search | about | contact us
BiblioVault ® 2001 - 2024
The University of Chicago Press