front cover of The Pacific Northwest Coast
The Pacific Northwest Coast
Living with the Shores of Oregon and Washington
Paul D. Komar
Duke University Press, 1998
While the coast of the Pacific Northwest becomes populated with houses, condominiums, motels, and restaurants, its beaches and cliffs continue to be altered by ocean currents and winter storms. A companion volume to Living with the Shore of Puget Sound and the Georgia Strait, The Pacific Northwest Coast serves as a source of information about the coast of the Pacific Northwest, its geological setting, the natural responses of beaches and cliffs to ocean processes, and the ever-present problem of erosion.
In this guide, Paul D. Komar, one of the nation’s leading coastal oceanographers, examines the lessons taught by ages of geological and cultural history. With explanations of the area’s geological evolution, including natural shoreline erosion and sea-cliff landsliding, Komar details human interaction with the coast: erosion caused by early settlers, the development and destruction of Bayocean Spit, the disastrous effects caused by the 1982–1983 El Niño, and the notorious failure of a construction project on the picturesqueæbut unstableæbluffs at Jump-Off Joe. Emphasizing the actual and potential harm to human projects and to the natural heritage of the coast, Komar provides the knowledge necessary for finding a safe home near the shore while preserving the beauty that draws us to it.
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Packrat Middens
The Last 40,000 Years of Biotic Change
Edited by Julio L. Betancourt, Thomas R. Van Devender, and Paul S. Martin
University of Arizona Press, 1990
Over the past thirty years, late Quaternary environments in the arid interior of western North America have been revealed by a unique source of fossils: well-preserved fragments of plants and animals accumulated locally by packrats and quite often encased, amberlike, in large masses of crystallized urine. These packrat middens are ubiquitous in caves and rock crevices throughout the arid West, where they can lie preserved for tens of thousands of years. More than a thousand of these deposits have been dated and analyzed, and middens have supplanted pollen records as a touchstone for studying vegetation dynamics and climatic change in radiocarbon time (the last 40,000 years). Now, similar deposits made by other mammals like hyraxes are being reported from other parts of the world.

This book brings together the findings and views of many of the researchers investigating fossil middens in the United States, Mexico, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia. The contributions serve to open a forum for methodological concerns, update the fossil record of various geographic regions, introduce new applications, and display the vast potential for fossil midden analysis in arid regions worldwide. The findings presented here will serve to foster regional research and to promote general studies devoted to global climate change. Included in the text are more than two hundred charts, photographs, and maps.
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Passing Strange and Wonderful
Aesthetics Nature And Culture
Yi-Fu Tuan
Island Press, 1993

In this rich and rewarding work, Yi-Fu Tuan vividly demonstrates that feeling and beauty are essential components of life and society. The aesthetic is not merely one aspect of culture but its central core—both its driving force and its ultimate goal.

Beginning with the individual and his physical world, Tuan's exploration progresses from the simple to the complex. His initial evaluation of the building blocks of aesthetic experience (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) develops gradually into a wide-ranging examination of the most elaborate of human constructs, including art, architecture, literature, philosophy, music, and more.

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Patterns in Nature
Why the Natural World Looks the Way It Does
Philip Ball
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Though at first glance the natural world may appear overwhelming in its diversity and complexity, there are regularities running through it, from the hexagons of a honeycomb to the spirals of a seashell and the branching veins of a leaf. Revealing the order at the foundation of the seemingly chaotic natural world, Patterns in Nature explores not only the math and science but also the beauty and artistry behind nature’s awe-inspiring designs.

Unlike the patterns we create in technology, architecture, and art, natural patterns are formed spontaneously from the forces that act in the physical world. Very often the same types of pattern and form – spirals, stripes, branches, and fractals, say—recur in places that seem to have nothing in common, as when the markings of a zebra mimic the ripples in windblown sand. That’s because, as Patterns in Nature shows, at the most basic level these patterns can often be described using the same mathematical and physical principles: there is a surprising underlying unity in the kaleidoscope of the natural world. Richly illustrated with 250 color photographs and anchored by accessible and insightful chapters by esteemed science writer Philip Ball, Patterns in Nature reveals the organization at work in vast and ancient forests, powerful rivers, massing clouds, and coastlines carved out by the sea.
 
By exploring similarities such as those between a snail shell and the swirling stars of a galaxy, or the branches of a tree and those of a river network, this spectacular visual tour conveys the wonder, beauty, and richness of natural pattern formation.
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PCBs
Human and Environmental Disposition and Toxicology
Edited by Larry G. Hansen and Larry W. Robertson
University of Illinois Press, 2007

Though polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been banned in the United States for more than thirty years, the toxic effects of their presence in local environments continue to be a significant public health concern. PCBs: Human and Environmental Disposition and Toxicology brings together more than fifty established specialists on PCB toxicity to discuss recent trends and specialized investigations of PCB influences on the environment and on humans. Renowned scientists including Paul S. Cooke, Takeshi Nakano, Tomas Trnovec, Deborah C. Rice, Linda S. Birnbaum, and Charles S. Wong present cutting-edge research on Hudson River PCBs, human contamination, homologue profiles, high PCB exposure in Slovakia, and PCB effects on the thyroid hormone, nutrition, and estrogen levels in humans and animals. Focusing on the detection, movement, metabolism, toxicity, remediation, and risk assessment of PCB contamination, this multi-disciplinary study is a valuable resource for regulatory agencies and scientists working with PCBs.

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Peak Oil
Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture
Matthew Schneider-Mayerson
University of Chicago Press, 2015
In recent years, the concept of “peak oil”—the moment when global oil production peaks and a train of economic, social, and political catastrophes accompany its subsequent decline—has captured the imagination of a surprisingly large number of Americans, ordinary citizens as well as scholars, and created a quiet, yet intense underground movement.

In Peak Oil, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson takes readers deep inside the world of “peakists,” showing how their hopes and fears about the postcarbon future led them to prepare for the social breakdown they foresee—all of which are fervently discussed and debated via websites, online forums, videos, and novels. By exploring the worldview of peakists, and the unexpected way that the fear of peak oil and climate change transformed many members of this left-leaning group into survivalists, Schneider-Mayerson builds a larger analysis of the rise of libertarianism, the role of oil in modern life, the political impact of digital technologies, the racial and gender dynamics of post-apocalyptic fantasies, and the social organization of environmental denial.
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People, Forests, and Change
Lessons from the Pacific Northwest
Edited by Deanna H. Olson and Beatrice Van Horne
Island Press, 2017
We owe much of our economic prosperity to the vast forested landscapes that cover the earth. The timber we use to build our homes, the water we drink, and the oxygen in the air we breathe come from the complex forested ecosystem that many of us take for granted. As urban boundaries expand and rural landscapes are developed, forests are under more pressure than ever. It is time to forgo the thinking that forests can be managed outside of human influence, and shift instead to management strategies that consider humans to be part of the forest ecosystem. Only then can we realistically plan for coexisting and sustainable forests and human communities in the future.

In People, Forests, and Change: Lessons from the Pacific Northwest, editors Deanna H. Olson and Beatrice Van Horne have assembled an expert panel of social and forest scientists to consider the nature of forests in flux and how to best balance the needs of forests and the rural communities closely tied to them. The book considers the temperate moist-coniferous forests of the US Pacific Northwest, but many of the concepts apply broadly to challenges in forest management in other regions and countries.  In the US northwest, forest ecosystem management has been underway for two decades, and key lessons are emerging. The text is divided into four parts that set the stage for forests and rural forest economies, describe dynamic forest systems at work, consider new science in forest ecology and management, and ponder the future for these coniferous forests under different scenarios.

People, Forests, and Change brings together ideas grounded in science for policy makers, forest and natural resource managers, students, and conservationists who wish to understand how to manage forests conscientiously to assure their long-term viability and that of human communities who depend on them.
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People in Control
Human factors in control room design
Jan Noyes
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2001
As industrial processes have become more automated, there is increasing concern about the performance of the people who control these systems. Human error is increasingly cited as the cause of accidents across many sectors of industry.
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The People's Forests
Marshall, Robert
University of Iowa Press, 2002

Devoted conservationist, environmentalist, and explorer Robert Marshall (1901-1939) was chief of the Division of Recreation and Lands, U.S. Forest Service, when he died at age thirty-eight. Throughout his short but intense life, Marshall helped catalyze the preservation of millions of wilderness acres in all parts of the U.S., inspired countless wilderness advocates, and was a pioneer in the modern environmental movement: he and seven fellow conservationists founded the Wilderness Society in 1935. First published in 1933, The People's Forests made a passionate case for the public ownership and management of the nation's forests in the face of generations of devastating practices; its republication now is especially timely.

Marshall describes the major values of forests as sources of raw materials, as essential resources for the conservation of soil and water, and as a “precious environment for recreation” and for “the happiness of millions of human beings.” He considers the pros and cons of private and public ownership, deciding that public ownership and large-scale public acquisition are vital in order to save the nation's forests, and sets out ways to intelligently plan for and manage public ownership.

The last words of this book capture Marshall's philosophy perfectly: “The time has come when we must discard the unsocial view that our woods are the lumbermen's and substitute the broader ideal that every acre of woodland in the country is rightly a part of the people's forests.”

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Peril in the Ponds
Deformed Frogs, Politics, and a Biologist's Quest
Judy Helgen
University of Massachusetts Press, 2012
Peril in the Ponds tells the story of a government biologist's investigation into the mystery of deformed frogs, an epidemic that grew during the 1990s and continues today. It provides an inside view of a highly charged environmental issue that aroused the attention of the public and the media and sparked controversies among scientists, politicians, and government agencies.

By the 1990s, wetlands across the United States were endangered from pollution and decades of drainage to convert them into farmland and urban developments. But when deformed frogs—many with missing legs or eyes, footless stumps, or misshapen jaws—began to emerge from Minnesota wetlands, alarm bells went off. What caused such deformities? Pollution? Ultraviolet rays? Biological agents? And could the mysterious cause also pose a threat to humans?

Judy Helgen writes with passionate concern about vulnerable frogs and wetlands as she navigates through a maze of inquisitive media and a reluctant government agency. She reports on the complexity of a growing catastrophe for frogs and broadens the issue as she researches and meets with scientists from around the world. She affirms the importance of examining aquatic life to understand pollution and the need to rescue our remaining wetlands. She also shares the fears expressed by the teachers, students, and other citizens who found these creatures, sensed a problem, and looked to her for answers. Ultimately, this is a story about the biological beauty of wetlands and our need to pay attention to the environment around us.
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Phantoms of the Prairie
The Return of Cougars to the Midwest
John W. Laundré
University of Wisconsin Press, 2012

Last seen in the 1880s, cougars (also known as pumas or mountain lions) are making a return to the plains regions of the Midwest. Their comeback, heralded by wildlife enthusiasts, has brought concern and questions to many. Will the people of the region make room for cougars? Can they survive the highly altered landscape of the Midwest? Is there a future for these intrepid pioneers if they head even farther east?
    Using GIS technology, and historical data, among many other methods, Phantoms of the Prairie takes readers on a virtual journey, showing how the cougar might move over the landscape with minimal human contact. Drawing on his years of research on cougars, John W. Laundré offers an overview of what has been, what is, and what might be regarding the return of cougars to their ancestral prairie homeland.

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A Pivotal Moment
Population, Justice, and the Environmental Challenge
Laurie Mazur
Island Press, 2010
With contributions by leading demographers, environmentalists, and reproductive health advocates, A Pivotal Moment offers a new perspective on the complex connection between population dynamics and environmental quality. It presents the latest research on the relationship between population growth and climate change, ecosystem health, and other environmental issues. It surveys the new demographic landscape—in which population growth rates have fallen, but human numbers continue to increase. It looks back at the lessons of the last half century while looking forward to population policies that are sustainable and just.
A Pivotal Moment embraces the concept of “population justice,” which holds that inequality is a root cause of both rapid population growth and environmental degradation. By addressing inequality—both gender and economic—we can reduce growth rates and build a sustainable future.
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Place of the Wild
A Wildlands Anthology
Edited by David Clarke Burks
Island Press, 1994

Where and what is the place of the wild? Is the goal of preserving biodiversity across the landscape of North America compatible with contemporary Western culture?

Place of the Wild brings together original essays from an exceptional array of contemporary writers and activists to present in a single volume the most current thinking on the relationship between humans and wilderness. A common thread running through the volume is the conviction that everyone concerned with the natural world -- academics and activists, philosophers and poets -- must join forces to re-establish cultural narratives and shared visions that sustain life on this planet.

The contributors apply the insights of conservation biology to the importance of wilderness in the 21st century, raising questions and stimulating thought. The volume begins with a series of personal narratives that present portraits of wildlands and humans. Following those narratives are more-analytical discourses that examine conceptions and perceptions of the wild, and of the place of humanity in it. The concluding section features clear and resonant activist voices that consider the importance of wildlands, and what can be done to reconcile the needs of wilderness with the needs of human culture.

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Places of Quiet Beauty
Parks, Preserves, and Environmentalism
Rebecca Conard
University of Iowa Press, 1997

Resource protection and public recreation policies have always been subject to the shifting winds of management philosophy governing both national and state parks. Somewhere in the balance, however, parks and preserves have endured as unique places of mind as well as matter. Places of Quiet Beauty allows us to see parks and preserves, forests and wildlife refuges—all those special places that the term “park” conjures up—as measures of our own commitment to caring for the environment. In this broad-ranging book, historian Rebecca Conard examines the complexity of American environmentalism in the twentieth century as manifest in Iowa's state parks and preserves.

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A Plague of Rats and Rubbervines
The Growing Threat Of Species Invasions
Yvonne Baskin
Island Press, 2002

The human love of novelty and desire to make one place look like another, coupled with massive increases in global trade and transport, are creating a growing economic and ecological threat. The same forces that are rapidly "McDonaldizing" the world's diverse cultures are also driving us toward an era of monotonous, weedy, and uniformly impoverished landscapes. Unique plant and animal communities are slowly succumbing to the world's "rats and rubbervines" -- animals like zebra mussels and feral pigs, and plants like kudzu and water hyacinth -- that, once moved into new territory, can disrupt human enterprise and well-being as well as native habitats and biodiversity.

From songbird-eating snakes in Guam to cheatgrass in the Great Plains, "invasives" are wreaking havoc around the world. In A Plague of Rats and Rubbervines, widely published science writer Yvonne Baskin draws on extensive research to provide an engaging and authoritative overview of the problem of harmful invasive alien species. She takes the reader on a worldwide tour of grasslands, gardens, waterways, and forests, describing the troubles caused by exotic organisms that run amok in new settings and examining how commerce and travel on an increasingly connected planet are exacerbating this oldest of human-created problems. She offers examples of potential solutions and profiles dedicated individuals worldwide who are working tirelessly to protect the places and creatures they love.

While our attention is quick to focus on purposeful attempts to disrupt our lives and economies by releasing harmful biological agents, we often ignore equally serious but much more insidious threats, those that we inadvertently cause by our own seemingly harmless actions. A Plague of Rats and Rubbervines takes a compelling look at this underappreciated problem and sets forth positive suggestions for what we as consumers, gardeners, travelers, nurserymen, fishermen, pet owners, business people -- indeed all of us who by our very local choices drive global commerce -- can do to help. "

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Planet Work
Rethinking Labor and Leisure in the Anthropocene
Ryan Hediger
Bucknell University Press, 2023
Labor and labor norms orient much of contemporary life, organizing our days and years and driving planetary environmental change. Yet, labor, as a foundational set of values and practices, has not been sufficiently interrogated in the context of the environmental humanities for its profound role in climate change and other crises. This collection of essays demonstrates the urgent need to rethink models and customs of labor and leisure in the Anthropocene. Recognizing the grave traumas and hazards plaguing planet Earth, contributors expose fundamental flaws in ideas of work and search for ways to redirect cultures toward more sustainable modes of life. These essays evaluate Anthropocene frames of interpretation, dramatize problems and potentials in regimes of labor, and explore leisure practices such as walking and storytelling as modes of recasting life, while a coda advocates reviving notions of work as craft.
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Planetary Health
Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves
Edited by Samuel Myers and Howard Frumkin
Island Press, 2020
Human health depends on the health of the planet. Earth’s natural systems—the air, the water, the biodiversity, the climate—are our life support systems. Yet climate change, biodiversity loss, scarcity of land and freshwater, pollution and other threats are degrading these systems. The emerging field of planetary health aims to understand how these changes threaten our health and how to protect ourselves and the rest of the biosphere.

Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves provides a readable introduction to this new paradigm. With an interdisciplinary approach, the book addresses a wide range of health impacts felt in the Anthropocene, including food and nutrition, infectious disease, non-communicable disease, dislocation and conflict, and mental health. It also presents strategies to combat environmental changes and its ill-effects, such as controlling toxic exposures, investing in clean energy, improving urban design, and more. Chapters are authored by widely recognized experts.

The result is a comprehensive and optimistic overview of a growing field that is being adopted by researchers and universities around the world. Students of public health will gain a solid grounding in the new challenges their profession must confront, while those in the environmental sciences, agriculture, the design professions, and other fields will become familiar with the human consequences of planetary changes. Understanding how our changing environment affects our health is increasingly critical to a variety of disciplines and professions. Planetary Health is the definitive guide to this vital field.
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Plant Reintroduction in a Changing Climate
Promises and Perils
Edited by Joyce Maschinski and Kristin E. Haskins
Island Press, 2011
Considered an essential conservation tool, plant reintroductions have been conducted for many of the world's rarest plant species. The expertise and knowledge gained through these efforts constitute an essential storehouse of information for conservationists faced with a rapidly changing global climate.

This volume presents a comprehensive review of reintroduction projects and practices, the circumstances of their successes or failures, lessons learned, and the potential role for reintroductions in preserving species threatened by climate change. Contributors examine current plant reintroduction practices, from selecting appropriate source material and recipient sites to assessing population demography.

The findings culminate in a set of Best Reintroduction Practice Guidelines, included in an appendix. These guidelines cover stages from planning and implementation to long-term monitoring, and offer not only recommended actions but also checklists of questions to consider that are applicable to projects around the world.

Traditional reintroduction practice can inform managed relocation-the deliberate movement of species outside their native range-which may be the only hope for some species to persist in a natural environment. Included in the book are discussions of the history, fears, and controversy regarding managed relocation, along with protocols for evaluating invasive risk and proposals for conducting managed relocation of rare plants.

Plant Reintroduction in a Changing Climate is a comprehensive and accessible reference for practitioners to use in planning and executing rare plant reintroductions.
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Plastic Matter
Heather Davis
Duke University Press, 2022
Plastic is ubiquitous. It is in the Arctic, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, and in the high mountaintops of the Pyrenees. It is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Nanoplastics penetrate our cell walls. Plastic is not just any material—it is emblematic of life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Plastic Matter Heather Davis traces plastic’s relations to geology, media, biology, and race to show how matter itself has come to be understood as pliable, disposable, and consumable. The invention and widespread use of plastic, Davis contends, reveals the dominance of the Western orientation to matter and its assumption that matter exists to be endlessly manipulated and controlled by humans. Plastic’s materiality and pliability reinforces these expectations of what matter should be and do. Davis charts these relations to matter by mapping the queer multispecies relationships between humans and plastic-eating bacteria and analyzing photography that documents the racialized environmental violence of plastic production. In so doing, Davis provokes readers to reexamine their relationships to matter and life in light of plastic’s saturation.
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Plastics
America's Packaging Dilemma
Nancy Wolf and Ellen Feldman
Island Press, 1991

Plastics explains what plastics are, how they are made, how they are used, and the problems and opportunities they bring.

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Platypus Matters
The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals
Jack Ashby
University of Chicago Press, 2022
Scientifically informed and funny, a firsthand account of Australia’s wonderfully unique mammals—and how our perceptions impact their future.

Think of a platypus: They lay eggs (that hatch into so-called platypups), produce milk without nipples and venom without fangs, and can detect electricity. Or a wombat: Their teeth never stop growing, they poop cubes, and they defend themselves with reinforced rears. And what about antechinuses—tiny marsupial carnivores whose males don’t see their first birthday, as their frenzied sex lives take so much energy that their immune systems fail? Platypuses, possums, wombats, echidnas, devils, kangaroos, quolls, dibblers, dunnarts, kowaris: Australia has some truly astonishing mammals, with incredible, unfamiliar features. But how does the world regard these creatures? And what does that mean for their conservation?

In Platypus Matters, naturalist Jack Ashby shares his love for these often-misunderstood animals. Informed by his own experiences meeting living marsupials and egg-laying mammals during fieldwork in Tasmania and mainland Australia, as well as his work with thousands of zoological specimens collected for museums over the last two-hundred-plus years, Ashby’s tale not only explains historical mysteries and debunks myths (especially about the platypus), but also reveals the toll these myths can take. Ashby makes clear that calling these animals “weird” or “primitive”—or incorrectly implying that Australia is an “evolutionary backwater,” a perception that can be traced back to the country’s colonial history—has undermined conservation: Australia now has the worst mammal extinction rate of any place on Earth. Important, timely, and written with humor and wisdom by a scientist and self-described platypus nerd, this celebration of Australian wildlife will open eyes and change minds about how we contemplate and interact with the natural world—everywhere.
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A Poison Like No Other
How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies
Matt Simon
Island Press, 2022
“Informed, utterly blindsiding account.” - Booklist, starred review

It’s falling from the sky and in the air we breathe. It’s in our food, our clothes, and our homes. It’s microplastic and it’s everywhere—including our own bodies. Scientists are just beginning to discover how these tiny particles threaten health, but the studies are alarming.
 
In A Poison Like No Other, Matt Simon reveals a whole new dimension to the plastic crisis, one even more disturbing than plastic bottles washing up on shores and grocery bags dumped in landfills. Dealing with discarded plastic is bad enough, but when it starts to break down, the real trouble begins. The very thing that makes plastic so useful and ubiquitous – its toughness – means it never really goes away. It just gets smaller and smaller: eventually small enough to enter your lungs or be absorbed by crops or penetrate a fish’s muscle tissue before it becomes dinner.
 
Unlike other pollutants that are single elements or simple chemical compounds, microplastics represent a cocktail of toxicity: plastics contain at least 10,000 different chemicals. Those chemicals are linked to diseases from diabetes to hormone disruption to cancers.
 
A Poison Like No Other is the first book to fully explore this new dimension of the plastic crisis, following the intrepid scientists who travel to the ends of the earth and the bottom of the ocean to understand the consequences of our dependence on plastic. As Simon learns from these researchers, there is no easy fix. But we will never curb our plastic addiction until we begin to recognize the invisible particles all around us. 
 
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The Poison Trials
Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science
Alisha Rankin
University of Chicago Press, 2021
In 1524, Pope Clement VII gave two condemned criminals to his physician to test a promising new antidote. After each convict ate a marzipan cake poisoned with deadly aconite, one of them received the antidote, and lived—the other died in agony. In sixteenth-century Europe, this and more than a dozen other accounts of poison trials were committed to writing. Alisha Rankin tells their little-known story.

At a time when poison was widely feared, the urgent need for effective cures provoked intense excitement about new drugs. As doctors created, performed, and evaluated poison trials, they devoted careful attention to method, wrote detailed experimental reports, and engaged with the problem of using human subjects for fatal tests. In reconstructing this history, Rankin reveals how the antidote trials generated extensive engagement with “experimental thinking” long before the great experimental boom of the seventeenth century and investigates how competition with lower-class healers spurred on this trend.

The Poison Trials sheds welcome and timely light on the intertwined nature of medical innovations, professional rivalries, and political power.
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The Poisoned Well
New Strategies For Groundwater Protection
Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund
Island Press, 1989

The Poisoned Well offers vital strategies for citizens, community organizations, and public officials who want to fight the battle against pollutants.

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The Poisonous Pen of Agatha Christie
By Michael C. Gerald
University of Texas Press, 1993

Poisoning occurs in over half of Agatha Christie's many novels and stories. In fact, she used a larger number and broader selection of poisons and medicines, for a wider variety of purposes, with greater frequency, ingenuity, and scientific accuracy than any other detective fiction writer. Yet very little has been written on the use of drugs, poisons, and chemicals in Christie's fiction.

The Poisonous Pen of Agatha Christie entertainingly and authoritatively fills this gap. Michael Gerald explores the use of poisons and drugs in Christie's fiction not only to commit murder and suicide but also to incapacitate a victim, alter behavior, treat disease, or support addiction. He also analyzes her views, as expressed in her fiction and autobiography, on drug addiction, the health professions, the value of medicines, and scientific discoveries.

Especially valuable is Gerald's exhaustive listing of all drugs, poisons, and chemicals mentioned in Christie's novels and stories, with references to the work(s) in which each appears and the ways in which each is used. Other tables list all the novels and short stories and the chemicals that are used in each. Throughout, the properties of all drugs are clearly explained so that the reader needs no special scientific or medical knowledge.

The Poisonous Pen of Agatha Christie illuminates the fictional uses Christie made of her real-life experiences as a hospital drug dispenser and as a provider of nursing care. It will be of interest to fans and scholars alike.

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Poisonous Skies
Acid Rain and the Globalization of Pollution
Rachel Emma Rothschild
University of Chicago Press, 2019
The climate change reckoning looms. As scientists try to discern what the Earth’s changing weather patterns mean for our future, Rachel Rothschild seeks to understand the current scientific and political debates surrounding the environment through the history of another global environmental threat: acid rain.
 
The identification of acid rain in the 1960s changed scientific and popular understanding of fossil fuel pollution’s potential to cause regional—and even global—environmental harms. It showed scientists that the problem of fossil fuel pollution was one that crossed borders—it could travel across vast stretches of the earth’s atmosphere to impact ecosystems around the world. This unprecedented transnational reach prompted governments, for the first time, to confront the need to cooperate on pollution policies, transforming environmental science and diplomacy. Studies of acid rain and other pollutants brought about a reimagining of how to investigate the natural world as a complete entity, and the responses of policy makers, scientists, and the public set the stage for how societies have approached other prominent environmental dangers on a global scale, most notably climate change.
 
Grounded in archival research spanning eight countries and five languages, as well as interviews with leading scientists from both government and industry, Poisonous Skies is the first book to examine the history of acid rain in an international context. By delving deep into our environmental past, Rothschild hopes to inform its future, showing us how much is at stake for the natural world as well as what we risk—and have already risked—by not acting.
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The Politics of Water in Arizona
Dean E. Mann
University of Arizona Press, 1963
“Mann’s book is timely, and its central theme, the role of legal, political, and scientific institutions in the utilization of water in Arizona, is appropriate. It is appropriate, moreover, for the greater region of California and the Southwest, where exist similar problems. . . . The Politics of Water in Arizona ranks along with Richard Cooley’s prize winning Politics and Conservation: The Decline of the Alaska Salmon as an outstanding contribution of a political science to the field of conservation and resource utilization.”—California Historical Society Quarterly
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Pollution Is Colonialism
Max Liboiron
Duke University Press, 2021
In Pollution Is Colonialism Max Liboiron presents a framework for understanding scientific research methods as practices that can align with or against colonialism. They point out that even when researchers are working toward benevolent goals, environmental science and activism are often premised on a colonial worldview and access to land. Focusing on plastic pollution, the book models an anticolonial scientific practice aligned with Indigenous, particularly Métis, concepts of land, ethics, and relations. Liboiron draws on their work in the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR)—an anticolonial science laboratory in Newfoundland, Canada—to illuminate how pollution is not a symptom of capitalism but a violent enactment of colonial land relations that claim access to Indigenous land. Liboiron's creative, lively, and passionate text refuses theories of pollution that make Indigenous land available for settler and colonial goals. In this way, their methodology demonstrates that anticolonial science is not only possible but is currently being practiced in ways that enact more ethical modes of being in the world.
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Prairies Forests And Wetlands
Natural Landscape Communities
Janette R. Thompson
University of Iowa Press, 1992

Before Euro-American settlement, graceful prairies and prairie-wetland complexes dominated Iowa's rolling landscape, with forest communities hugging rivers and streams and savannas or forests covering the southern and eastern portions of the state. During the last 150 years these original natural communities have nearly been eliminated by conversion of over 95 percent of the land to agricultural and urban uses.

This timely, practical book combines a nontechnical natural history of each native community with a how-to manual for lay restorationists dedicated to reconstructing prairies, forests, and wetlands. Thompson intelligently presents the collective experience of professionals active in restoring the splendid natural areas of Iowa and the greater Midwest—discussing site selection, site preparation, plant species, planting techniques, costs, and maintenance of restoration areas. She includes a useful list of sources for plant materials in and near Iowa as well as information on the birds and mammals, reptiles and amphibians of these landscapes. Prairies, Forests, and Wetlands will help individual landowners, farmers, landscape architects, D.O.T. engineers, teachers, botanists, county conservation boards, and wildlife area managers in their private and professional campaigns to reclaim Iowa's land.

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Precaution, Environmental Science, and Preventive Public Policy
Edited by Joel A. Tickner
Island Press, 2002
The "precautionary principle"—the idea that society should guard against potentially harmful activities even if some cause and effect relationships have not been fully established—has often been attacked for being unscientific. However leading scientists studying the issue have begun to make the case that the precautionary principle is in fact science based, and that it creates a need for more rigorous and transparent science in examining complex and uncertain environmental risks.Precaution, Environmental Science, and Preventive Public Policy is the first book to explore the role of science in developing a more precautionary approach to environmental and public health policy. The book brings together leading scientists, legal experts, philosophers, environmental health professionals, and environmentalists to offer a multi-disciplinary perspective on the controversial debate over science and precaution. The book:discusses the critical need for science in promoting sustainabilityoutlines the ethical imperative of a more precautionary science and the philosophical foundations of that new approachconsiders some of the ways in which the current conduct of environmental science works against precautionary policiesexamines how the role and use of science differs across cultures and political systemsprovides the components of an approach to environmental science that more effectively supports precautionary decisionsThe book also offers case studies that consider various types of uncertainty and sets forth a framework for evaluating and addressing uncertainty in decision-making.Contributors include Juan Almendares, Katherine Barrett, Kamaljit Bawa, Finn Bro-Rasmussen, Donald Brown, Theofanis Christoforou, Terry Collins, Barry Commoner, Carl Cranor, Stephen Dovers, David Gee, Elizabeth Guillette, Cato ten Hallers-Tjabbes, James Huff, Matthias Kaiser, Richard Levins, Mary O'Brien, Carolyn Raffensperger, Jerry Ravetz, Vandana Shiva, Boyce Thorne-Miller, Joe Thornton, Reginald Victor, and Alistair Woodward.Precaution, Environmental Science, and Preventive Public Policy presents a broad overview of the role of science in implementing the precautionary principle and makes a compelling case that science should be used not just to study problems but to develop solutions.
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Predicting Species Occurrences
Issues of Accuracy and Scale
Edited by J. Michael Scott, Patricia J. Heglund, and Michael L. Morrison; Foreword by Peter H. Raven
Island Press, 2002
Predictions about where different species are, where they are not, and how they move across a landscape or respond to human activities -- if timber is harvested, for instance, or stream flow altered -- are important aspects of the work of wildlife biologists, land managers, and the agencies and policymakers that govern natural resources. Despite the increased use and importance of model predictions, these predictions are seldom tested and have unknown levels of accuracy.Predicting Species Occurrences addresses those concerns, highlighting for managers and researchers the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches, as well as the magnitude of the research required to improve or test predictions of currently used models. The book is an outgrowth of an international symposium held in October 1999 that brought together scientists and researchers at the forefront of efforts to process information about species at different spatial and temporal scales. It is a comprehensive reference that offers an exhaustive treatment of the subject, with 65 chapters by leading experts from around the world that: review the history of the theory and practice of modeling and present a standard terminology examine temporal and spatial scales in terms of their influence on patterns and processes of species distribution offer detailed discussions of state-of-the-art modeling tools and descriptions of methods for assessing model accuracy discuss how to predict species presence and abundance present examples of how spatially explicit data on demographics can provide important information for managers An introductory chapter by Michael A. Huston examines the ecological context in which predictions of species occurrences are made, and a concluding chapter by John A. Wiens offers an insightful review and synthesis of the topics examined along with guidance for future directions and cautions regarding misuse of models. Other contributors include Michael P. Austin, Barry R. Noon, Alan H. Fielding, Michael Goodchild, Brian A. Maurer, John T. Rotenberry, Paul Angermeier, Pierre R. Vernier, and more than a hundred others.Predicting Species Occurrences offers important new information about many of the topics raised in the seminal volume Wildlife 2000 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1986) and will be the standard reference on this subject for years to come. Its state-of-the-art assessment will play a key role in guiding the continued development and application of tools for making accurate predictions and is an indispensable volume for anyone engaged in species management or conservation.
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Prediction
Science, Decision Making, and the Future of Nature
Edited by Daniel Sarewitz, Roger A. Pielke Jr., and Radford Byerly Jr.
Island Press, 2000

The idea that predictive science can simplify the decision-making process by creating a clearer picture of the future is deeply appealing in principle, but deeply problematic in practice.

Prediction offers a fascinating and wide-ranging look at the interdependent scientific, political, and social factors involved in using science-based predictions to guide policy making. Through ten detailed case studies, it explores society's efforts to generate reliable scientific information about complex natural systems and to use that information in making sound policy decisions. The book:

  • provides an overview of predictive science from historical, scientific, political, and behavioral perspectives offers case studies of the use and misuse of scientific predictions on subjects ranging from asteroids to nuclear waste disposal
  • proposes a practical analytical framework for the use of predictive science in setting policy
  • recommends actions and policies that can increase the likelihood of effective decisions
Contributors include Clark Chapman, Charles Herrick, William H. Hooke, Orrin Pilkey, Steve Rayner, Naomi Oreskes, Daniel Metlay, Stanley Changnon, Donald Gautier, Robert Moran, Joanne Nigg, and Thomas Stewart.

Prediction is the first book to look at the numerous and varied scientific, social, and political factors involved in making and using predictions relevant to a wide range of current environmental controversies and challenges. It provides much-needed context for understanding predictions and scientific pronouncements, and is an important work for anyone concerned with interactions between science and policy making.
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The Price of Nuclear Power
Uranium Communities and Environmental Justice
Malin, Stephanie A.
Rutgers University Press, 2015
Rising fossil fuel prices and concerns about greenhouse gas emissions are fostering a nuclear power renaissance and a revitalized uranium mining industry across the American West. In The Price of Nuclear Power, environmental sociologist Stephanie Malin offers an on-the-ground portrait of several uranium communities caught between the harmful legacy of previous mining booms and the potential promise of new economic development. Using this context, she examines how shifting notions of environmental justice inspire divergent views about nuclear power’s sustainability and equally divisive forms of social activism. 
 
Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted in rural isolated towns such as Monticello, Utah, and Nucla and Naturita, Colorado, as well as in upscale communities like Telluride, Colorado, and incorporating interviews with community leaders, environmental activists, radiation regulators, and mining executives, Malin uncovers a fundamental paradox of the nuclear renaissance: the communities most hurt by uranium’s legacy—such as high rates of cancers, respiratory ailments, and reproductive disorders—were actually quick to support industry renewal. She shows that many impoverished communities support mining not only because of the employment opportunities, but also out of a personal identification with uranium, a sense of patriotism, and new notions of environmentalism. But other communities, such as Telluride, have become sites of resistance, skeptical of industry and government promises of safe mining, fearing that regulatory enforcement won’t be strong enough. Indeed, Malin shows that the nuclear renaissance has exacerbated social divisions across the Colorado Plateau, threatening social cohesion. Malin further illustrates ways in which renewed uranium production is not a socially sustainable form of energy development for rural communities, as it is utterly dependent on unstable global markets. 
 
The Price of Nuclear Power is an insightful portrait of the local impact of the nuclear renaissance and the social and environmental tensions inherent in the rebirth of uranium mining.
 
 
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Primer of Ecological Restoration
Karen D. Holl
Island Press, 2020
The pace, intensity, and scale at which humans have altered our planet in recent decades is unprecedented. We have dramatically transformed landscapes and waterways through agriculture, logging, mining, and fire suppression, with drastic impacts on public health and human well-being. What can we do to counteract and even reverse the worst of these effects? Restore damaged ecosystems.
 
The Primer of Ecological Restoration is a succinct introduction to the theory and practice of ecological restoration as a strategy to conserve biodiversity and ecosystems. In twelve brief chapters, the book introduces readers to the basics of restoration project planning, monitoring, and adaptive management. It explains abiotic factors such as landforms, soil, and hydrology that are the building blocks to successfully recovering microorganism, plant, and animal communities. Additional chapters cover topics such as invasive species and legal and financial considerations. Each chapter concludes with recommended reading and reference lists, and the book can be paired with online resources for teaching.
 
Perfect for introductory classes in ecological restoration or for practitioners seeking constructive guidance for real-world projects, Primer of Ecological Restoration offers accessible, practical information on recent trends in the field.
 
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Principles of Green Bioethics
Sustainability in Health Care
Cristina Richie
Michigan State University Press, 2019
Health care is ubiquitous in the industrialized world. Yet, every medical development, technique, and procedure impacts the environment. Green bioethics synthesizes environmental ethics and biomedical ethics, thus creating an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable health care. Notably, green bioethics addresses not the structure of environmental sustainability in health-care institutions but the sustainability of individual health-care offerings. It parallels traditional biomedical ethics by providing four principles for ethical guidance: distributive justice, resource conservation, simplicity, and ethical economics. Through these four principles, green bioethics presents a coherent framework for evaluating the sustainability of medical developments, techniques, and procedures. The future of our world may very well depend on how effectively we halt ecological destruction and conserve our resources in all areas of life. The principles of green bioethics, outlined in this book, will advance sustainability in health care.
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The Promise of Multispecies Justice
Sophie Chao, Karin Bolender, and Eben Kirksey, editors
Duke University Press, 2022
What are the possibilities for multispecies justice? How do social justice struggles intersect with the lives of animals, plants, and other creatures? Leading thinkers in anthropology, geography, philosophy, speculative fiction, poetry, and contemporary art answer these questions from diverse grounded locations. In America, Indigenous peoples and prisoners are decolonizing multispecies relations in unceded territory and carceral landscapes. Small justices are emerging in Tanzanian markets, near banana plantations in the Philippines, and in abandoned buildings of Azerbaijan as people navigate relations with feral dogs, weeds, rats, and pesticides. Conflicts over rights of nature are intensifying in Colombia’s Amazon. Specters of justice are emerging in India, while children in Micronesia memorialize extinct bird species. Engaging with ideas about environmental justice, restorative justice, and other species of justice, The Promise of Multispecies Justice holds open the possibility of flourishing in multispecies worlds, present and to come.

Contributors. Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, M. L. Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Eben Kirksey, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim TallBear
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Properties of Plastics
A Guide for Conservators
Thea B. van Oosten
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2022
A practical, comprehensive resource on the complex behaviors of plastics written expressly for conservation and cultural heritage professionals.
 
Almost every museum in the world is confronted with plastics in their collections. Research initiatives and knowledge concerning the conservation of heritage objects made of plastics have proliferated over the last twenty-five years, necessitating this up-to-date, comprehensive resource. Intended as a highly practical guide for the conservation community, this authoritative book offers information essential to understanding plastics, polymers, and rubber/elastomers and their behaviors in the cultural heritage context. Numerous graphs, diagrams, and illustrations allow readers to compare the mechanical, physical, thermal, and optical properties of these substances during conservation. Aimed at the hands-on museum practitioner, this book will assist professionals in choosing the appropriate methods and materials for preserving and treating plastic objects.
 
Complementing the main chapters, fifty-six illustrated “fact sheets” summarize, at a glance, the properties of those plastics most commonly found in museum collections. Six informative case studies present real-world examples of current conservation approaches to works of art and design made of plastics and rubber/elastomers. Under the expert authorship of Thea B. van Oosten, conservation scientist, educator, and internationally regarded authority on the behavior and properties of plastics, this instructive volume is destined to become an invaluable resource for the field.
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Prospects for Resilience
Insights from New York City's Jamaica Bay
Eric W. Sanderson, William D. Solecki, John R. Waldman, and Adam S. Parris
Island Press, 2016
Given the realities of climate change and sea-level rise, coastal cities around the world are struggling with questions of resilience.  Resilience, at its core, is about desirable states of the urban social-ecological system and understanding how to sustain those states in an uncertain and tumultuous future. How do physical conditions, ecological processes, social objectives, human politics, and history shape the prospects for resilience?  Most books set out “the answer.”  This book sets out a process of grappling with holistic resilience from multiple perspectives, drawing on the insights and experiences of more than fifty scholars and practitioners working together to make Jamaica Bay in New York City an example for the world.

Prospects for Resilience establishes a framework for understanding resilience practice in urban watersheds. Using Jamaica Bay—the largest contiguous natural area in New York, home to millions of New Yorkers, and a hub of global air travel with John F. Kennedy International Airport—the authors demonstrate how various components of social-ecological systems interact, ranging from climatic factors to plant populations to human demographics. They also highlight essential tools for creating resilient watersheds, including monitoring and identifying system indicators; computer modeling; green infrastructure; and decision science methods. Finally, they look at the role and importance of a “boundary organization” like the new Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay in coordinating and facilitating resilience work, and consider significant research questions and prospects for the future of urban watersheds.

Prospects for Resilience sets forth an essential foundation of information and advice for researchers, urban planners, students and others who need to create more resilient cities that work with, not against, nature.
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Protecting Public Health and the Environment
Implementing The Precautionary Principle
Edited by Carolyn Raffensperger and Joel Tickner; Foreword by Wes Jackson
Island Press, 1999

When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. This idea, known as the "Precautionary Principle," is seen by environmentalists and public health experts as the key to protecting ecological and human health.

In January 1998, the Science and Environmmental Health Network convened an international group of scientists, researchers, environmentalists, academics, and labor representatives to discuss ways of incorporating the precautionary approach into environmental and public health decision-making. Known as the Wingspread Conference on Implementing the Precautionary Principle, the workshop focused on understanding the contexts under which the principle developed, its basis, and how it could be implemented. Protecting Public Health and the Environment is an outgrowth of that conference. The book:

  • describes the history, specific content, and scientific and philosophical foundations of the principle of precautionary action
  • explains the functions of the principle in activities as diverse as agriculture and manufacturing
  • explains how to know when precautionary action is needed and who decides what action will (or will not) be taken
  • attempts to show how the burden of proof of environmental harm can be shifted to proponents of a potentially hazardous activity
  • provides specific structures and mechanisms for implementing the precautionary principl.
Throughout, contributors focus on the difficult questions of implementation and fundamental change required to support a more precautionary approach to environmental and public health hazards. Among the contributors are David Ozonoff, Nicholas Ashford, Ted Schettler, Robert Costanza, Ken Geiser, and Anderw Jordan.

Public health professionals and academics, policymakers, environmental lawyers, sustainable agriculture proponents, economists, and environmental activists will find the book an enlightening and thought-provoking guide to a new way of thinking about ecosystem and public health protection.

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Protection of Global Biodiversity
Converging Strategies
Lakshman D. Guruswamy and Jeffrey A. McNeely, eds.
Duke University Press, 1998
The rate of extinction of biological species is greater today than at any time in the last 65 million years. Some predict that if this rate continues, two-thirds of all living species will disappear during the next century. Because reaching consensus on specific courses of action involves complex issues, any adequate response to this impending crisis must include coverage of many areas of inquiry and understanding. Protection of Global Biodiversity features essays by distinguished international experts who communicate with each other across disciplinary boundaries to address the challenge of formulating policies to protect biodiversity.
Although the global community has recently adopted a Convention of Biological Diversity, the agreement sets forth only abstract goals. Contributors to this volume advance the Convention’s initial steps by providing workable solutions that can be implemented regionally, nationally, and locally. The contributors—including natural, social, and political scientists; economists; lawyers; and environmentalists; and decisionmakers in business, agriculture, and government—have united to create a common discourse and to evaluate and propose strategies for halting this alarming loss of biodiversity. In recognizing the diverse aspects of this task—scientific, economic, institutional, moral, and legal—this book presents a new picture of emerging action.

Contributors. S. James Anaya, Gregory Benford, Graciela Chichilnisky, S. Todd Crider, Yvonne Cripps, Robert T. Fraley, Anil K. Gupta, Lakshman D. Guruswamy, G. M. Heal, Brent Hendricks, Robert B. Horsch, Laura L. Jackson, Annie Lovejoy, Ariel E. Lugo, Jeffrey A. McNeely, Brian G. Norton, Elinor Ostrom, Peter H. Raven, John W. Reid, Walter V. Reid, Mark Sagoff, Roger A. Sedgo, R. David Simpson, Ana Sittenfeld, Christopher D. Stone, Gary H. Toenniessen

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Pure Intelligence
The Life of William Hyde Wollaston
Melvyn C. Usselman
University of Chicago Press, 2015
William Hyde Wollaston made an astonishing number of discoveries in an astonishingly varied number of fields: platinum metallurgy, the existence of ultraviolet radiation, the chemical elements palladium and rhodium, the amino acid cystine, and the physiology of binocular vision, among others. Along with his colleagues Humphry Davy and Thomas Young, he was widely recognized during his life as one of Britain’s leading scientific practitioners in the first part of the nineteenth century, and the  deaths of all three within a six-month span, between 1828 and 1829, were seen by many as the end of a glorious period of British scientific supremacy. Unlike Davy and Young, however, Wollaston was not the subject of a contemporary biography, and his many impressive achievements have fallen into obscurity as a result.

Pure Intelligence is the first book-length study of Wollaston, his science, and the environment in which he thrived. Drawing on previously-unstudied laboratory records as well as historical reconstructions of chemical experiments and discoveries, and written in a highly accessible style, Pure Intelligence will help to reinstate Wollaston in the history of science, and the pantheon of its great innovators.
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