front cover of Back Cast
Back Cast
Fly-Fishing and Other Such Matters
Jeff Metcalf
University of Utah Press, 2018
A storyteller and avid fly fisherman, Jeff Metcalf is, for compelling personal reasons, an enhanced observer of the human condition, who finds himself often in the streams of the American West. Not only rivers run through his essays, his cancer does too. But so do camaraderie, adventures, reveling in nature and outdoor devotions, and the sheer bliss of focused engagement with the fish and the cast. Metcalf’s keenly observed companions are river guides, small-town locals, academics, and other city folk, all like him among those who run to the river for solace and joy.
 
These essays are much more than fish stories; they reveal the community and communion of fishing and the bonds to place the author nurtured through it. Whether he recalls carousing and tale-swapping with friends or excellence found through the challenge of the cast, Metcalf’s words, sometimes roiling and turbulent, sometimes calm and reflective, like a western river, vividly convey the pull of the steelhead and the fight for survival. Whether or not you fish, Metcalf’s sharp-eyed, open and honest look at life will draw you in.

"These waters have been my home, and I fish them more than most. In truth, they have saved my life on more than a few occasions. I seek refuge in the quiet solitude of rivers, and in dark hours of my life—including this particular year—I need desperately to be fly-fishing." —From the book
 
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Back to Earth
Tomorrow's Environmentalism
Anthony Weston
Temple University Press, 1994

front cover of Back to the Land
Back to the Land
The Enduring Dream of Self-Sufficiency in Modern America
Dona Brown
University of Wisconsin Press, 2011
For many, “going back to the land” brings to mind the 1960s and 1970s—hippie communes and the Summer of Love, The Whole Earth Catalog and Mother Earth News. More recently, the movement has reemerged in a new enthusiasm for locally produced food and more sustainable energy paths. But these latest back-to-the-landers are part of a much larger story. Americans have been dreaming of returning to the land ever since they started to leave it. In Back to the Land, Dona Brown explores the history of this recurring impulse.            ?           
            Back-to-the-landers have often been viewed as nostalgic escapists or romantic nature-lovers. But their own words reveal a more complex story. In such projects as Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman Farms, Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Broadacre City,” and Helen and Scott Nearing’s quest for “the good life,” Brown finds that the return to the farm has meant less a going-backwards than a going-forwards, a way to meet the challenges of the modern era. Progressive reformers pushed for homesteading to help impoverished workers get out of unhealthy urban slums. Depression-era back-to-the-landers, wary of the centralizing power of the New Deal, embraced a new “third way” politics of decentralism and regionalism. Later still, the movement merged with environmentalism. To understand Americans’ response to these back-to-the-land ideas, Brown turns to the fan letters of ordinary readers—retired teachers and overworked clerks, recent immigrants and single women. In seeking their rural roots, Brown argues, Americans have striven above all for the independence and self-sufficiency they associate with the agrarian ideal.
 
 
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians

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Backcasts
A Global History of Fly Fishing and Conservation
Edited by Samuel Snyder, Bryon Borgelt, and Elizabeth Tobey
University of Chicago Press, 2016
“Many of us probably would be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect.”-Norman Maclean
 
Though Maclean writes of an age-old focus of all anglers—the day’s catch—he may as well be speaking to another, deeper accomplishment of the best fishermen and fisherwomen: the preservation of natural resources.

Backcasts celebrates this centuries-old confluence of fly fishing and conservation. However religious, however patiently spiritual the tying and casting of the fly may be, no angler wishes to wade into rivers of industrial runoff or cast into waters devoid of fish or full of invasive species like the Asian carp. So it comes as no surprise that those who fish have long played an active, foundational role in the preservation, management, and restoration of the world’s coldwater fisheries. With sections covering the history of fly fishing; the sport’s global evolution, from the rivers of South Africa to Japan; the journeys of both native and nonnative trout; and the work of conservation organizations such as the Federation of Fly Fishers and Trout Unlimited, Backcasts casts wide.

Highlighting the historical significance of outdoor recreation and sports to conservation in a collection important for fly anglers and scholars of fisheries ecology, conservation history, and environmental ethics, Backcasts explores both the problems anglers and their organizations face and how they might serve as models of conservation—in the individual trout streams, watersheds, and landscapes through which these waters flow.
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Backpacking Tennessee
Overnight Trail Adventures from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mountains
Johnny Molloy
University of Tennessee Press, 2022

“The reason I travel and explore the outdoors is simple,” writes Johnny Molloy, “the world is a beautiful place!” And Molloy would know: he has backpacked more than 2,500 nights in forty states. It is this experience—much of it garnered in his home state of Tennessee—combined with his extensive production of guidebooks spanning activities from hiking and camping to paddling and bicycling, that enabled him to produce Backpacking Tennessee: Overnight Trail Adventures from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mountains.

Complete with directions, distances, descriptions, and maps, Backpacking Tennessee is divided into four sections that together outline forty overnight hikes across West Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, the Cumberland Plateau, and East Tennessee and the Appalachian Mountains. The trails Molloy has chosen to highlight are a mix of well-known hikes and lesser-known areas, ranging in distance and difficulty for both novice hikers and experienced backpackers. Woven throughout the trail descriptions are comments on scenery, notes about safety, and historical information that help readers get a true feel for each hike. To round out his comprehensive guide, Molloy also includes ratings, 1–5, on the family- and dog-friendliness of each trail—an especially helpful feature for readers bringing loved ones along.

From the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Cherokee National Forest to Big South Fork and Land Between the Lakes, Tennessee offers thousands of miles of trails for adventurers looking to explore. For budding outdoor enthusiasts and experienced backpackers alike, Backpacking Tennessee answers the timeless question: where do we go next?

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A Backyard Prairie
The Hidden Beauty of Tallgrass and Wildflowers
Fred Delcomyn and James L. Ellis
Southern Illinois University Press, 2021
All the makings of natural wonder in your backyard

In 2003 Fred Delcomyn imagined his backyard of two and a half acres, farmed for corn and soybeans for generations, restored to tallgrass prairie. Over the next seventeen years, Delcomyn, with help from his friend James L. Ellis scored, seeded, monitored, reseeded, and burned these acres into prairie. In A Backyard Prairie, they document their journey and reveal the incredible potential of a backyard to travel back to a time before the wild prairie was put into plow rows. It has been said, “Anyone can love the mountains, but it takes a soul to love the prairie.” This book shows us how. 

The first book to celebrate a smaller, more private restoration, A Backyard Prairie offers a vivid portrait of what makes a prairie. Delcomyn and Ellis describe selecting and planting seeds, recount the management of a prescribed fire, and capture the prairie’s seasonal parades of colorful flowers in concert with an ever-growing variety of animals, from the minute eastern tailed-blue butterfly to the imperious red-winged blackbird and the reclusive coyote.

This book offers a unique account of their work and their discovery of a real backyard, an inviting island of grass and flowers uncovered and revealed. We often travel miles and miles to find nature larger than ourselves. In this rich account of small prairie restoration, Delcomyn and Ellis encourage the revival of original prairie in our backyards and the patient, beauty-seeking soul sleeping within ourselves.
 
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Bacula of North American Mammals
William Henry Burt
University of Michigan Press, 1960
In Bacula of North American Mammals, originally published by the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan, William Henry Burt describes the bacula of various North American mammals. Before this work, there was little material and few articles on the bacula of mammals. With the help of university staff and graduate students, Burt was able to preserve these bones and accumulate a large collection between 1930 and 1960. Although this collection incorporated a vast array of mammals, bats and cats were excluded due to their status as insectivores. The results of Burt’s study are organized by species, and include the generas Procyon, Nasua, Potos, Bassariscus, and Jentinkia.
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Bad Water
Nature, Pollution, and Politics in Japan, 1870-1950
Robert Stolz
Duke University Press, 2014
Bad Water is a sophisticated theoretical analysis of Japanese thinkers and activists' efforts to reintegrate the natural environment into Japan's social and political thought in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. The need to incorporate nature into politics was revealed by a series of large-scale industrial disasters in the 1890s. The Ashio Copper Mine unleashed massive amounts of copper, arsenic, mercury, and other pollutants into surrounding watersheds. Robert Stolz argues that by forcefully demonstrating the mutual penetration of humans and nature, industrial pollution biologically and politically compromised the autonomous liberal subject underlying the political philosophy of the modernizing Meiji state. In the following decades, socialism, anarchism, fascism, and Confucian benevolence and moral economy were marshaled in the search for new theories of a modern political subject and a social organization adequate to the environmental crisis. With detailed considerations of several key environmental activists, including Tanaka Shōzō, Bad Water is a nuanced account of Japan's environmental turn, a historical moment when, for the first time, Japanese thinkers and activists experienced nature as alienated from themselves and were forced to rebuild the connections.
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Badger
Daniel Heath Justice
Reaktion Books, 2015
Fierce, menacing, and mysterious, badgers have fascinated humans as living animals, abstract symbols, or commercial resources for thousands of years—often to their detriment. With their reputation for determined self-defense, they have been brutalized by hunters and sportsmen, while their association with the mythic underworld has made them idealized symbols of earth-based wisdom and their burrowing habits have resulted in their widespread persecution as pests. In this highly illustrated book, Daniel Heath Justice provides the first global cultural history of the badger in over thirty years.
           
From the iconic European badger and its North American kin to the African honey badger and Southeast Asian hog badger, Justice considers the badger’s evolution and widespread distribution alongside its current, often-imperiled status throughout the world. He travels from natural history and life in the wild to the folklore, legends, and spiritual beliefs that badgers continue to inspire, while also exploring their representation and exploitation in industry, religion, and the arts. Tracing the complex and contradictory ways in which this fascinating animal endures, Badger will appeal to anyone interested in a deeper understanding of these much-maligned creatures.
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Baja California's Coastal Landscapes Revealed
Excursions in Geologic Time and Climate Change
Markes E. Johnson
University of Arizona Press, 2021
Baja California is an improbably long and narrow peninsula. It thrusts out like a spear, parting the Mexican mainland from the Pacific Ocean. In his third installment on the Gulf of California’s coastal setting, expert geologist and guide Markes E. Johnson reveals a previously unexplored side to the region’s five-million-year story beyond the fossil coral reefs, clam banks, and prolific beds of coralline algae vividly described in his earlier books. Through a dozen new excursions, in Baja California’s Coastal Landscapes Revealed, Johnson returns to these yet wild shores to share his gradual recognition of another side to the region.

Johnson reveals a geologic history that is outside the temporal framework of a human lifetime and scored by violent storms. We see how hurricanes have shaped coastal landscapes all along the peninsula’s inner coast, a fascinating story only possible by disassembling the rocks that on first appraisal seem incomprehensible.

Looking closely, Johnson shows us how geology not only helps us look backward but also forward toward an uncertain future. The landscape Johnson describes may be apart from the rest of Mexico, but his expert eye reveals how it is influenced by the unfolding drama of Planet Earth’s global warming.
 
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The Balance of Nature?
Ecological Issues in the Conservation of Species and Communities
Stuart L. Pimm
University of Chicago Press, 1991
Ecologists, although they acknowledge the problems involved, generally conduct their research on too few species, in too small an area, over too short a period of time. In The Balance of Nature?, a work sure to stir controversy, the distinguished theoretical ecologist Stuart L. Pimm argues that ecology therefore fails in many ways to address the enormous ecological problems now facing our planet.

Ecologists describing phenomena on larger scales often use terms like "stability," "balance of nature," and "fragility," and Pimm begins by considering the various specific meanings of these terms. He addresses five kinds of ecological stability—stability in the strict sense, resilience, variability, persistence, and resistance—and shows how they provide ways of comparing natural populations and communities as well as theories about them. Each type of stability depends on characteristics of the species studied and also on the structure of the food web in which the species is embedded and the physical features of the environment.

The Balance of Nature? provides theoretical ecology with a rich array of questions—questions that also underpin pressing problems in practical conservation biology. Pimm calls for nothing less than new approaches to ecology and a new alliance between theoretical and empirical studies.
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front cover of Balancing on the Brink of Extinction
Balancing on the Brink of Extinction
Endangered Species Act And Lessons For The Future
Edited by Kathryn A. Kohm
Island Press, 1991

Balancing on the Brink of Extinction presents a comprehensive overview of the Endangered Species Act -- its conception, history, and potential for protecting the remaining endangered species.

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Bamboo
Susanne Lucas
Reaktion Books, 2024
A natural and cultural history of this important and useful plant.

We may think of bamboo only as a snack for cuddly panda bears, but we use the plant as food, clothing, paper, fabric, and shelter. Drawing on a vast array of sources, this book builds a complete picture of bamboo in both history and our modern world. Susanne Lucas shows how bamboo has always met the physical and spiritual requirements of humanity while at the same time being exploited by people everywhere.
 
Lucas describes how bamboo’s special characteristics, such as its ability to grow quickly and thus be an easily replaced resource, offers potential solutions to modern ecological dilemmas. She explores the vital role bamboo plays in the survival of many animals and ecosystems, as well as its use for some of the earliest books ever written, as the framework for houses, and for musical instruments. As modern research and technologies advance, she explains, bamboo use has increased dramatically—it can now be found in the filaments of light bulbs, airplanes, the reinforcements of concrete, and even bicycles. Filled with illustrations, Bamboo is an interesting new take on a plant that is both very old and very new.
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Banning DDT
How Citizen Activists in Wisconsin Led the Way
Bill Berry
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2014

On a December day in 1968, DDT went on trial in Madison, Wisconsin. In Banning DDT: How Citizen Activists in Wisconsin Led the Way, Bill Berry details how the citizens, scientists, reporters, and traditional conservationists drew attention to the harmful effects of “the miracle pesticide” DDT, which was being used to control Dutch elm disease.

Berry tells of the hunters and fishers, bird-watchers, and garden-club ladies like Lorrie Otto, who dropped off twenty-eight dead robins at the Bayside village offices. He tells of university professors and scientists like Joseph Hickey, a professor and researcher in the Department of Wildlife Management in at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who, years after the fact, wept about the suppression of some of his early DDT research. And he tells of activists like Senator Gaylord Nelson and members of the state’s Citizens Natural Resources who rallied the cause.

The Madison trial was one of the first for the Environmental Defense Fund. The National Audubon Society helped secure the more than $52,000 in donations that offset the environmentalists’ costs associated with the hearing. Today, virtually every reference to the history of DDT mentions the impact of Wisconsin’s battles.

The six-month-long DDT hearing was one of the first chapters in citizen activism in the modern environmental era. Banning DDT is a compelling story of how citizen activism, science, and law merged in Wisconsin’s DDT battles to forge a new way to accomplish public policy. These citizen activists were motivated by the belief that we all deserve a voice on the health of the land and water that sustain us.

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Bark
A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast
Michael Wojtech
Brandeis University Press, 2020

What kind of tree is that? Whether you’re hiking in the woods or simply sitting in your backyard, from Maine to New York you’ll never be without an answer to that question, thanks to this handy companion to the trees of the Northeast. Featuring detailed information and illustrations covering each phase of a tree’s lifecycle, this indispensable guidebook explains how to identify trees by their bark alone—no more need to wait for leaf season. Chapters on the structure and ecology of tree bark, descriptions of bark appearance, an easy-to-use identification key, and supplemental information on non-bark characteristics—all enhanced by more than 450 photographs, illustrations, and maps—will show you how to distinguish the textures, shapes, and colors of bark to recognize various tree species, and also understand why these traits evolved. 

Whether you’re a professional naturalist or a parent leading a family hike, this new edition of Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast is your essential guide to the region’s 67 native and naturalized tree species.

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front cover of Bark Beetles in North American Conifers
Bark Beetles in North American Conifers
A System for the Study of Evolutionary Biology
Edited by Jeffry B. Mitton and Kareen B. Sturgeon
University of Texas Press, 1982

Because they prey upon a wide variety of conifers, bark beetles have a major impact upon western forests. In most of the western states, for example, we have witnessed bark beetles in epidemic outbreaks, attacking and damaging ponderosa pine, limber pine, and other hosts.

The ecosystem of bark beetle and host tree is a highly coevolved community of organisms in which the evolution of one member of the community significantly influences the evolution of the other. Largely because of the enormous economic impact these insects exert on the management of our forests, few other such communities have been studied so extensively. Bark Beetles in North American Conifers brings together in one volume both theory and a wealth of empirical data gathered by researchers from all the fields in which bark beetles are studied: ecology, evolutionary biology, population genetics, entomology, and forestry.

Topics covered include the life cycle of bark beetles and their population dynamics, their genetic variation and evolutionary mechanisms, the evolution and systematics of the major groups of bark beetles, pheromone production and its implications for coevolution among these organisms, the interaction between bark beetles and their predators, host resistance and susceptibility, the relationship of parasites and symbiotic micro-organisms in general, and management and control of bark beetles based on sound ecological and evolutionary concepts. The concluding section of the book summarizes the dynamics of the coevolved system of bark beetle and host tree and discusses controversial issues for which this system may provide important answers.

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The Bark River Chronicles
Stories from a Wisconsin Watershed
Milton J. Bates
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2012

The Bark River valley in southeastern Wisconsin is a microcosm of the state's - indeed, of the Great Lakes region's - natural and human history. "The Bark River Chronicles" reports one couple's journey by canoe from the river's headwaters to its confluence with the Rock River and several miles farther downstream to Lake Koshkonong. Along the way, it tells the stories of Ice Age glaciation, the effigy mound builders, the Black Hawk War, early settlement and the development of waterpower sites, and recent efforts to remove old dams and mitigate the damage done by water pollution and invasive species.
Along with these big stories, the book recounts dozens of little stories associated with sites along the river. The winter ice harvest, grain milling technology, a key supreme court decision regarding toxic waste disposal, a small-town circus, a scheme to link the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River by canal, the murder of a Chicago mobster, controversies over race and social class in Waukesha County's lake country, community efforts to clean up the river and restore a marsh, visits to places associated with the work of important Wisconsin writers - these and many other stories belong to the Bark River chronicles.

For the two voyageurs who paddle the length of the Bark, it is a journey of rediscovery and exploration. As they glide through marshes, woods, farmland, and cities, they acquire not only historical and environmental knowledge but also a renewed sense of the place in which they live. Maps and historical photographs help the reader share their experience.

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front cover of Barren, Wild, and Worthless
Barren, Wild, and Worthless
Living in the Chihuahuan Desert
Susan J. Tweit
University of Arizona Press, 2003
Appearing barren and most definitely wild, the Chihuahuan Desert of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States may look worthless to some, but for Susan Tweit it is an inspiration. In this collection of seven elegant personal essays, she explores undiscovered facets of this seemingly hostile environment. With eloquence, passion, and insight, she describes and reflects on the relationship between the land, history, and people and makes this underappreciated region less barren for those who would share her journeys.
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Basic Texas Birds
A Field Guide
By Mark W. Lockwood
University of Texas Press, 2007

Finding all the birds in Texas can be a lifetime pursuit. Basic Texas Birds, an easy-to-use field guide, will help you identify over 180 species of birds that are found across the state, including a selection of the rarer "Texas specialties" that draw birders to Texas from around the world. These are the birds that form the basis of a birder's life list for Texas.

Basic Texas Birds is organized by bird families to aid in identifying any bird you see in the wild. It is loaded with resources, including:

  • 200 full-color, close-up photos of the birds
  • State-of-the-art range maps—the most accurate of any currently available—that show each species' distribution within the state
  • Up-to-date species accounts that provide a wealth of current and historical information, including each bird's appearance, habitat, status, and distribution, and that also identify similar species
  • A glossary of terms used in bird identification
  • A list of selected readings for learning more about birds found in Texas
  • The Texas Ornithological Society's list of birds documented in Texas

Much more convenient for identifying common birds than a comprehensive state or national field guide, Basic Texas Birds is a must-have resource for both beginning and experienced birders.

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front cover of Basking with Humpbacks
Basking with Humpbacks
Tracking Threatened Marine Life in New England Waters
Todd McLeish
University Press of New England, 2016
Basking with Humpbacks offers an exciting, close-up look at some of the most rare marine creatures living in New England waters and examines the complex threats they face. In eleven chapters, each featuring a different animal or plant, McLeish takes readers on an entertaining journey with scientists who study these species. The author follows basking sharks—the second largest fish in the sea—in their hunt for food, helps harbor porpoises escape from fishing nets, snorkels in search of wild bay scallops, and learns how the blood of horseshoe crabs is used in medical research. Along the way he visits the islands where rare seabirds nest, tracks humpback whales on their long migration to the Gulf of Maine, and watches as stranded leatherback turtles are returned to the ocean. These first-person experiences are coupled with interviews with biologists and other experts who explain in their own words the important role these creatures play in the marine ecosystem and what steps must be taken to protect them. In examining the natural history of selected plants and animals, McLeish also discusses the physics of waves and currents, the geology of the seabed, the chemistry of sea water, and other natural factors that influence the survival of New England marine life.
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Bat
Tessa Laird
Reaktion Books, 2018
Bats have been maligned in the West for centuries. Unfair associations with demons have seen their leathery wings adorn numerous evil characters, from the Devil to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But these amazing animals are ecological superheroes. Nectar-feeding bats pollinate important crops like agave; fruit-eating bats disperse seeds and encourage reforestation; and insect-eating bats keep down mosquito populations and other pests, saving agricultural industries billions of dollars. Ranging in size from a bumblebee to creatures with a wingspan the length of an adult human, found on all continents except Antarctica, and displaying extraordinary abilities like echolocation—a built-in sonar system that enables many bats to navigate in the dark—these incredibly diverse mammals are as surprising as they are misunderstood.

In Bat, Tessa Laird challenges our preconceptions as she combines fascinating facts of bat biology with engaging portrayals of bats in mythology, literature, film, popular culture, poetry, and contemporary art. She also provides a sobering reminder of the threats bats face worldwide, from heatwaves and human harassment to wind turbines and disease. Illustrated with incredible photographs and artistic representations of bats from many different cultures and eras, this celebration of the only mammals possessing true flight will enthrall batty fans, skeptics, and converts alike.
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Bat Ecology
Edited by Thomas H. Kunz and M. Brock Fenton
University of Chicago Press, 2003
In recent years researchers have discovered that bats play key roles in many ecosystems as insect predators, seed dispersers, and pollinators. Bats also display astonishing ecological and evolutionary diversity and serve as important models for studies of a wide variety of topics, including food webs, biogeography, and emerging diseases. In Bat Ecology, world-renowned bat scholars present an up-to-date, comprehensive, and authoritative review of this ongoing research.

The first part of the book covers the life history and behavioral ecology of bats, from migration to sperm competition and natural selection. The next section focuses on functional ecology, including ecomorphology, feeding, and physiology. In the third section, contributors explore macroecological issues such as the evolution of ecological diversity, range size, and infectious diseases (including rabies) in bats. A final chapter discusses conservation challenges facing these fascinating flying mammals.

Bat Ecology is the most comprehensive state-of-the-field collection for scientists and researchers.

Contributors:
John D. Altringham, Robert M. R. Barclay, Tenley M. Conway, Elizabeth R. Dumont, Peggy Eby, Abigail C. Entwistle, Theodore H. Fleming, Patricia W. Freeman, Lawrence D. Harder, Gareth Jones, Linda F. Lumsden, Gary F. McCracken, Sharon L. Messenger, Bruce D. Patterson, Paul A. Racey, Jens Rydell, Charles E. Rupprecht, Nancy B. Simmons, Jean S. Smith, John R. Speakman, Richard D. Stevens, Elizabeth F. Stockwell, Sharon M. Swartz, Donald W. Thomas, Otto von Helversen, Gerald S. Wilkinson, Michael R. Willig, York Winter
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Bats
A World of Science and Mystery
M. Brock Fenton and Nancy B. Simmons
University of Chicago Press, 2015
There are more than 1,300 species of bats—or almost a quarter of the world’s mammal species. But before you shrink in fear from these furry “creatures of the night,” consider the bat’s fundamental role in our ecosystem. A single brown bat can eat several thousand insects in a night. Bats also pollinate and disperse the seeds for many of the plants we love, from bananas to mangoes and figs.
           
Bats: A World of Science and Mystery presents these fascinating nocturnal creatures in a new light. Lush, full-color photographs portray bats in flight, feeding, and mating in views that show them in exceptional detail. The photos also take the reader into the roosts of bats, from caves and mines to the tents some bats build out of leaves. A comprehensive guide to what scientists know about the world of bats, the book begins with a look at bats’ origins and evolution. The book goes on to address a host of questions related to flight, diet, habitat, reproduction, and social structure: Why do some bats live alone and others in large colonies? When do bats reproduce and care for their young? How has the ability to fly—unique among mammals—influenced bats’ mating behavior? A chapter on biosonar, or echolocation, takes readers through the system of high-pitched calls bats emit to navigate and catch prey. More than half of the world’s bat species are either in decline or already considered endangered, and the book concludes with suggestions for what we can do to protect these species for future generations to benefit from and enjoy.

From the tiny “bumblebee bat”—the world’s smallest mammal—to the Giant Golden-Crowned Flying Fox, whose wingspan exceeds five feet, A Battery of Bats presents a panoramic view of one of the world’s most fascinating yet least-understood species.
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Bats of the Rocky Mountain West
Natural History, Ecology, and Conservation
Rick A. Adams
University Press of Colorado, 2003
Since antiquity, bats have been misunderstood and shrouded in mystery. Given misnomers such as fledermaus ("flying mouse") and murciegalo ("blind mouse"), these nocturnal flying mammals were even classified as primates by the great Carl Linnaeus, based on his knowledge of the anatomy of large Old World fruit bats. In this beautifully illustrated volume, bat specialist Rick A. Adams delves into bats' true nature and the roles these fascinating ledurblaka ("leather flutterers") play in the natural history and ecology of the Rocky Mountain West.

Bats of the Rocky Mountain West begins with a general discussion of bat biology and evolution as well as regional physiography and zoogeography. In addition, Adams describes - based on the results of extensive research - the behavior and ecology of the 31 species of bats found in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Naturalists and biologists alike will benefit from the detailed species descriptions, color photographs and illustrations, distribution maps, and echolocation sonograms. Bats of the Rocky Mountain West is a unique and valuable reference for professional bat biologists, naturalists, and wildlife enthusiasts interested in the conservation and ecology of bats in the region.

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front cover of The Battle for Alabama's Wilderness
The Battle for Alabama's Wilderness
Saving the Great Gymnasiums of Nature
John N. Randolph
University of Alabama Press, 2005

Traces the development of Alabama's environmental movement from its beginnings with the establishment of The Alabama Conservancy in the late 1960s and early '70s to the preservation efforts of present-day activist groups

The grassroots effort to preserve Alabama's Wilderness Areas spanned thirty years, from 1967 to 1997. The first battle, to establish the Sipsey Wilderness in the Bankhead National Forest, was the catalyst for reform of national policy regarding public land preserves in the eastern United States. It, and the later campaigns—to establish the Cheaha Wilderness, to enlarge the Sipsey, and to create the Dugger Mountain Wilderness—are classic tales of citizen activists overcoming the quagmire of federal bureaucracy and the intransigence of hostile politicians. Early political opposition to proposed designation or expansion of wilderness areas in Alabama was based on the belief that limiting development of these lands would negatively impact the state's powerful timber industry. In response to such opposition, serious environmental activism was born in Alabama.

Using newspaper reports, Congressional testimony, interviews, and his own recollections, John Randolph traces the development of Alabama's environmental movement from its beginnings with the establishment of The Alabama Conservancy in the late 1960s and early '70s to the preservation efforts of present-day activist groups, such as the Alabama Environmental Council, the Cahaba River Society, and the Alabama Wilderness Alliance.

The Battle for Alabama's Wilderness permits all of the players—pro and con—to speak for themselves, but the heroes—people like Mary Burks, Blanche Dean, Joab Thomas, and Pete Conroy—embody the vision, hope, and persistence required of those who succeed in their preservation efforts. Randolph's account is a testament to the power of grassroots citizen groups who are committed to a common cause and inspired by a shared ideal.
 

 

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The Battle for the Buffalo River
The Story of America's First National River
Neil Compton
University of Arkansas Press, 2010
Under the auspices of the 1938 Flood Control Act, the U.S. Corps of Engineers began to pursue an aggressive dam-building campaign. A grateful public generally lauded their efforts, but when they turned their attention to Arkansas’s Buffalo River, the vocal opposition their proposed projects generated dumbfounded them. Never before had anyone challenged the Corps’s assumption that damming a river was an improvement. Led by Neil Compton, a physician in Bentonville, Arkansas, a group of area conservationists formed the Ozark Society to join the battle for the Buffalo. This book is the account of this decade-long struggle that drew in such political figures as supreme court justice William O. Douglas, Senator J. William Fulbright, and Governor Orval Faubus. The battle finally ended in 1972 with President Richard Nixon’s designation of the Buffalo as the first national river. Drawing on hundreds of personal letters, photographs, maps, newspaper articles, and reminiscences, Compton’s lively book details the trials, gains, setbacks, and ultimate triumph in one of the first major skirmishes between environmentalists and developers.
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Battle
The Nature and Consequences of Civil War Combat
Edited by Kent Gramm
University of Alabama Press, 2008
A collection of essays that reveals the reality of war behind the pageantry of the American Civil War

“In our youth, our hearts were touched with fire,” wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes of his generation’s Civil War days. Through the ages, war stories have gleamed with romantic glory, and American memories of the cataclysmic Civil War inspire pageantry and poetry even today.

The essays in Battle form a corrective to such celebratory histories by examining the lethal realities of Civil War combat—Enlightenment science applied to the creation of weapons that maimed and killed, which far outpaced advances in diet, sanitation, and medical treatment. The book reveals that behind the drums and trumpets, sashes and swords, the armies of the Union and Confederacy alike were haunted by fear, pain, and death.

The collection includes an introduction and afterword by editor Kent Gramm, who also contributes an essay titled “Numbers” that reveals the war in statistics. Paul Fussell contributes a powerful essay titled “The Culture of War.” D. Scott Hartwig examines the face of battle at Gettysburg. Bruce A. Evans discusses medical technology in “Wounds, Death, and Medical Care in the Civil War.” Eric T. Dean challenges the meanings and consequences of combat in “The Awful Shock and Rage of Battle.” The collection is rounded out by Alan T. Nolan’s masterful review of the national consequences of battle and the resultant myth of the Confederacy’s Lost Cause.
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Battles of the North Country
Wilderness Politics and Recreational Development in the Adirondack State Park, 1920-1980
Jonathan D. Anzalone
University of Massachusetts Press, 2018
The Adirondack region is trapped in a cycle of conflict. Nature lovers advocate for the preservation of wilderness, while sports enthusiasts demand infrastructure for recreation. Local residents seek economic opportunities, while environmentalists fight industrial or real estate growth. These clashes have played out over the course of the twentieth century and continue into the twenty-first.

Through a series of case studies, historian Jonathan D. Anzalone highlights the role of public and private interests in the region and shows how partnerships frayed and realigned in the course of several key developments: the rise of camping in the 1920s and 1930s; the 1932 Lake Placid Olympics; the construction of a highway to the top of Whiteface Mountain; the postwar rise of downhill skiing; the completion of I-87 and the resulting demand for second homes; and the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. Battles of the North Country reveals how class, economic self-interest, state power, and a wide range of environmental concerns have shaped modern politics in the Adirondacks and beyond.
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The Beaches Are Moving
The Drowning of America's Shoreline
Wallace Kaufman and Orrin H. Pilkey Jr.
Duke University Press, 1983

Our beaches are eroding, sinking, washing out right under our houses, hotels, bridges; vacation dreamlands become nightmare scenes of futile revetments, fills, groins, what have you—all thrown up in a frantic defense against the natural system. The romantic desire to live on the seashore is in doomed conflict with an age-old pattern of beach migration. Yet it need not be so. Conservationist Wallace Kaufman teams up with marine geologist Orrin H. Pilkey Jr., in an evaluation of America's beaches from coast to coast, giving sound advice on how to judge a safe beach development from a dangerous one and how to live at the shore sensibly and safely.

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Beaches, Bays, and Barrens
A Natural History of the Jersey Shore
Eric G. Bolen
Rutgers University Press, 2024
The Jersey Shore attracts millions of visitors each year, drawn to its sandy beaches. Yet New Jersey’s coastline contains a richer array of biodiverse habitats than most tourists realize, from seagrass meadows to salt marshes to cranberry bogs. 
 
Beaches, Bays, and Barrens introduces readers to the natural wonders of the Jersey Shore, revealing its unique ecology and fascinating history. The journey begins with the contributions and discoveries of early naturalists who visited the region and an overview of endangered species and natural history, followed by chapters that explore different facets of the shore’s environments. These start with sandy beaches and dunes and culminate in the engaging Pine Barrens, the vital watershed for much of the state’s varied coastline. Along the way, readers will also learn about whaling, decoy carvers, an extinct duck, and the cultivation of wild blueberries.
Including over seventy color photographs, the book also features twenty-three infoboxes that go deep into areas of ecological or historical interest, such as the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge or the Jaws-like shark attacks of 1916. From Cape May to Sandy Hook, biologist Eric G. Bolen takes you on a guided tour of the Jersey Shore’s rich ecological heritage.  
 
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Bear
Robert E. Bieder
Reaktion Books, 2005
The angry grizzly and the cuddly teddy: few animals possess such a range of personas as the bear. Here, Robert Bieder surveys the wealth of imagery, myths, and stories that surrounds the bear. Beginning with the dawn bear, the small dog-sized ancestor of all bears who hails from 25 million years ago, Bieder embarks on a fascinating exploration of the evolutionary history of the bear family, from extinct species such as the cave bear and giant short-faced bear to the mere eight species that survive today.


Bear draws on cultural material from around the world to examine the various legends and myths surrounding the bear, including ceremonies and taboos that govern the hunting, killing, and eating of bears. The book also looks at the role of bears in modern culture as the subjects of stories, songs, and films; as exhibited objects in circuses and zoos; and, perhaps most famously, as toys. Bieder also considers the precarious future of the bear as it is threatened by loss of habitat, poaching, global warming, and disease and discusses the impact of human behavior on bears and their environments.

Accompanied by numerous vibrant photographs and illustrations, and written in an engaging fashion, Bear is an appealing and informative volume for anyone who has curled up with Winnie-the-Pooh or marveled at this powerful king of the forest.
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Bear Man of Admiralty Island
A Biography of Allen E. Hasselborg
John Howe
University of Alaska Press, 1996
Bear Man of Admiralty Island is the life story of a rugged loner and self-taught naturalist who came to southeastern Alaska in 1901 to seek his fortune in the awe-inspiring wilderness but found his destiny instead. In the process, this sturdy Midwesterner learned the skills of a prospector, fisherman, trapper, guide, boatbuilder, and homesteader. At all these things he eventually excelled, but his greatest fame came from his greatest skill: he was a peerless bear hunter. He joined several natural history expeditions and worked for about ten years as a specimen collector and guide. He later guided sportsmen and photographers interested in Southeastern's wildlife and majestic natural beauty. As his respect for the great brown bears increased, he lost his interest in killing them, and his experiences inspired conservationists who lobbied to protect Admiralty Island from logging. Hasselborg's keen wit, fierce independence, and eccentric ways attracted much attention during his lifetime. He was an extraordinary man who was in some ways a perfectly ordinary Alaskan of his time, and author Howe reflects on both sides of that character in a balanced, detailed way.
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Bearing Witness
The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change
Thomas A. Kerns
Oregon State University Press, 2021
Fracking, the practice of shattering underground rock to release oil and natural gas, is a major driver of climate change. The 300,000 fracking facilities in the US also directly harm the health and livelihoods of people in front-line communities, who are disproportionately poor and people of color. Impacted citizens have for years protested that their rights have been ignored.

On May 14, 2018, a respected international human-rights court, the Rome-based Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, began a week-long hearing on the impacts of fracking and climate change on human and Earth rights. In its advisory opinion, the Tribunal ruled that fracking systematically violates substantive and procedural human rights; that governments are complicit in the rights violations; and that to protect human rights and the climate, the practice of fracking should be banned.

The case makes history. It revokes the social license of extreme-extraction industries by connecting environmental destruction to human-rights violations. It affirms that climate change, and the extraction techniques that fuel it, directly violate deeply and broadly accepted moral norms encoded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Bearing Witness maps a promising new direction in the ongoing struggle to protect the planet from climate chaos. It tells the story of this landmark case through carefully curated court materials, including searing eye-witness testimony, groundbreaking legal testimony, and the Tribunal’s advisory opinion. Essays by leading climate writers such as Winona LaDuke, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Sandra Steingraber and legal experts such as John Knox, Mary Wood, and Anna Grear give context to the controversy. Framing essays by the editors, experts on climate ethics and human rights, demonstrate that a human-rights focus is a powerful, transformative new tool to address the climate crisis.

 
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Bears Ears
Landscape of Refuge and Resistance
Andrew Gulliford
University of Utah Press, 2022
Designated in 2016 by President Obama and reduced to 85 percent of its original size one year later by President Trump, Bears Ears National Monument continues to be a flash point of conflict among ranchers, miners, environmental groups, states’ rights advocates, and Native American activists. In this volume, Andrew Gulliford synthesizes 11,000 years of the region’s history to illuminate what’s truly at stake in this conflict and distills this geography as a place of refuge and resistance.
 
Gulliford’s engaging narrative explains prehistoric Pueblo villages and cliff dwellings, Navajo and Ute history, stories of Mormon families who arrived by wagon train in 1880, impacts of the Atomic Age, uranium mining, and the pothunting and looting of Native graves that inspired the passage of the Antiquities Act over a century ago. The book describes how the national monument came about and its deep significance to five native tribes.
 
Bears Ears National Monument is a bellwether for public land issues in the American West. Its recognition will be relevant for years to come.
 
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Beastly London
A History of Animals in the City
Hannah Velten
Reaktion Books, 2013
Horse-drawn cabs rattling down muddy roads, cattle herded through the streets to the Smithfield meat market for slaughter, roosters crowing at the break of dawn—London was once filled with a cacophony of animal noises (and smells). But over the last thirty years, the city seems to have banished animals from its streets. In Beastly London, Hannah Velten uses a wide range of primary sources to explore the complex and changing relationship between Londoners of all classes and their animal neighbors.
            Velten travels back in history to describe a time when Londoners shared their homes with pets and livestock—along with a variety of other pests, vermin, and bedbugs; Londoners imported beasts from all corners of the globe for display in their homes, zoos, and parks; and ponies flying in hot air balloons and dancing fleas were considered entertainment. As she shows, London transformed from a city with a mainly exploitative relationship with animals to the birthplace of animal welfare societies and animal rights’ campaigns. Packed with over one hundred illustrations, Beastly London is a revealing look at how animals have been central to the city’s success.
 
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Beasts at Bedtime
Revealing the Environmental Wisdom in Children’s Literature
Liam Heneghan
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Talking lions, philosophical bears, very hungry caterpillars, wise spiders, altruistic trees, companionable moles, urbane elephants: this is the magnificent menagerie that delights our children at bedtime. Within the entertaining pages of many children’s books, however, also lie profound teachings about the natural world that can help children develop an educated and engaged appreciation of the dynamic environment they inhabit.
 
In Beasts at Bedtime, scientist (and father) Liam Heneghan examines the environmental underpinnings of children’s stories. From Beatrix Potter to Harry Potter, Heneghan unearths the universal insights into our inextricable relationship with nature that underlie so many classic children’s stories. Some of the largest environmental challenges in coming years—from climate instability, the extinction crisis, freshwater depletion, and deforestation—are likely to become even more severe as this generation of children grows up. Though today’s young readers will bear the brunt of these environmental calamities, they will also be able to contribute to environmental solutions if prepared properly. And all it takes is an attentive eye: Heneghan shows how the nature curriculum is already embedded in bedtime stories, from the earliest board books like The Rainbow Fish to contemporary young adult classics like The Hunger Games.
 
Beasts at Bedtime is an awakening to the vital environmental education children’s stories can provide—from the misadventures of The Runaway Bunny to more overt tales like The Lorax. Heneghan serves as our guide, drawing richly upon his own adolescent and parental experiences, as well as his travels in landscapes both experienced and imagined. Organized into thematic sections, the work winds its way through literary forests, colorful characters, and global environments.
 
This book enthralls as it engages. Heneghan as a guide is as charming as he is insightful, showing how kids (and adults) can start to experience the natural world in incredible ways from the comfort of their own rooms. Beasts at Bedtime will help parents, teachers, and guardians extend those cozy times curled up together with a good book into a lifetime of caring for our planet. 
 
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Beautiful Minds
The Parallel Lives of Great Apes and Dolphins
Maddalena Bearzi and Craig Stanford
Harvard University Press, 2010

Apes and dolphins: primates and cetaceans. Could any creatures appear to be more different? Yet both are large-brained intelligent mammals with complex communication and social interaction. In the first book to study apes and dolphins side by side, Maddalena Bearzi and Craig B. Stanford, a dolphin biologist and a primatologist who have spent their careers studying these animals in the wild, combine their insights with compelling results. Beautiful Minds explains how and why apes and dolphins are so distantly related yet so cognitively alike and what this teaches us about another large-brained mammal: Homo sapiens.

Noting that apes and dolphins have had no common ancestor in nearly 100 million years, Bearzi and Stanford describe the parallel evolution that gave rise to their intelligence. And they closely observe that intelligence in action, in the territorial grassland and rainforest communities of chimpanzees and other apes, and in groups of dolphins moving freely through open coastal waters. The authors detail their subjects’ ability to develop family bonds, form alliances, and care for their young. They offer an understanding of their culture, politics, social structure, personality, and capacity for emotion. The resulting dual portrait—with striking overlaps in behavior—is key to understanding the nature of “beautiful minds.”

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Beaver
Rachel Poliquin
Reaktion Books, 2015
With unique fish-like tails, chainsaw teeth, a pungent musk, and astonishing building skills, beavers are unlike any other creature in the world. Not surprisingly, the extraordinary beaver has played a fascinating role in human history and has inspired a rich cultural tradition for millennia.  In Beaver, Rachel Poliquin explores four exceptional beaver features: beaver musk, beaver fur, beaver architecture, and beaver ecology, tracing the long evolutionary history of the two living species and revealing them to be survivors capable of withstanding ice ages, major droughts, and all predators, except one: humans. 

Widely hunted for their fur, beavers were a driving force behind the colonization of North America and remain, today, Canada’s national symbol. Poliquin examines depictions of beavers in Aesop’s Fables, American mythology, contemporary art, and environmental politics, and she explores the fact and fictions of beaver chain gangs, beaver-flavored ice cream, and South America’s ever-growing beaver population. And yes, she even examines the history of the sexual euphemism. Poliquin delights in the strange tales and improbable history of the beaver. Written in an accessible style for a broad readership, this beautifully illustrated book will appeal to anyone who enjoys long-forgotten animal lore and extraordinary animal biology.     
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Becoming a Place of Unrest
Environmental Crisis and Ecophenomenological Praxis
Robert Booth
Ohio University Press, 2021
The key to mitigating the environmental crisis isn’t just based on science; it depends upon a profound philosophical revision of how we think about and behave in relation to the world. Our ongoing failure to interrupt the environmental crisis in a meaningful way stems, in part, from how we perceive the environment—what Robert Booth calls the "more-than-human world.” Anthropocentric presumptions of this world, inherited from natural science, have led us to better scientific knowledge about environmental problems and more science-based—yet inadequate—practical “solutions.” That’s not enough, Booth argues. Rather, he asserts that we must critically and self-reflexively revise how we perceive and consider ourselves within the more-than-human world as a matter of praxis in order to arrest our destructive impact on it. Across six chapters, Booth brings ecophenomenology—environmentally focused phenomenology—into productive dialogue with a rich array of other philosophical approaches, such as ecofeminism, new materialism, speculative realism, and object-oriented ontology. The book thus outlines and justifies why and how a specifically ecophenomenological praxis may lead to the disruption of the environmental crisis at its root. Booth’s observations and arguments make the leap from theory to practice insofar as they may influence how we fundamentally grasp the environmental crisis and what promising avenues of practical activism might look like. In Booth’s view, this is not about achieving a global scientific consensus regarding the material causes of the environmental crisis or the responsible use of “natural resources.” Instead, Booth calls for us to habitually resist our impetus to uncritically reduce more-than-human entities to “natural resources” in the first place. As Booth recognizes, Becoming a Place of Unrest cannot and does not tell us how we should act. Instead, it outlines and provides the basic means by which to instill positive and responsible conceptual and behavioral relationships with the rest of the world. Based on this, there is hope that we may begin to develop more concrete, actionable policies that bring about profound and lasting change.
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Becoming Animal
Teresa Präauer
Seagull Books, 2024
An unveiling of the presence of captivating figures and creatures throughout history.

In this gripping philosophical and cultural exploration, Teresa Präauer sets out to investigate figures of transformation, transmission, and translation—across languages, cultures, genres, media, species, and spaces. Hybrids, chimeras, monsters, and liminal creatures of all sorts inhabit these pages, as indeed they do the pages of the cultural archive from Antiquity and the Middle Ages to the present day: everything from the harpies, ape-men, and cynocephali that inhabit the edges of medieval maps and taxonomies to the Krampuses and Furries that roam through Alpine villages and convention centers today. Yet these chimeras are not aberrations; rather, they reveal an essential truth about culture and artistic expression.
 
What emerges in Becoming Animal is a kaleidoscopic image of culture as the constant probing of the limits of the sayable, as an unending process of attempting to capture in words and symbols that which cannot be pinned down.
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Becoming Creole
Nature and Race in Belize
Johnson, Melissa A.
Rutgers University Press, 2019
Becoming Creole explores how people become who they are through their relationships with the natural world, and it shows how those relationships are also always embedded in processes of racialization that create blackness, brownness, and whiteness. Taking the reader into the lived experience of Afro-Caribbean people who call the watery lowlands of Belize home, Melissa A. Johnson traces Belizean Creole peoples’ relationships with the plants, animals, water, and soils around them, and analyzes how these relationships intersect with transnational racial assemblages. She provides a sustained analysis of how processes of racialization are always present in the entanglements between people and the non-human worlds in which they live. 
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Bedbug
Klaus Reinhardt
Reaktion Books, 2018
Few animals elicit such a profound combination of horror, fear, and disgust as the bedbug. Uninvited, bedbugs invade our most private spaces (our beds), take away our blood, and afterwards, impudently mark their territory (our sheets). In this book, Klaus Reinhardt investigates the natural and human history of these vampiric insects, examining how ordinary people, travelers, writers, and scientists have experienced bedbugs; how we have coped with them; and what we have done to combat them.

From fossils to classical Greek plays to the beds of medieval travelers, history is a rash of bedbugs. So ubiquitous and so loathed are these contentious creatures, the first recorded use of the insect moniker “bug” refers to them, a word that now means any sort of glitch or invader—from computer errors to snooping devices. Lifting the covers on this pestilential history, Reinhardt shows how bedbugs were not only the center of bitter fights among scientists, but also how the bugs’ dangerous aspects were foregrounded, and how bedbugs’ peculiar mating habits fueled public revulsion. Richly illustrated, full of the latest bedbug research, and sure to make you itch, Bedbug closes with a plea for sanguine tolerance—something humans and bedbugs will need alike as worldwide infestation rates soar.
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Bee
Claire Preston
Reaktion Books, 2006
"How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour / and gather honey all the day from every opening flower!" This famed Isaac Watts verse reveals the enduring fascination that bees have held for humans: bees have long been admired for their remarkable socialization and architectural skills, and since the earliest times they have carried profound symbolic meanings. Claire Preston's Bee offers a comprehensive survey of the natural and cultural history of the bee and explores the impressive body of literature that has grown out of man's search for honey.

Bee traces the bee's role in art, politics, and social thought, drawing on scientific studies, literature, and historical texts. The volume examines the evolution of the bee's cultural image from a symbol of virtue and civility to the dangerous swarms of killer bees in Hollywood horror flicks. From ancient political analogies to Renaissance debates about monarchy to studies of bee behavior that portend ominous conclusions for our own socialization and use of technology, Bee analyzes the complex connections between the bee and human culture.
Written with energy and enthusiasm, Bee offers an original and fascinating meditation on this tiny workaholic.
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Bee Time
Lessons from the Hive
Mark L. Winston
Harvard University Press, 2014

Being among bees is a full-body experience, Mark Winston writes—from the low hum of tens of thousands of insects and the pungent smell of honey and beeswax, to the sight of workers flying back and forth between flowers and the hive. The experience of an apiary slows our sense of time, heightens our awareness, and inspires awe. Bee Time presents Winston’s reflections on three decades spent studying these creatures, and on the lessons they can teach about how humans might better interact with one another and the natural world.

Like us, honeybees represent a pinnacle of animal sociality. How they submerge individual needs into the colony collective provides a lens through which to ponder human societies. Winston explains how bees process information, structure work, and communicate, and examines how corporate boardrooms are using bee societies as a model to improve collaboration. He investigates how bees have altered our understanding of agricultural ecosystems and how urban planners are looking to bees in designing more nature-friendly cities.

The relationship between bees and people has not always been benign. Bee populations are diminishing due to human impact, and we cannot afford to ignore what the demise of bees tells us about our own tenuous affiliation with nature. Toxic interactions between pesticides and bee diseases have been particularly harmful, foreshadowing similar effects of pesticides on human health. There is much to learn from bees in how they respond to these challenges. In sustaining their societies, bees teach us ways to sustain our own.

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Beetle
Adam Dodd
Reaktion Books, 2015
Ancient and strange, beetles call to mind a lost world of Egyptian magic and belief—a reminder of the fascination they’ve long held for human culture. In Beetle, Adam Dodd offers a richly illustrated, engaging account of the natural and cultural history of the beetle, from its origins more than two hundred and fifty million years ago to the present, when its anatomy is inspiring cutting-edge developments in cybernetics. Along the way, Dodd explores the incredible variety of beetles on earth—there are more than 350,000 species—and their amazing ability to exploit nature’s niches. He also takes readers on a wide-ranging tour of the countless ways that beetles have infiltrated our art, folklore, literature, and religious beliefs. Stolid, secretive, and still-mysterious, beetles continue to exert a powerful pull on naturalists and collectors today, and no beetle fanatic will want to miss Dodd’s winning appreciation of their history.
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Before and After an Oil Spill
The Arthur Kill
Burger, Joanna
Rutgers University Press, 1994

In January 1990, the New York Harbor suffered a major oil spill when an underwater pipe at an Exxon refinery leaked into the Arthur Kill, the fifteen-mile strait that runs between New Jersey and Staten Island. The waterway is home to herons and egrets, fiddler crabs and sea turtles, and a favorite place for recreational fishing, bird-watching, hiking, and boating. It is also lined with refineries and a busy corridor for oil tankers. Because this industrial activity posed such an imposing threat to the fragile ecosystem, biologists had been monitoring the region’s water, soil, vegetation, and wildlife for some time before the oil spill. Thus, we have before -and-after data about the habitat—the only oil spill anywhere for which this is true.

This unique book discusses the human consequences of the oil spill as well as providing detailed studies of its effects on the plants and animals of the Arthur Kill. Biologists, environmentalists, lawyers, and officials worldwide will find this book an essential guide to dealing with—and possibly preventing—future environmental disasters.

The contributors areJohn Brzorad, Angela Christini, Keith Cooper, Lynn Frink, Michael Gochfeld, Paul Hauge, Gordon Johnson,  Alan D. Maccarone, Katherine Parsons, Carolyn Summers, Robert Tucker.

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Before the Echo
Essays on Nature
By Pete Dunne
University of Texas Press, 1995

"The natural world is a lot like a game of musical chairs," observes Pete Dunne. "Everywhere you turn, everywhere you go, there are places where living things sit down, niches that support their specific needs. But just as in musical chairs, there aren't enough places to go around. Our species keeps removing them—forcing other creatures to leave the game."

In these twenty-nine essays, one of America's top nature writers trains his sights on the beauties and the vulnerabilities of the natural world. Writing to infuse others with a sense of the richness and diversity that nature holds, Pete Dunne ranges over topics from the wonder of the year's first snowfall to the lost art of stargazing to the mysterious forces that impel people to hunt—and not to hunt. Running like a thread through all the essays is Dunne's desire to preserve all that is "natural" in nature, to stop our unthinking destruction of wild places and wild creatures before we humans find ourselves with "the last chair, in an empty room" on an impoverished earth.

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Before the Law
Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame
Cary Wolfe
University of Chicago Press, 2012
Animal studies and biopolitics are two of the most dynamic areas of interdisciplinary scholarship, but until now, they have had little to say to each other. Bringing these two emergent areas of thought into direct conversation in Before the Law, Cary Wolfe fosters a new discussion about the status of nonhuman animals and the shared plight of humans and animals under biopolitics.
 
Wolfe argues that the human­­­-animal distinction must be supplemented with the central distinction of biopolitics: the difference between those animals that are members of a community and those that are deemed killable but not murderable. From this understanding, we can begin to make sense of the fact that this distinction prevails within both the human and animal domains and address such difficult issues as why we afford some animals unprecedented levels of care and recognition while subjecting others to unparalleled forms of brutality and exploitation. Engaging with many major figures in biopolitical thought—from Heidegger, Arendt, and Foucault to Agamben, Esposito, and Derrida—Wolfe explores how biopolitics can help us understand both the ethical and political dimensions of the current questions surrounding the rights of animals.
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The Behavior of Texas Birds
By Kent Rylander
University of Texas Press, 2002

Whether it's the sudden, plunging dives of Brown Pelicans, the singing and aerial displays of Northern Mockingbirds, or the communal nesting of Purple Martins, innate and learned behaviors are some of the most fascinating things to observe in Texas birds. Even casual birdwatchers eventually ask, "why do they do that?" while serious birders and ornithologists seek to understand all the behaviors involved in feeding, flying, mating, and rearing young. But until now, it has been hard to find this information in one handy source.

In this comprehensive, yet easy-to-use book, Kent Rylander distills data from many sources to provide an authoritative guide to the behavior of Texas birds. He begins by explaining the principles of animal behavior and illustrating how they can be applied to interpreting bird behaviors in the field. The majority of the book is devoted to accounts of more than 400 species of birds that are most likely to be encountered by Texas birdwatchers. Each account describes such behaviors as feeding, courtship, parenting, and other behaviors that are significant for that species. References to interesting and important articles from scientific journals are incorporated in the species accounts where appropriate, and line drawings illustrate some of the behaviors described.

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Being Property Once Myself
Blackness and the End of Man
Joshua Bennett
Harvard University Press, 2020

Winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize

“This trenchant work of literary criticism examines the complex ways…African American authors have written about animals. In Bennett’s analysis, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Jesmyn Ward, and others subvert the racist comparisons that have ‘been used against them as a tool of derision and denigration.’...An intense and illuminating reevaluation of black literature and Western thought.”
—Ron Charles, Washington Post

For much of American history, Black people have been conceived and legally defined as nonpersons, a subgenre of the human. In Being Property Once Myself, prize-winning poet Joshua Bennett shows that Blackness has long acted as the caesura between human and nonhuman and delves into the literary imagination and ethical concerns that have emerged from this experience. Each chapter tracks a specific animal—the rat, the cock, the mule, the dog, the shark—in the works of Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Jesmyn Ward, and Robert Hayden. The plantation, the wilderness, the kitchenette overrun with pests, the valuation and sale of animals and enslaved people—all place Black and animal life in fraught proximity.

Bennett suggests that animals are deployed to assert a theory of Black sociality and to combat dominant claims about the limits of personhood. And he turns to the Black radical tradition to challenge the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness in discourses surrounding the environment and animals. Being Property Once Myself is an incisive work of literary criticism and a groundbreaking articulation of undertheorized notions of dehumanization and the Anthropocene.

“A gripping work…Bennett’s lyrical lilt in his sharp analyses makes for a thorough yet accessible read.”
LSE Review of Books

“These absorbing, deeply moving pages bring to life a newly reclaimed ethics.”
—Colin Dayan, author of The Law Is a White Dog

“Tremendously illuminating…Refreshing and field-defining.”
—Salamishah Tillet, author of Sites of Slavery

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Believing In Place
A Spiritual Geography Of The Great Basin
Richard V. Francaviglia
University of Nevada Press, 2016

The austere landscape of the Great Basin has inspired diverse responses from the people who have moved through or settled in it. Author Richard V. Francaviglia is interested in the connection between environment and spirituality in the Great Basin, for here, he says, "faith and landscape conspire to resurrect old myths and create new ones." As a geographer, Francaviglia knows that place means more than physical space. Human perceptions and interpretations are what give place its meaning. In Believing in Place, he examines the varying human perceptions of and relationships with the Great Basin landscape, from the region's Native American groups to contemporary tourists and politicians, to determine the spiritual issues that have shaped our connections with this place. In doing so, he considers the creation and flood myths of several cultures, the impact of the Judeo-Christian tradition and individualism, Native American animism and shamanist traditions, the Mormon landscape, the spiritual dimensions of gambling, the religious foundations of Cold War ideology, stories of UFOs and alien presence, and the convergence of science and spirituality.

Believing in Place is a profound and totally engaging reflection on the ways that human needs and spiritual traditions can shape our perceptions of the land. That the Great Basin has inspired such a complex variety of responses is partly due to its enigmatic vastness and isolation, partly to the remarkable range of peoples who have found themselves in the region. Using not only the materials of traditional geography but folklore, anthropology, Native American and Euro-American religion, contemporary politics, and New Age philosophies, Francaviglia has produced a fascinating and timely investigation of the role of human conceptions of place in that space we call the Great Basin.

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Beneath the Surface
Understanding Nature in the Mullica Valley Estuary
Kenneth W. Able
Rutgers University Press, 2020
2021 winner of Non-fiction popular category: New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance

The Mullica Valley estuary and its watershed, formed over the last 10,000 years, are among the cleanest estuaries along the east coast of the United States. This 365,000-acre ecosystem benefits from a combination of protected watershed, low human population density, and general lack of extensive development. In Beneath the Surface, marine scientist Ken Able helps the reader penetrate the surface and gain insights into the kinds of habitats, animals, and plants that live there. Readers will gain a better understanding of the importance of these shallow waters; how the amount of salt in the water determines where animals and plants are found in estuaries; the day-night, seasonal, and annual variation in their occurrence; and how change is occurring as the result of climate variation. Throughout the book are insightful sidebars telling intimate stories of where various animals came from and where they are going as they travel through the estuary on their way to and from other portions of the east coast. Beneath the Surface emphasizes the kinds and importance of the animals and plants that live beneath the surface of this unique ecosystem.
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Berries
Victoria Dickenson
Reaktion Books, 2020
What is it about the small fruits of field and wood that encourage rapture? These gifts of the earth—flagrant in hedgerows, carpeting the forest floor or coloring tablelands—are so ubiquitous as to be commonplace and yet so extraordinary that we have woven them into our folklore, our fables, and our art. Strawberries were painted in the frescoes of Pompeii, brambles twined into the borders of medieval miniatures, and mulberries have been embroidered on silks and linens. Today, the huge demand for these nutrient-rich fruits is pushing berry cultivation into new territories, from South America to Scandinavia, and changing the nature of our relationship with these much-loved fruits. In this delightful, surprising, and occasionally juicy botanical exploration, Victoria Dickenson traces the humble berry’s journey across cultures and through centuries with humor and passion.
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Best Backpacking Trips in California and Nevada
Mike White
University of Nevada Press, 2015
The American West is home to some of the best backpacking trips in the world, and within California and Nevada are several outstanding destination trails. Hikers from all over the country, and around the world, travel to this area every season to undertake some of these classic trips of a lifetime and enjoy the breathtaking scenery. Best Backpacking Trips in California and Nevada was written to help the accomplished hiker through the entire process of planning a multiday excursion. The book covers all aspects of the trip, from traveling to the area to successfully fulfilling the dream of backpacking in one of the most beautiful regions in the West.

The guide includes thirteen detailed trail descriptions, along with information on additional resources, governing agencies, and permits and fees. It also provides listings of the nearest airports, outdoor retailers, campgrounds, transportation, and amenities and attractions. Accompanying the specific information on each trip are captivating historical vignettes and entertaining personal essays, enhancing the reader’s understanding of the area. Whether journeying from near or far, Best Backpacking Trips of California and Nevada is the most complete resource for turning a dream trip into reality.
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Best Backpacking Trips in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico
Mike White
University of Nevada Press, 2016

This is the second book in a series of detailed guidebooks covering all the best “life-list” backpacking vacations in the spectacular backcountry of the American West. This new volume specifically covers the best such adventures in the states of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Every conceivable aspect of trip planning is covered in the guide, including maps and descriptions of the trail, where to locate the nearest airport, other area attractions that shouldn’t be missed, and guide services that are available. A noteworthy feature of the book is the individual vignettes that give insight into the historical significance of many of the trails. Also unique are the interesting and humorous personal accounts that the authors share from their personal experiences hiking these routes. Backpackers will find a wide range of outstanding trips, from high mountain adventures to some of the world’s best lower-elevation canyon hikes. Best Backpacking Trips in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico provides an extensive choice of terrific expeditions.

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Better Environmental Decisions
Strategies for Governments, Businesses, and Communities
Edited by Ken Sexton, Alfred A. Marcus, K. William Easter, and Timothy D. Burkhardt
Island Press, 1999
Better Environmental Decisions reponds to the need for improved environmental decision making by bringing together leading scholars and practitioners to provide a comprehensive interdisciplinary introduction to the subject. Each chapter describes an important aspect of environmental decision making; identifies key issues, problems, and barriers; and recommends ways to improve both the process and the final result.Topics examined include: Congressional decisions about regulatory reform environmental benefit/cost analysisvaluing environmental impacts comparing risks and setting priorities strategic environmental management corporate accounting for environmental and social factors corporate responses to rules and regulations community decisions about environmental riskscivic environmentalismcommunity partnerships with industry and governmentThroughout, contributors focus on providing tools to make better decisions, and on presenting solutions to real-world problems.Better Environmental Decisions describes and analyzes the key decision making criteria of each of the stakeholders involved -- governments, businesses, and communities -- and offers a compendium of techniques necessary for achieving success. It will be a landmark reference and resource for anyone involved with environmental decisionmaking, including legislators, regulators, business and environmental managers, environmental advocates, community activists, reporters, researchers, educators, and students.
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Better Environmental Policy Studies
How To Design And Conduct More Effective Analyses
Lawrence Susskind, Ravi K. Jain, and Andrew O. Martyniuk
Island Press, 2001

Environmental policy studies commissioned by government agencies or other stakeholders can play a vital role in environmental decisionmaking; they provide much-needed insight into policy options and specific recommendations for action. But the results of even the most rigorous studies are frequently misappropriated or misunderstood and are as likely to confuse an issue as they are to clarify it.

Better Environmental Policy Studies explores this problem, as it considers the shortcomings of current approaches to policy studies and presents a pragmatic new approach to the subject. Reviewing five cases that are widely regarded as the most effective policy studies to have been conducted in the United States in the last few decades, the authors present a comprehensive guide to the concepts and methods required for conducting effective policy studies. The book:

  • describes and explains the conventional approach to policy studies and its shortcoming
  • presents the history, impacts, and common elements of five successful policy studies
  • offers an in-depth look at the different tools and techniques of policy analysis
  • extends the concepts and principles of successful policy studies to their potential uses in the international arena

Better Environmental Policy Studies presents a practical, battle-tested approach to overcoming the obstacles to formulating effective environmental policy. It is an invaluable resource for students and faculty in departments of environmental studies, public policy and administration, and planning, as well as for professional policy analysts and others involved with making decisions and mediating disputes over environmental issues.

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The Better to Eat You With
Fear in the Animal World
Joel Berger
University of Chicago Press, 2008
At dawn on a brutally cold January morning, Joel Berger crouched in the icy grandeur of the Teton Range.  It had been three years since wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone after a sixty-year absence, and members of a wolf pack were approaching a herd of elk. To Berger’s utter shock, the elk ignored the wolves as they went in for the kill. The brutal attack that followed—swift and bloody—led Berger to hypothesize that after only six decades, the elk had forgotten to fear a species that had survived by eating them for hundreds of millennia.

Berger’s fieldwork that frigid day raised important questions that would require years of travel and research to answer: Can naive animals avoid extinction when they encounter reintroduced carnivores? To what extent is fear culturally transmitted? And how can a better understanding of current predator-prey behavior help demystify past extinctions and inform future conservation?

The Better to Eat You With is the chronicle of Berger’s search for answers.  From Yellowstone’s elk and wolves to rhinos living with African lions and moose coexisting with tigers and bears in Asia, Berger tracks cultures of fear in animals across continents and climates, engaging readers with a stimulating combination of natural history, personal experience, and conservation. Whether battling bureaucracy in the statehouse or fighting subzero wind chills in the field, Berger puts himself in the middle of the action.  The Better to Eat You With invites readers to join him there. The thrilling tales he tells reveal a great deal not only about survival in the animal kingdom but also the process of doing science in foreboding conditions and hostile environments.
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Better Trout Habitat
A Guide to Stream Restoration and Management
Christopher J. Hunter; Montana Land Reliance
Island Press, 1991

Better Trout Habitat explains the physical, chemical, and biological needs of trout, and shows how climate, geology, vegetation, and flowing water all help to create trout habitat.

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Betting the Farm on a Drought
Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Change
By Seamus McGraw
University of Texas Press, 2015

Climate change has become one of the most polarizing issues of our time. Extremists on the left regularly issue hyperbolic jeremiads about the impending destruction of the environment, while extremists on the right counter with crass, tortured denials. But out in the vast middle are ordinary people dealing with stronger storms and more intense droughts than they’ve ever known. This middle ground is the focus of Betting the Farm on a Drought, a lively, thought-provoking book that lays out the whole story of climate change—the science, the math, and most importantly, the human stories of people fighting both the climate and their own deeply held beliefs to find creative solutions to a host of environmental challenges.

Seamus McGraw takes us on a trip along America’s culturally fractured back roads and listens to farmers and ranchers and fishermen, many of them people who are not ideologically, politically, or in some cases even religiously inclined to believe in man-made global climate change. He shows us how they are already being affected and the risks they are already taking on a personal level to deal with extreme weather and its very real consequences for their livelihoods. McGraw also speaks to scientists and policymakers who are trying to harness that most renewable of American resources, a sense of hope and self-reliance that remains strong in the face of daunting challenges. By bringing these voices together, Betting the Farm on a Drought ultimately becomes a model for how we all might have a pragmatic, reasoned conversation about our changing climate.

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Between Grass And Sky
Where I Live And Work
Linda M. Hasselstrom
University of Nevada Press, 2005

An important collection of personal essays from one of the most widely published American environmental writers addresses the effects of ranching on the environment. Acclaimed nature writer Linda M. Hasselstrom sees herself as a rancher who writes—a definition that shapes the tone and content of her writing. Now owner of the South Dakota cattle ranch where she grew up, Hasselstrom lives in intimate contact with the natural world. "Nature is to me both home and office. Nature is my boss, manager of the branch office—or ranch office—where I toil to convert native grass into meat. . . . If I want to keep my job as well as my home, I pay attention not only to Nature's orders, but to her moods and whims." She writes knowingly of the rancher's toil and of the intelligence and dignity of the wild and domesticated creatures that share the prairie grassland she calls home. As one who knows and loves the land, Hasselstrom appreciates the concerns of environmental activists and understands that responsible ranchers can play a role in nurturing a healthy rural ecosystem. Rich in detail, humor, and pathos, these essays offer wry commentary on the scope of human folly and the even greater human potential for community and empathy. "Only people who live in the country," she writes, "could form a relationship with nature so intimate that they feel concern for one lonely duck. People who live in cities . . . only glimpse nature from high windows or speeding vehicles. Even wilderness lovers who probe deeply are only passing through. We who live on the land truly live within the land, each of our lives only one among the other inhabitants of the place." These are essays to read with wonder and delight, to relish and ponder. Available in hardcover and paperback.

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Between Land and Sea
The Atlantic Coast and the Transformation of New England
Christopher L. Pastore
Harvard University Press, 2014

One of the largest estuaries on the North Atlantic coast, Narragansett Bay served as a gateway for colonial expansion in the seventeenth century and the birthplace of American industrialization in the late eighteenth. Christopher Pastore presents an environmental history of this watery corner of the Atlantic world, beginning with the first European settlement in 1636 and ending with the dissolution of the Blackstone Canal Company in 1849. Between Land and Sea traces how the Bay’s complex ecology shaped the contours of European habitation, trade, and resource use, and how littoral settlers in turn reconfigured the physical and cultural boundaries between humans and nature.

Narragansett Bay emerges in Pastore’s account as much more than a geological formation. Rather, he reimagines the nexus of land and sea as a brackish borderland shaped by the tension between what English settlers saw as improvable land and the perpetual forces of the North Atlantic Ocean. By draining swamps, damming rivers, and digging canals, settlers transformed a marshy coastal margin into a clearly defined edge. The resultant “coastline” proved less resilient, less able to absorb the blows of human initiative and natural variation than the soggy fractal of water and earth it replaced.

Today, as sea levels rise and superstorms batter coasts with increasing ferocity, Between Land and Sea calls on the environmentally-minded to make a space in their notions of progress for impermanence and uncertainty in the natural world.

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Between Mind and Nature
A History of Psychology
Roger Smith
Reaktion Books, 2013
From William James to Ivan Pavlov, John Dewey to Sigmund Freud, the Würzburg School to the Chicago School, psychology has spanned centuries and continents. Today, the word is an all-encompassing name for a bewildering range of beliefs about what psychologists know and do, and this intrinsic interest in knowing how our own and other’s minds work has a story as fascinating and complex as humankind itself. In Between Mind and Nature, Roger Smith explores the history of psychology and its relation to religion, politics, the arts, social life, the natural sciences, and technology.
 
Considering the big questions bound up in the history of psychology, Smith investigates what human nature is, whether psychology can provide answers to human problems, and whether the notion of being an individual depends on social and historical conditions. He also asks whether a method of rational thinking exists outside the realm of natural science. Posing important questions about the value and direction of psychology today, Between Mind and Nature is a cogently written book for those wishing to know more about the quest for knowledge of the mind.
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Between Ruin and Restoration
An Environmental History of Israel
Daniel E. Orenstein
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013
The environmental history of Israel is as intriguing and complex as the nation itself. Situated on a mere 8,630 square miles, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf, varying from desert to forest, Israel’s natural environment presents innumerable challenges to its growing population. The country’s conflicted past and present, diverse religions, and multitude of cultural influences powerfully affect the way Israelis imagine, question, and shape their environment. Zionism, from the late nineteenth onward, has tempered nearly every aspect of human existence. Scarcities of usable land and water coupled with border conflicts and regional hostilities have steeled Israeli’s survival instincts. As this volume demonstrates, these powerful dialectics continue to undergird environmental policy and practice in Israel today.

Between Ruin and Restoration assembles leading experts in policy, history, and activism to address Israel’s continuing environmental transformation from the biblical era to the present and beyond, with a particular focus on the past one hundred and fifty years. The chapters also reflect passionate public debates over meeting the needs of Israel’s population and preserving its natural resources.

The chapters detail the occupations of the Ottoman Empire and British colonialists in eighteenth and nineteenth century Palestine, as well as Fellaheen and pastoralist Bedouin tribes, and how they shaped much of the terrain that greeted early Zionist settlers. Following the rise of the Zionist movement, the rapid influx of immigrants and ensuing population growth put new demands on water supplies, pollution controls, sanitation, animal populations, rangelands and biodiversity, forestry, marine policy, and desertification. Additional chapters view environmental politics nationally and internationally, the environmental impact of Israel’s military, and considerations for present and future sustainability.
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Between Two Fires
A Fire History of Contemporary America
Stephen J. Pyne
University of Arizona Press, 2015
From a fire policy of prevention at all costs to today's restored burning, Between Two Fires is America's history channeled through the story of wildland fire management. Stephen J. Pyne tells of a fire revolution that began in the 1960s as a reaction to simple suppression and single-agency hegemony, and then matured into more enlightened programs of fire management. It describes the counterrevolution of the 1980s that stalled the movement, the revival of reform after 1994, and the fire scene that has evolved since then.

Pyne is uniquely qualified to tell America’s fire story. The author of more than a score of books, he has told fire’s history in the United States, Australia, Canada, Europe, and the Earth overall. In his earlier life, he spent fifteen seasons with the North Rim Longshots at Grand Canyon National Park.

In Between Two Fires, Pyne recounts how, after the Great Fires of 1910, a policy of fire suppression spread from America’s founding corps of foresters into a national policy that manifested itself as a costly all-out war on fire. After fifty years of attempted fire suppression, a revolution in thinking led to a more pluralistic strategy for fire’s restoration. The revolution succeeded in displacing suppression as a sole strategy, but it has failed to fully integrate fire and land management and has fallen short of its goals.

Today, the nation’s backcountry and increasingly its exurban fringe are threatened by larger and more damaging burns, fire agencies are scrambling for funds, firefighters continue to die, and the country seems unable to come to grips with the fundamentals behind a rising tide of megafires. Pyne has once again constructed a history of record that will shape our next century of fire management. Between Two Fires is a story of ideas, institutions, and fires. It’s America’s story told through the nation’s flames.
 
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Between Urban and Wild
Reflections from Colorado
Andrea M. Jones
University of Iowa Press, 2013
In her calm, carefully reasoned perspective on place, Andrea Jones focuses on the familiar details of country life balanced by the larger responsibilities that come with living outside an urban boundary. Neither an environmental manifesto nor a prodevelopment defense, Between Urban and Wild operates partly on a practical level, partly on a naturalist’s level. Jones reflects on life in two homes in the Colorado Rockies, first in Fourmile Canyon in the foothills west of Boulder, then near Cap Rock Ridge in central Colorado. Whether negotiating territory with a mountain lion, balancing her observations of the predatory nature of pygmy owls against her desire to protect a nest of nuthatches, working to reduce her property’s vulnerability to wildfire while staying alert to its inherent risks during fire season, or decoding the distinct personalities of her horses, she advances the tradition of nature writing by acknowledging the effects of sprawl on a beloved landscape.

Although not intended as a manual for landowners, Between Urban and Wild nonetheless offers useful and engaging perspectives on the realities of settling and living in a partially wild environment. Throughout her ongoing journey of being home, Jones’s close observations of the land and its native inhabitants are paired with the suggestion that even small landholders can act to protect the health of their properties. Her brief meditations capture and honor the subtleties of the natural world while illuminating the importance of working to safeguard it.

Probing the contradictions of a lifestyle that burdens the health of the land that she loves, Jones’s writing is permeated by her gentle, earnest conviction that living at the urban-wild interface requires us to set aside self-interest, consider compromise, and adjust our expectations and habits—to accommodate our surroundings rather than force them to accommodate us.
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Beyond 40%
Record-Setting Recycling And Composting Programs
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Island Press, 1991

Beyond 40% is a practical guide for communities trying to solve their solid waste disposal problems.


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Beyond Desert Walls
Essays from Prison
Ken Lamberton
University of Arizona Press, 2005
“From the upper bunk where I write, a narrow window allows me a southern exposure of the desert beyond this prison. Saguaro cacti, residents here long before this rude concrete pueblo, fill the upper part of my frame. If I could open the window and reach out across the razed ground, sand traps, and shining perimeter fence, I might touch their fluted sides, their glaucous and waxen skins.”
 
For some people, even prison cannot shut out the natural world.

A teacher and family man incarcerated in Arizona State Prison—the result of a transgression that would cost him a dozen years of his life—Ken Lamberton can see beyond his desert walls. In essays that focus on the natural history of the region and on his own personal experiences with desert places, the author of the Burroughs Medal-winning book Wilderness and Razor Wire takes readers along as he revisits the Southwest he knew when he was free, and as he makes an inner journey toward self-awareness. Whether considering the seemingly eternal cacti or the desolate beauty of the Pinacate, he draws on sharp powers of observation to re-create what lies beyond his six-by-eight cell and to contemplate the thoughts that haunt his mind as tenaciously as the kissing bugs that haunt his sleep.

Ranging from prehistoric ruins on the Colorado Plateau to the shores of the Sea of Cortez, these writings were begun before Wilderness and Razor Wire and serve as a prequel to it. They seamlessly interweave natural and personal history as Lamberton explores caves, canyons, and dry ponds, evoking the mysteries and rhythms of desert life that elude even the most careful observers. He offers new ways of thinking about how we relate to the natural world, and about the links between those relationships and the ones we forge with other people. With the assurance of a gifted writer, he seeks to make sense of his own place in life, crafting words to come to terms with an insanity of his own making, to look inside himself and understand his passions and flaws.

Whether considering rattlesnakes of the hellish summer desert or the fellow inmates of his own personal hell, Lamberton finds meaningful connections—to his crime and his place, to the people who remained in his life and those who didn’t. But what he reveals in Beyond Desert Walls ultimately arises from language itself: a deep, and perhaps even frightening, understanding of a singular human nature.
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Beyond Earth Day
Fulfilling the Promise
Gaylord Nelson; With Susan Campbell and Paul Wozniak; Foreword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; Preface by Tia Nelson
University of Wisconsin Press, 2002

Gaylord Nelson’s legacy is known and respected throughout the world. He was a founding father of the modern environmental movement and creator of one of the most influential public awareness campaigns ever undertaken on behalf of global environmental stewardship: Earth Day.
    Nelson died in 2005, but his message in this book is still timely and urgent, delivered with the same eloquence with which he articulated the nation’s environmental ills throughout the decades. He details the planet’s most critical concerns—from species and habitat losses to global climate change and population growth. In outlining strategies for planetary health, Nelson inspires citizens to reassert environmentalism as a national priority. Included in this reprint is a new preface by Gaylord Nelson’s daughter, Tia Nelson.

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Beyond Mammoth Cave
A Tale of Obsession in the World's Longest Cave
James D. Borden and Roger W. Brucker
Southern Illinois University Press, 2000

In Beyond Mammoth Cave: A Tale of Obsession in the World’s Longest Cave, James D. Borden and Roger W. Brucker provide gripping first-person accounts of the discoveries, including Roppel Cave, that made Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave three times longer than any other cave in the world.

Borden, a relative newcomer, and Brucker, a veteran explorer, bring a personal and sometimes conflicting view of their roles as adversaries in a race that lasted from 1972 through 1983 to find “big cave.” They describe hazardous adventures, precarious climbs, and close calls from falling rocks. The perils are many and the trek arduous as they squirm through muddy tubes, wade in neck-deep cold water, and crawl over sharp rocks and gritty sand. Theirs is a tale of agonizing endurance spiced by spectacular discoveries.

But the cave was not the sole obstacle. The explorations were complicated by political intrigue and the rivalry between the Kentucky-based Cave Research Foundation and the Central Kentucky Karst Coalition, each seeking to make discoveries and hide secrets. Extreme stress, of course, evoked extreme behavior, ranging from selfishness to sacrifice, from outrageous humor to the deadly serious response.

Beyond Mammoth Cave includes maps by Patricia Kambesis that show the progression of cave discoveries in relation to the topography. Original line drawings by well-known illustrator Linda Heslop capture the dark mystery of the exploration. The book features five black and white photographs as a color gallery of photographs.

A sequel to The Longest Cave by Brucker and Richard A. Watson, this book is a comprehensive update of the speleological investigations in the Mammoth Cave region. Brucker’s involvement provides continuity to the investigation.

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Beyond Polarization
Public Process and the Unlikely Story of California's Marine Protected Areas
Steven L. Yaffee
Island Press, 2020
In a time when the United States is divided and positive collective action feels out of our grasp, Beyond Polarization tells a story of hope and hard work. That story goes back to 1999, when California passed a landmark piece of legislation to establish a system of marine protected areas off its coast that would safeguard miles of fragile ocean resources. After a contentious ten-year public process, establishment of a network of 124 protected areas was considered nothing short of miraculous. As important as this achievement was, the legacy it left was even more enduring: a blueprint for successful public policy that can be replicated elsewhere. What lessons can we draw?
 
California’s experience provides a rare opportunity to learn from a collaborative public process involving private interests and science-intensive decisions. Determined to do just that, Steven Yaffee, a renowned expert on negotiation and collaborative decision making, spent hundreds of hours researching the MLPA process in an effort to understand how California succeeded where other efforts have failed. The result is Beyond Polarization, a highly readable insider’s perspective on complicated decision-making processes and the strategic choices necessary for success. The book follows the initiative process region by region, each with its unique stakeholders and geographic concerns. These lessons can be applied to similar collaborative processes across the country and world.
 
Beyond Polarization presents an optimistic message about the public policy process in a time of civic division. It offers reassurance that, by using proven decision-making processes, policymakers, scientists, and local citizens can successfully collaborate to manage and protect natural resources we all have a stake in.
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Beyond Prejudice
The Moral Significance of Human and Nonhuman Animals
Evelyn B. Pluhar
Duke University Press, 1995
In Beyond Prejudice, Evelyn B. Pluhar defends the view that any sentient conative being—one capable of caring about what happens to him or herself—is morally significant, a view that supports the moral status and rights of many nonhuman animals. Confronting traditional and contemporary philosophical arguments, she offers in clear and accessible fashion a thorough examination of theories of moral significance while decisively demonstrating the flaws in the arguments of those who would avoid attributing moral rights to nonhumans.
Exposing the traditional view—which restricts the moral realm to autonomous, fully fledged "persons"—as having horrific implications for the treatment of many humans, Pluhar goes on to argue positively that sentient individuals of any species are no less morally significant than the most automomous human. Her position provides the ultimate justification that is missing from previous defenses of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In the process of advancing her position, Pluhar discusses the implications of determining moral significance for children and "abnormal" humans as well as its relevance to population policies, the raising of animals for food or product testing, decisions on hunting and euthanasia, and the treatment of companion animals. In addition, the author scrutinizes recent assertions by environmental ethicists that all living things or that natural objects and ecosystems be considered highly morally significant. This powerful book of moral theory challenges all defenders of the moral status quo—which decrees that animals decidedly do not count—to reevaluate their convictions.
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Beyond Preservation
Restoring and Inventing Landscapes
Dwight Baldwin
University of Minnesota Press, 1994

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Beyond Sun and Sand
Caribbean Environmentalisms
Edited by Sherrie L. Baver and Barbara Deutsch Lynch
Rutgers University Press, 2006
Filtered through the lens of the North American and European media, the Caribbean appears to be a series of idyllic landscapes-sanctuaries designed for sailing, diving, and basking in the sun on endless white sandy beaches. Conservation literature paints a similarly enticing portrait, describing the region as a habitat for endangered coral reefs and their denizens, parrots, butterflies, turtles, snails, and a myriad of plant species.

In both versions, the image of the exotic landscape overshadows the rich island cultures that are both linguistically and politically diverse, but trapped in a global economy that offers few options for development. Popular depictions also overlook the reality that the region is fraught with environmental problems, including water and air pollution, solid waste mismanagement, destruction of ecosystems, deforestation, and the transition from agriculture to ranching.

Bringing together ten essays by social scientists and activists, Beyond Sun and Sand provides the most comprehensive exploration to date of the range of environmental issues facing the region and the social movements that have developed to deal with them. The authors consider the role that global and regional political economies play in this process and provide valuable insight into Caribbean environmentalism. Many of the essays by prominent Caribbean analysts are made available for the first time in English.
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Beyond the Ark
Tools For An Ecosystem Approach To Conservation
W. William Weeks; Foreword by Bruce Babbitt
Island Press, 1997
Among the few organizations with substantial experience in conserving and managing large ecosystems is The Nature Conservancy (TNC) -- the largest private, nonprofit conservation organization in the world dedicated to preserving natural areas, whose efforts have led to the protection of more than nine million acres of land across the United States and Canada.For more than fourteen years, W. William Weeks has worked in various capacities for The Nature Conservancy -- as state director, chief operating officer, and, currently, as vice president and director of The Center for Compatible Economic Development. During that time he has developed a deeply personal understanding of TNC's underlying philosophy and guiding methodology, and has come to appreciate the complex interaction between landscapes and people that characterize all conservation efforts. In Beyond the Ark, Weeks weaves together anecdotes, personal reflection, and fascinating detail from past and current Nature Conservancy projects to present a lively and inspiring introduction to issues of land conservation and management, and to The Nature Conservancy's approach to conservation.The author begins with a general introduction to conservation, to conservation planning, to the history and philosophy of The Nature Conservancy, and to the popular but often vaguely defined notion of ecosystem management. He then presents a detailed account of the conservation planning discipline that is at the heart of The Nature Conservancy's approach. Weeks offers in-depth description and analysis of the planning process that TNC goes through for each project -- a process designed to lead to a comprehensive understanding of the ecological system under consideration, threats to it and their causes, strategies for addressing those threats, and a means of measuring success. He ends with a consideration of the implications of the approach described, and presents his own thoughts on various aspects of the larger context in which conservation efforts must function.Beyond the Ark is an insightful and illuminating overview of conservation and management issues. Featuring a wealth of practical information gleaned from a wide range of real-life projects, it provides invaluable guidance to all those working to protect our endangered natural resources.
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Beyond the Land Itself
Views of Nature in Canada and the United States
Marcia B. Kline
Harvard University Press, 1970
Marcia Kline's work, which inaugurates a new series of student essays sponsored by the Committee on Degrees in History and Literature, utilizes illustrations from both fictional and nonfictional writing of the mid-nineteenth century to contrast the views of nature held in the United States and Canada during that period. Her conclusions note that while Americans romanticized their West, Canadians responded in terror to the natural world.
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Beyond the Last Village
A Journey Of Discovery In Asia's Forbidden Wilderness
Alan Rabinowitz
Island Press, 2001

In 1993, Alan Rabinowitz, called "the Indiana Jones" of wildlife science by The New York Times, arrived for the first time in the country of Myanmar, known until 1989 as Burma, uncertain of what to expect. Working under the auspices of the Wildlife Conservation Society, his goal was to establish a wildlife research and conservation program and to survey the country's wildlife. He succeeded beyond all expectations, not only discovering a species of primitive deer completely new to science but also playing a vital role in the creation of Hkakabo Razi National Park, now one of Southeast Asia's largest protected areas.

Beyond the Last Village takes the reader on a journey of exploration, danger, and discovery in this remote corner of the planet at the southeast edge of the Himalayas where tropical rain forest and snow-covered mountains meet. As we travel through this "lost world" -- a mysterious and forbidding region isolated by ancient geologic forces -- we meet the Rawang, a former slave group, the Taron, a solitary enclave of the world's only pygmies of Asian ancestry, and Myanmar Tibetans living in the furthest reaches of the mountains. We enter the territories of strange, majestic-looking beasts that few people have ever heard of and fewer have ever seen -- golden takin, red goral, blue sheep, black barking deer. The survival of these ancient species is now threatened, not by natural forces but by hunters with snares and crossbows, trading body parts for basic household necessities.

The powerful landscape and unique people the author befriends help him come to grips with the traumas and difficulties of his past and emerge a man ready to embrace the world anew. Interwoven with his scientific expedition in Myanmar, and helping to inform his understanding of the people he met and the situations he encountered, is this more personal journey of discovery.

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Beyond the Trees
Stories of Wisconsin Forests
Candice Gaukel Andrews
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2011

Nature writer Candice Andrews weaves together contemporary observations and historical reminisces in Beyond the Trees: Stories of Wisconsin Forests. Readers will journey to some of the most pristine and notable places in the Upper Midwest—Wisconsin’s state and national forests.

The diversity of landscapes evoked in Beyond the Trees is matched only by the characters who inhabit them. Traverse the footsteps of Ojibwe hunters and early explorers in the remote woods of Brule River State Forest. Trek past the remains of bygone logging and CCC camps in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Glimpse into the world of Great Lakes shipping in Point Beach State Forest. Walk on trails named after John Muir and Increase Lapham in the Kettle Moraine State Forest, and experience urban green space at Milwaukee’s Havenwoods State Forest. From orchids to oak savanna, beaver to brook trout, and white-tailed deer to timber wolves, discover Wisconsin’s wildlife and flora and fauna. Archival images, informative sidebars, locator maps, and contact information for Wisconsin state and national forests round out this unique book.

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Beyond Wolves
The Politics Of Wolf Recovery And Management
Martin A. Nie
University of Minnesota Press, 2003

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The Big Bang Symphony
A Novel of Antarctica
Lucy Jane Bledsoe
University of Wisconsin Press, 2010
Antarctica is a vortex that draws you back, season after season. The place is so raw and pure, all seal hide and crystalline iceberg. The fishbowl communities at McMurdo Station, South Pole Station, and in the remote field camps intensify relationships, jack all emotion up to a 10. The trick is to get what you need and then get out fast.
    At least that’s how thirty-year-old Rosie Moore views it as she flies in for her third season on the Ice. She plans to avoid all entanglements, romantic and otherwise, and do her work as a galley cook. But when her flight crash-lands, so do all her plans.
    Mikala Wilbo, a brilliant young composer whose heart—and music—have been frozen since the death of her partner, is also on that flight. She has come to the Ice as an artist-in-residence, to write music, but also to secretly check out the astrophysicist father she has never met.
    Arriving a few weeks later, Alice Neilson, a graduate student in geology who thinks in charts and equations, is thrilled to leave her dependent mother and begin her career at last. But from the start she is aware that her post-doc advisor, with whom she will work in Antarctica, expects much more from their relationship.
    As the three women become increasingly involved in each other’s lives, they find themselves deeply transformed by their time on the Ice. Each falls in love. Each faces challenges she never thought she would meet. And ultimately, each finds redemption in a depth and quality of friendship that only the harsh beauty of Antarctica can engender.
 
 
Finalist, Lambda Literary Awards
 
Finalist, Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction, awarded by the Publishing Triangle
 
Finalist, Northern California Independent Booksellers Association
 
Honorable Mention, Foreword Magazine’s Gay/Lesbian Fiction Book of the Year
 
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association
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Big Bend National Park
Mexico, the United States, and a Borderland Ecosystem
Michael Welsh
University of Nevada Press, 2021
Known as a place of stark beauty, dramatic geographic dimension, and challenging desert terrain, Big Bend National Park is located in West Texas on the north bank of the Rio Grande, adjacent to the Mexican states of Coahuila and Chihuahua. Although a place of natural grandeur, the unique location of this 118-mile long, 1.5 million-acre corridor has led to many challenges between the United States and Mexico, two nations who share one ecosystem but inhabit different political worlds.

Big Bend National Park explores the cultural and diplomatic history of this transborder region that was designated a national park on the US side and the site of a long-hoped-for “international peace park” on the other. Michael Welsh demonstrates the challenges faced and lessons learned by both the US and Mexico as they struggled against political and environmental vicissitudes in their attempts to realize the creation of a shared frontier.

Geopolitical and environmental conflicts such as Cold War fears, immigration, the war on drugs, international water rights, and more stringent American border security measures after 9/11 all hindered relations between the two countries. But more recently, renewed cooperation and ongoing diplomatic relations have led to new developments. Mexican park personnel began assisting American officials with efforts to re-wild the American side of the river with animal species that had been eliminated, and the Obama administration relaxed some post-9/11 restrictions, allowing American visitors to cross over to the Mexican park and its nearby towns.

The ambition of developing a park for peace has yet to materialize, even as individuals and their governments continue to work toward an accord. Big Bend National Park provides a greater understanding of this complex borderland and hopes to help fulfill the aspiration of creating a shared ecosystem and the dream of a park for peace.
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Big Box USA
The Environmental Impact of America’s Biggest Retail Stores
Bart Elmore
University Press of Colorado, 2023
Big Box USA presents a new look at how the big box retail store has dramatically reshaped the US economy and its ecosystems in the last half century. From the rural South to the frigid North, from inside stores to ecologies far beyond, this book examines the relationships that make up one of the most visible features of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century American life.
 
The rise of big box retail since the 1960s has transformed environments on both local and global scales. Almost everyone has explored the aisles of big box stores. The allure of “everyday low prices” and brightly colored products of every kind connect shoppers with a global marketplace. Contributors join a growing conversation between business and environmental history, addressing the ways American retail institutions have affected physical and cultural ecologies around the world. Essays on Walmart, Target, Cabela’s, REI, and Bass Pro Shops assess the “bigness” of these superstores from “smokestacks to coat racks” and contend that their ecological impacts are not limited to the footprints of parking lots and manufacturing but also play a didactic role in educating consumers about their relationships with the environment.
 
A model for historians seeking to bring business and environmental histories together in their analyses of merchant capital’s role in the landscapes of everyday life and how it has remade human relationships with nature, Big Box USA is a must-read for students and scholars of the environment, business, sustainability, retail professionals, and a general audience.
 
 
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Big, Wild, and Connected
Part 1: From the Florida Peninsula to the Coastal Plain
John Davis
Island Press, 2013

This E-ssential is a three-part series that covers John Davis's epic journey from Florida to Maine. In 2011, with support from the Wildlands Network, Davis traveled 7,600 miles in 10 months from Florida to Maine by foot, bicycle, skis, and canoe/kayak. His extensive travels were motivated by wanting to answer the question “Is it possible in the twenty-first century to identify and protect a continental-long wildlife corridor that could help to protect eastern nature into the future?”

John paints a vivid picture of the physical challenges of the trek, such as climbing the highest point in South Carolina with a heavily loaded bike and trying to consume the 8,000 calories per day he needed to fuel himself for the journey. As readers adventure with Davis, they will also share his evolving understanding of what it would take to implement an Eastern Wildway.

Eastern wildlife, both seen and unseen, from Florida panthers to North Carolina’s red wolves to the ghosts of cougars farther north, are the real focus of this adventure as John explores how such wildness can coexist with human development in the most populated regions of the United States. The science and conservation of large-scale connectivity are brought to life by his travels—offering unique insights into the challenges and opportunities for creating an Eastern Wildway. This is a must-read for enthusiasts of hiking narratives, as well as professionals and students interested in issues related to large-scale connectivity. Compelling photographs and other graphics complement John’s fascinating story.


[more]

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Big, Wild, and Connected
Part 2: From the Central Appalachians to the Catskill Mountains
John Davis
Island Press, 2013
This E-ssential is a three-part series that covers John Davis's epic journey from Florida to Maine. In 2011, with support from the Wildlands Network, Davis traveled 7,600 miles in 10 months from Florida to Maine by foot, bicycle, skis, and canoe/kayak. His extensive travels were motivated by wanting to answer the question “Is it possible in the twenty-first century to identify and protect a continental-long wildlife corridor that could help to protect eastern nature into the future?”

John paints a vivid picture of the physical challenges of the trek, such as climbing the highest point in South Carolina with a heavily loaded bike and trying to consume the 8,000 calories per day he needed to fuel himself for the journey. As readers adventure with Davis, they will also share his evolving understanding of what it would take to implement an Eastern Wildway.

Eastern wildlife, both seen and unseen, from Florida panthers to North Carolina’s red wolves to the ghosts of cougars farther north, are the real focus of this adventure as John explores how such wildness can coexist with human development in the most populated regions of the United States. The science and conservation of large-scale connectivity are brought to life by his travels—offering unique insights into the challenges and opportunities for creating an Eastern Wildway. This is a must-read for enthusiasts of hiking narratives, as well as professionals and students interested in issues related to large-scale connectivity. Compelling photographs and other graphics complement John’s fascinating story.
[more]

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Big, Wild, and Connected
Part 3: From the Adirondack Mountains to the Gaspé Peninsula
John Davis
Island Press, 2013
This E-ssential is a three-part series that covers John Davis's epic journey from Florida to Maine. In 2011, with support from the Wildlands Network, Davis traveled 7,600 miles in 10 months from Florida to Maine by foot, bicycle, skis, and canoe/kayak. His extensive traveles were motivated by wanting to answer the question “Is it possible in the twenty-first century to identify and protect a continental-long wildlife corridor that could help to protect eastern nature into the future?”

John paints a vivid picture of the physical challenges of the trek, such as climbing the highest point in South Carolina with a heavily loaded bike and trying to consume the 8,000 calories per day he needed to fuel himself for the journey. As readers adventure with Davis, they will also share his evolving understanding of what it would take to implement an Eastern Wildway.

Eastern wildlife, both seen and unseen, from Florida panthers to North Carolina’s red wolves to the ghosts of cougars farther north, are the real focus of this adventure as John explores how such wildness can coexist with human development in the most populated regions of the United States. The science and conservation of large-scale connectivity are brought to life by his travels—offering unique insights into the challenges and opportunities for creating an Eastern Wildway. This is a must-read for enthusiasts of hiking narratives, as well as professionals and students interested in issues related to large-scale connectivity. Compelling photographs and other graphics complement John’s fascinating story.
[more]

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Big, Wild, and Connected
Scouting an Eastern Wildway from the Everglades to Quebec
John Davis
Island Press, 2015
In 2011, adventurer and conservationist John Davis walked, cycled, skied, canoed, and kayaked on an epic 10-month, 7,600-mile journey that took him from the keys of Florida to a remote seashore in northeastern Quebec. Davis was motivated by a dream: to see a continent-long corridor conserved for wildlife in the eastern United States, especially for the large carnivores so critical to the health of the land.
In Big, Wild, and Connected, we travel the Eastern Wildway with Davis, viscerally experiencing the challenges large carnivores, with their need for vast territories, face in an ongoing search for food, water, shelter, and mates. On his self-propelled journey, Davis explores the wetlands, forests, and peaks that are the last strongholds for wildlife in the East. This includes strategically important segments of disturbed landscapes, from longleaf pine savanna in the Florida Panhandle to road-latticed woods of Pennsylvania. Despite the challenges, Davis argues that creation of an Eastern Wildway is within our reach and would serve as a powerful symbol of our natural and cultural heritage.
Big, Wild, and Connected reveals Eastern landscapes through wild eyes, a reminder that, for the creatures with which we share the land, movement is as essential to life as air, water, and food. Davis’ journey shows that a big, wild, and connected network of untamed places is the surest way to ensure wildlife survival through the coming centuries.
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Big Wonderful
Notes from Wyoming
Kevin Holdsworth
University Press of Colorado, 2006
In this unconventional memoir, Kevin Holdsworth vividly portrays life in remote, unpredictable country and ruminates on the guts - or foolishness - it takes to put down roots and raise a family in a merciless environment.

Growing up in Utah, Holdsworth couldn't wait to move away. Once ensconced on the East Coast, however, he found himself writing westerns and dreaming of the mountains he'd skied and climbed. Fed up with city life, he moved to a small Wyoming town.

In Big Wonderful, he writes of a mountaineering companion's death, the difficult birth of his son, and his father's terminal illness - encounters with mortality that sharpened his ideas about risk, care, and commitment. He puts a new spin on mountaineering literature, telling wild tales from his reunion with the mountains but also relating the surprising willpower it took to turn back from risks he would have taken before he became a father. He found he needed courage to protect and engage deeply with his family, his community, and the wild places he loves.

Holdsworth's essays and poems are rich with anecdotes, characters, and vivid images. Readers will feel as if they themselves watched a bear destroy an entire expedition's food, walked with his great-great-grandmother along the icy Mormon Trail, and tried to plant a garden in Wyoming's infamous wind.

Readers who love the outdoors will enjoy this funny and touching take on settling down and adventuring in the West's most isolated country.
[more]

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Billboard in the Clouds
Suzanne S. Rancourt
Northwestern University Press, 2003

In this remarkable debut book of poems, winner of the Native Writers First Book Award, Suzanne S. Rancourt, presents her experience as a mixed-raced person seeking understanding through relationship with the natural world and dominant culture. Her family portraits are reminiscent of E. A. Robinson; her sensuous nature poems are imbued with love of earth as a "blessing."

Dance

my legs are explosions
expressions
of lustful wind
i converse through cracks in the walls
slipping in my true intention like a snow drift
on the inside
side of a door i pound
your chest
has become my wailing wall
i crave your tongue dusted
with words and implications
i have something you need

[more]

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Billion-Dollar Fish
The Untold Story of Alaska Pollock
Kevin M. Bailey
University of Chicago Press, 2013
Alaska pollock is everywhere. If you’re eating fish but you don’t know what kind it is, it’s almost certainly pollock. Prized for its generic fish taste, pollock masquerades as crab meat in california rolls and seafood salads, and it feeds millions as fish sticks in school cafeterias and Filet-O-Fish sandwiches at McDonald’s. That ubiquity has made pollock the most lucrative fish harvest in America—the fishery in the United States alone has an annual value of over one billion dollars. But even as the money rolls in, pollock is in trouble: in the last few years, the pollock population has declined by more than half, and some scientists are predicting the fishery’s eventual collapse.

In Billion-Dollar Fish, Kevin M. Bailey combines his years of firsthand pollock research with a remarkable talent for storytelling to offer the first natural history of Alaska pollock. Crucial to understanding the pollock fishery, he shows, is recognizing what aspects of its natural history make pollock so very desirable to fish, while at the same time making it resilient, yet highly vulnerable to overfishing. Bailey delves into the science, politics, and economics surrounding Alaska pollock in the Bering Sea, detailing the development of the fishery, the various political machinations that have led to its current management, and, perhaps most important, its impending demise. He approaches his subject from multiple angles, bringing in the perspectives of fishermen, politicians, environmentalists, and biologists, and drawing on revealing interviews with players who range from Greenpeace activists to fishing industry lawyers.

Seamlessly weaving the biology and ecology of pollock with the history and politics of the fishery, as well as Bailey’s own often raucous tales about life at sea, Billion-Dollar Fish is a book for every person interested in the troubled relationship between fish and humans, from the depths of the sea to the dinner plate.
[more]

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Binocular Vision
The Politics of Representation in Birdwatching Field Guides
Spencer Schaffner
University of Massachusetts Press, 2011
From meadows to marshlands, seashores to suburbs, field guides help us identify many of the things we find outdoors: plants, insects, mammals, birds. In these texts, nature is typically represented, both in words and images, as ordered, clean, and untouched by human technology and development. This preoccupation with species identification, however, has produced an increasingly narrow view of nature, a "binocular vision," that separates the study of individual elements from a range of larger, interconnected environmental issues. In this book, Spencer Schaffner reconsiders this approach to nature study by focusing on how birds are presented in field guides.

Starting with popular books from the late nineteenth century and moving ultimately to the electronic guides of the current day, Binocular Vision contextualizes birdwatching field guides historically, culturally, and in terms of a wide range of important environmental issues. Schaffner questions the assumptions found in field guides to tease out their ideological workings. He argues that the sanitized world represented in these guides misleads readers by omitting industrial landscapes and so-called nuisance birds, leaving users of the guides disconnected from environmental degradation and its impact on bird populations.

By putting field guides into direct conversation with concerns about species conservation, environmental management, the human alteration of the environment, and the problem of toxic pollution, Binocular Vision is a field guide to field guides that takes a novel perspective on how we think about and interact with the world around us.
[more]

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Biodiversity and the Law
Edited by William J. Snape III
Island Press, 1996

Biodiversity and the Law is a timely and provocative volume that combines historical perspective and cutting-edge legal analysis in an authoritative and broad discussion of biodiversity and the law. Leading legal and policy experts consider a variety of options for the worldwide protection of biodiversity and present a succinct but comprehensive overview of the legal mechanisms available. They examine how conservation advocates can better utilize existing law, and consider what new law is needed.

Among the topics considered are:

  • scientific and policy foundations of biodiveristy protection
  • domestic efforts to establish an effective endangered species protection regime
  • international biodiversity protection
  • biodiversity as a genuinely public entity
  • the future of biodiversity law
Contributors include Mollie Beattie, Don Waller, Jason Patlis, Lindell Marsh, Todd Olson, Peter Jenkins, Suzanne Iudicello, John Pendergrass, Dinah Bear, Walter Kuhlmann, Rodger Schlickeisen, David Downes, and others.
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Biodiversity Planning and Design
Sustainable Practices
Jack Ahern, Elizabeth Leduc, and Mary Lee York; Landscape Architecture Foundation
Island Press, 2006
How do you measure biodiversity, and why should landscape architects and planners care? What are the essential issues, the clearest terminology, and the most effective methods for biodiversity planning and design? How can they play a role in biodiversity conservation in a manner compatible with other goals? These are critical questions that Jack Ahern, Elizabeth Leduc, and Mary Lee York answer in this timely and useful book.

Real-world case studies showcase biodiversity protection and restoration projects, both large and small, across the U.S.: the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle,Washington; the Crosswinds Marsh Wetlands Mitigation Project in Wayne County, Michigan; the Florida Statewide Greenway System; and the Fort Devens Stormwater Project in Ayer, Massachusetts. Ahern shows how an interdisciplinary approach led by planners and designers with conservation biologists, restoration ecologists, and natural and social scientists can yield successful results and sustainable practices. Minimizing habitat loss and degradation-the principal causes of biodiversity decline-are at the heart of the planning and design processes and provide landscape architects and planners a chance to achieve their professional goals while taking a leading role in the environmental community.
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Biogeography and Adaptation
Patterns of Marine Life
Geerat J. Vermeij
Harvard University Press, 1978
The driving forces of natural selection leave their traces in the shapes of living creatures and their patterns of distribution. In this thoughtful and wide-ranging discussion of evolutionary process and adaptive response, Geerat Vermeij elucidates the general principles that underlie the great diversity of marine forms found in the world's great oceans.
[more]

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A Biogeography of Reptiles and Amphibians in the Gomez Farias Region, Tamaulipas, Mexico
Paul S. Martin
University of Michigan Press, 1958
This study analyzes the ecological distributions of reptiles and amphibians in southern Tamaulipas of northeastern Mexico. Observations are confined to a small, though topographically complex, section of the Sierra Madre Oriental to enable a more careful definition of zonal distribution than would be possible had the same amount of fieldwork been expended in a larger geographical unit. Geology, climate, and vegetation are environmental features of primary concern to the animal ecologist, and this study discusses each of these in turn. Such information should clarify the environmental basis for certain distribution patterns both throughout eastern Mexico and, locally, in the Gomez Farias region. In addition it should be useful in comparing this with other peritropical areas.
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Biography of an Industrial Landscape
Carlsberg's Urban Spaces Retold
Svava Riesto
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
Biography of an Industrial Landscape tells the story of one of the most significant urban redevelopment projects in northern Europe at the turn of the century. Examining the reinvention of the Carlsberg brewery site in Copenhagen as a city district, Svava Riesto unpacks the deeper assumptions about value that lie behind contemporary design, spatial planning and heritage practices. In particular, Riesto examines ways of valuing a vital yet seldom explicitly discussed feature of industrial landscapes: open space. Carlsberg's industrial open spaces were largely disregarded during the redevelopment, which was founded on canonical heritage thinking and ideas about urban space that were poorly equipped to include the characteristics of these spaces in the design's considerations.As a response, this account reappraises industrial open spaces. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre and biographical approaches to landscape research, the Carlsberg site's open spaces are presented anew as an interplay of materials, practices and the imagination - shaped and reshaped by water, yeast, industrial working routines and conflicting ideas about the future city.
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The Biology of Sharks and Rays
A. Peter Klimley
University of Chicago Press, 2013
The Biology of Sharks and Rays is a comprehensive resource on the biological and physiological characteristics of the cartilaginous fishes: sharks, rays, and chimaeras. In sixteen chapters, organized by theme, A. Peter Klimley covers a broad spectrum of topics, including taxonomy, morphology, ecology, and physiology. For example, he explains the body design of sharks and why the ridged, toothlike denticles that cover their entire bodies are present on only part of the rays’ bodies and are absent from those of chimaeras. Another chapter explores the anatomy of the jaws and the role of the muscles and teeth in jaw extension, seizure, and handling of prey. The chapters are richly illustrated with pictures of sharks, diagrams of sensory organs, drawings of the body postures of sharks during threat and reproductive displays, and maps showing the extent of the species’ foraging range and long-distance migrations. Each chapter commences with an anecdote from the author about his own personal experience with the topic, followed by thought-provoking questions and a list of recommended readings in the scientific literature. 

The book will be a useful textbook for advanced ichthyology students as well as an encyclopedic source for those seeking a greater understanding of these fascinating creatures.
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Biomechanics
An Approach to Vertebrate Biology
Carl Gans
University of Michigan Press, 1980
Offers an approach to the study of functional anatomy
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The Biophilia Hypothesis
Edited by Stephen R. Kellert
Island Press, 1993

"Biophilia" is the term coined by Edward O. Wilson to describe what he believes is humanity's innate affinity for the natural world. In his landmark book Biophilia, he examined how our tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes might be a biologically based need, integral to our development as individuals and as a species. That idea has caught the imagination of diverse thinkers.

The Biophilia Hypothesis brings together the views of some of the most creative scientists of our time, each attempting to amplify and refine the concept of biophilia. The variety of perspectives -- psychological, biological, cultural, symbolic, and aesthetic -- frame the theoretical issues by presenting empirical evidence that supports or refutes the hypothesis. Numerous examples illustrate the idea that biophilia and its converse, biophobia, have a genetic component:

  • fear, and even full-blown phobias of snakes and spiders are quick to develop with very little negative reinforcement, while more threatening modern artifacts -- knives, guns, automobiles -- rarely elicit such a response
  • people find trees that are climbable and have a broad, umbrella-like canopy more attractive than trees without these characteristics
  • people would rather look at water, green vegetation, or flowers than built structures of glass and concrete
The biophilia hypothesis, if substantiated, provides a powerful argument for the conservation of biological diversity. More important, it implies serious consequences for our well-being as society becomes further estranged from the natural world. Relentless environmental destruction could have a significant impact on our quality of life, not just materially but psychologically and even spiritually.
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Biopolitics of the More-Than-Human
Forensic Ecologies of Violence
Joseph Pugliese
Duke University Press, 2020
In Biopolitics of the More-Than-Human Joseph Pugliese examines the concept of the biopolitical through a nonanthropocentric lens, arguing that more-than-human entities—from soil and orchards to animals and water—are actors and agents in their own right with legitimate claims to justice. Examining occupied Palestine, Guantánamo, and sites of US drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, Pugliese challenges notions of human exceptionalism by arguing that more-than-human victims of war and colonialism are entangled with and subject to the same violent biopolitical regimes as humans. He also draws on Indigenous epistemologies that invest more-than-human entities with judicial standing to argue for an ethico-legal framework that will enable the realization of ecological justice. Bringing the more-than-human world into the purview of justice, Pugliese makes visible the ecological effects of human war that would otherwise remain outside the domains of biopolitics and law.
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Bioregional Assessments
Science At The Crossroads Of Management And Policy
Edited by K. Norman Johnson, Frederick Swanson, Margaret Herring, and Sarah Greene; Foreword by Jerry F. Franklin
Island Press, 1999

In diverse regions around the country, impending crises over dwindling natural resources and conflicts over land use have given birth to a new approach to environmental management and policymaking. Known as bioregional assessment, the approach gives science and scientists a crucial role in the policymaking process, bringing together experts on a range of issues to assess existing ecological and social conditions and to provide a base of knowledge from which to develop policy options and management decisions.

A number of high-profile assessments have been conducted, and while much has been written on individual projects, little has been done to compare assessments or integrate the lessons they provide. Bioregional Assessments synthesizes the knowledge from many regions by examining the assessment process and detailing a series of case studies from around the country. Each case study, written by knowledgeable leaders from the region, features a detailed description of the project followed by reviews from the perspectives of science, management, and policy.

Case studies examined are the Forest Ecosystem Management Assess ment Team (FEMAT) Assessment; the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Assessments; the Everglades-South Florida Assessments; the Northern Forest Lands Assessments; Southern California Natural Community Conservation Planning (NCCP); the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project; and the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project.

In addition, the book features introductory chapters that examine the challenges inherent in the assessment of complex regional systems, and the role of science in the assessment process. The concluding chapter provides a synthesis and analysis of the assessment process.

Bioregional assessments are quickly becoming an essential part of ecosystem management. This book provides a unique look at the theory and practice of bioregional assessments, and is an essential volume for resource managers, scientists, policymakers, and anyone involved with formulating or implementing strategies for regional planning and ecosystem management.

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