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On the Wild Edge: In Search of a Natural Life
By David Petersen. 1928
"Opinionated and iconoclastic, Petersen writes with humor and a well-honed craft that will delight fans of Edward Abbey." -Library Journal…
(starred review) Twenty-five years ago David Petersen and his wife, Caroline, pulled up stakes, trading Laguna Beach, California, for a snug hand-built cabin in the wilderness. Today he knows that mountain land as intimately as anyone can know his home. Petersen conflates a quarter century into the adventures of four high-country seasons, tracking the rigors of survival from the snowmelt that announces the arrival of spring to the decline and death of autumn and winter that will establish the fertile ground needed for next year's rebirth. In the past we listened to Henry David Thoreau or Aldo Leopold; today it is Petersen's turn. His observations are lyrical, scientific, and from the heart. He reinforces Thoreau's dictum: "in wildness is the preservation of the earth." In prose rich with mystery and soul, his words are a plea for the survival of the remnant wilderness."Many of us would like to live a life of greater intention and simplicity, but few can and even fewer do. David Petersen is one of those rare human beings among us who lives a wild life with a cultured mind . . . [He] has created a map all of us can follow."-Terry Tempest Williams, author of The Open Space of DemocracyWind Energy and Wildlife Interactions
By Johann Köppel. 2017
This book presents a selection of new insights in understanding and mitigating impacts on wildlife and their habitats. Topics such…
as, species behaviour and responses; collision risk and fatality estimation; landscape features and gradients, are considered. Other chapters in the book cover the results of current research on mitigation; compensation; effectiveness of measures; monitoring and long-term effects; planning and siting. Examples are given of current research on shutdown on demand and curtailment algorithms. By identifying what we have learned so far, and which predominate uncertainties and gaps remain for future research, this book contributes to the most up to date knowledge on research and management options. This book includes presentations from the Conference on Wind Energy and Wildlife impacts (CWW15), March 2015, hosted by the Berlin Institute of Technology, which offered a platform to national and international participants to showcase the current state of knowledge in wind energy’s wildlife implications.Made From This Earth
By Vera Norwood. 1993
The broad sweep of environmental and ecological history has until now been written and understood in predominantly male terms. In…
Made From This Earth, Vera Norwood explores the relationship of women to the natural environment through the work of writers, illustrators, landscape and garden designers, ornithologists, botanists, biologists, and conservationists.Norwood begins by showing that the study and promotion of botany was an activity deemed appropriate for women in the early 1800s. After highlighting the work of nineteenth-century scientific illustrators and garden designers, she focuses on nature's advocates such as Rachel Carson and Dian Fossey who differed strongly with men on both women's "nature" and the value of the natural world. These women challenged the dominant, male-controlled ideologies, often framing their critique with reference to values arising from the female experience. Norwood concludes with an analysis of the utopian solutions posed by ecofeminists, the most recent group of women to contest men over the meaning and value of nature.An Outer Banks Reader
By David Stick. 1998
For half a century, David Stick has been writing books about the fragile chain of barrier islands off the North…
Carolina coast known as the Outer Banks. Two of his earliest, Graveyard of the Atlantic and The Outer Banks of North Carolina, were published by the UNC Press in the 1950s, and continue to be best-sellers. More recently, Stick embarked on another project, searching for the most captivating and best-written examples of what others have said about his beloved Outer Banks. In the process, more than 1,000 books, pamphlets, periodicals, historical documents, and other writings were reviewed. The result is a rich and fascinating anthology. The selections in An Outer Banks Reader span the course of more than four and a half centuries, from the first known record of a meeting between Europeans and Native Americans in the region in 1524 to modern-day accounts of life on the Outer Banks. Together, Stick hopes, the sixty-four entries may provide both "outlanders" and natives with an understanding of why the Outer Banks are home to a rapidly growing number of people who would rather spend the rest of their lives there than any place else on earth.Nature Wars
By Jim Sterba. 2012
This may be hard to believe but it is very likely that more people live in closer proximity to more…
wild animals, birds and trees in the eastern United States today than anywhere on the planet at any time in history. For nature lovers, this should be wonderful news -- unless, perhaps, you are one of more than 4,000 drivers who will hit a deer today, your child's soccer field is carpeted with goose droppings, coyotes are killing your pets, the neighbor's cat has turned your bird feeder into a fast-food outlet, wild turkeys have eaten your newly-planted seed corn, beavers have flooded your driveway, or bears are looting your garbage cans. For 400 years, explorers, traders, and settlers plundered North American wildlife and forests in an escalating rampage that culminated in the late 19th century's "era of extermination." By 1900, populations of many wild animals and birds had been reduced to isolated remnants or threatened with extinction, and worry mounted that we were running out of trees. Then, in the 20th century, an incredible turnaround took place. Conservationists outlawed commercial hunting, created wildlife sanctuaries, transplanted isolated species to restored habitats and imposed regulations on hunters and trappers. Over decades, they slowly nursed many wild populations back to health. But after the Second World War something happened that conservationists hadn't foreseen: sprawl. People moved first into suburbs on urban edges, and then kept moving out across a landscape once occupied by family farms. By 2000, a majority of Americans lived in neither cities nor country but in that vast in-between. Much of sprawl has plenty of trees and its human residents offer up more and better amenities than many wild creatures can find in the wild: plenty of food, water, hiding places, and protection from predators with guns. The result is a mix of people and wildlife that should be an animal-lover's dream-come-true but often turns into a sprawl-dweller's nightmare.Nature Wars offers an eye-opening look at how Americans lost touch with the natural landscape, spending 90 percent of their time indoors where nature arrives via television, films and digital screens in which wild creatures often behave like people or cuddly pets. All the while our well-meaning efforts to protect animals allowed wild populations to burgeon out of control, causing damage costing billions, degrading ecosystems, and touching off disputes that polarized communities, setting neighbor against neighbor. Deeply researched, eloquently written, counterintuitive and often humorous Nature Wars will be the definitive book on how we created this unintended mess. From the Hardcover edition.A love affair unfolds as crisis hits a family farm on the high plainsJulene Bair has inherited part of a…
farming empire and fallen in love with a rancher from Kansas's beautiful Smoky Valley. She means to create a family, provide her son with the father he longs for, and preserve the Bair farm for the next generation, honoring her own father's wish and commandment, "Hang on to your land!" But part of her legacy is a share of the ecological harm the Bair Farm has done: each growing season her family--like other irrigators--pumps over two hundred million gallons out of the Ogallala aquifer. The rapidly disappearing aquifer is the sole source of water on the vast western plains, and her family's role in its depletion haunts her. As traditional ways of life collide with industrial realities, Bair must dramatically change course.Updating the territory mapped by Jane Smiley, Pam Houston, and Terry Tempest Williams, and with elements of Cheryl Strayed's Wild, The Ogallala Road tells a tale of the West today and points us toward a new way to love both the land and one another.Howl
By Susan Imhoff Bird. 2015
"With humor, sensitivity, and probing intelligence, Bird's inquiry into the world of the wolf weaves an outer journey with inner…
way-finding, resulting in an inspiring book about being more than human--it's about being alive."--Mary Ellen Hannibal, author of The Spine of the Continent: The Race to Save America's Last, Best WildernessCommemorating the twentieth anniversary of the reintroduction of wolves to the American West, Howl follows Susan Imhoff Bird's exploration into the passions and controversies surrounding nature's most fascinating predator. At a crossroads in her own life, Bird travels around the West, talking with wolf watchers, landowners, wildlife managers, conservationists, and hunters about their understandings of what matters most, which almost always is their connection with the natural world. However, the often-conflicting issues raised by hunters, ranchers, and politicians prompt Bird's personal examination of wolf science, myths, and ethics, culminating in her conviction that wolves must be allowed to recover and thrive on our lands. Along the way, Bird begins to unleash her own wild nature, learning to howl and inviting us to do the same.Susan Imhoff Bird finds inspiration in Utah's canyons, valleys, and water-sculpted rock. She can often be found on her bicycle or snowshoes, absorbing the wisdom of the natural world. Bird lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.Primates in the Real World
By Georgina M. Montgomery. 2015
The opening of this vital new book centers on a series of graves memorializing baboons killed near Amboseli National Park…
in Kenya in 2009--a stark image that emphasizes both the close emotional connection between primate researchers and their subjects and the intensely human qualities of the animals. Primates in the Real World goes on to trace primatology's shift from short-term expeditions designed to help overcome centuries-old myths to the field's arrival as a recognized science sustained by a complex web of international collaborations. Considering a series of pivotal episodes spanning the twentieth century, Georgina Montgomery shows how individuals both within and outside of the scientific community gradually liberated themselves from primate folklore to create primate science. Achieved largely through a movement from the lab to the field as the primary site of observation, this development reflected an urgent and ultimately extremely productive reassessment of what constitutes "natural" behavior for primates.An important contribution to the history of science and of women's roles in science, as well as to animal studies and the exploration of the animal-human boundary, Montgomery's engagingly written narrative provides the general reader with the most accessible overview to date of this enduringly fascinating field of study.Haiti After the Earthquake
By Paul Farmer. 2011
"On January 12, 2010 a massive earthquake laid waste to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, killing hundreds of thousands of people. Within three…
days, Dr. Paul Farmer arrived in the Haitian capital, along with a team of volunteers, to lend his services to the injured. In this vivid narrative, Farmer describes the incredible suffering--and resilience--that he encountered in Haiti. Having worked in the country for nearly thirty years, he skillfully explores the social issues that made Haiti so vulnerable to the earthquake--the very issues that make it an "unnatural disaster. " Complementing his account are stories from other doctors, volunteers, and earthquake survivors. Haiti after the earthquake will both inform and inspire readers to stand with the Haitian people against the profound economic and social injustices that formed the fault line for this disaster"--Provided by publisher.Pigeon River Country: A Michigan Forest
By Franz, Dale Clarke. 2007
The long awaited new edition of a classic offers memories, myths, and meanings of the largest contiguous piece of wild…
land in Michigan's Lower Peninsula. This updated edition explores more deeply why and how the outdoors moves and compels us. It’s a book about mice who sing, elk who wear collars, deer who kiss, and birds who could dictate their compositions to Mozart. It's about the human species interacting in generous and sometimes misguided ways with the rest of life. It's about men trying to ripen pinecones into pineapples and women taking better aim with a revolver than expected. It's about poetry—from Mary Oliver, Lao Tzu, and Theodore Roethke—and seeing hawks dive in a night sky or feeling oil geologists shake the earth below. It's about finding fish dead in the river by the thousands and crouching behind a stump to watch beaver build a dwelling. While this book considers life beyond the boundaries of Pigeon River Country, it is steeped in the specifics of a place that lives mostly on its own, instead of human, terms. The Pigeon River Country is a remote northern forest, ecologically distinct from most of the United States. Laced with waterways, it has a storied past. Dale Clarke Franz has collected personal accounts from various people intrigued with the Pigeon River Country—including loggers, conservationists, mill workers, campers, even the young Ernest Hemingway, who said he loved the forest "better than anything in the world. " There are comprehensive discussions of the area's flora and fauna, guides to trails and camping sites, and photos showcasing the changing face of this hidden national treasure.Longleaf, Far as the Eye Can See
By John C. Hall, Bill Finch, Beth Maynor Young, Rhett Johnson. 2012
Longleaf forests once covered 92 million acres from Texas to Maryland to Florida. These grand old-growth pines were the "alpha…
tree" of the largest forest ecosystem in North America and have come to define the southern forest. But logging, suppression of fire, destruction by landowners, and a complex web of other factors reduced those forests so that longleaf is now found only on 3 million acres. Fortunately, the stately tree is enjoying a resurgence of interest, and longleaf forests are once again spreading across the South. Blending a compelling narrative by writers Bill Finch, Rhett Johnson, and John C. Hall with Beth Maynor Young's breathtaking photography, Longleaf, Far as the Eye Can See invites readers to experience the astounding beauty and significance of the majestic longleaf ecosystem. The authors explore the interactions of longleaf with other species, the development of longleaf forests prior to human contact, and the influence of the longleaf on southern culture, as well as ongoing efforts to restore these forests. Part natural history, part conservation advocacy, and part cultural exploration, this book highlights the special nature of longleaf forests and proposes ways to conserve and expand them.Mountains and Marshes: Exploring the Bay Area's Natural History
By David Rains Wallace. 2015
Described as "a writer in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and other self-educated seers" by the San…
Francisco Chronicle, David Rains Wallace turns his attention to one of the most distinctive corners of California: the San Francisco Bay Area. Weaving a complex and engaging story of the Bay Area from personal, historical, and environmental threads, Wallace's exploration of the natural world takes readers on a fascinating tour through the region: from Point Reyes National Park, where an abandoned campfire and an invasion of Douglas fir trees combusted into a dangerous wildfire, to Oakland's Lake Merritt, a surprising site amid skyscrapers for some of the best local bird-watching; from the majestic Diablo Range near San Jose, where conservationists fight against land developers to preserve species like mountain lions and golden eagles, to the Golden Gate itself, the iconic bridge that-geologically speaking-leads not to gold but to serpentine. Each essay explores a different place throughout the four corners of the Bay Area, uncovering the flora and fauna that make each so extraordinary.With a naturalist's eye, a penchant for local history, and an obvious passion for the subject, Wallace's new collection is among the first nature writing dedicated entirely to the Bay Area. Informative, engrossing, and exquisitely described, Mountains and Marshes affords unexpected yet familiar views of a beloved region that, even amidst centuries of growth and change, is as dynamic as it is timeless.Regenesis
By George Church, Ed Regis. 2012
Everyone has heard of genetic engineering: we eat engineered foods, we take drugs made in engineered bacteria and yeast, and…
someday soon may drive our cars on fuel produced by engineered microorganisms. "Regenesis" is the story of where these technologies came from, and where theyOCOre going, told by the man leading the revolution: Harvard genetics professor George Church. While traditional genetic engineering introduces changes to an organism a few genes at a time, genomic engineering introduces changes on a wholesale basis, allowing for unprecedented feats of synthetic biological engineering. (The technique, called MAGE, was invented by the author. ) In "Regenesis," Church argues for the great potential of this technology, not only to make existing organisms more useful, but for inventing wholly new speciesOCobacterial, animal, and human. It promises to be a strange future, with biohackers building organisms in their garages, companies manufacturing toolkits of DNA parts for creating living machines, and much else. Researchers have already managed to get microbes to produce jet fuel, gasoline, and electricity. And even vaccines, drugs, and industrial chemicals (OC green chemistryOCO). They can reprogram bacteria to metabolize greenhouse gases and convert them into harmless, even beneficial substances. Still, incredible as they might seem, these exploits are minor advances compared to the catalog of wonders that full-blown genomic engineering will make possible, from resurrecting woolly mammoths and other extinct organisms to creating mirror life forms immune to disease. The rise of synthetic biology marks a fundamental transformation in the relationship between biology and nature. When humans can control the genetic makeup of organisms to the extent foreseen by synthetic biologists, nature will no longer be the exclusive arbiter of life, death, and evolution. "Regenesis" reveals what this not so far off future will look like.Mountain Rampage
By Scott Graham. 2015
"Graham's clever tale is tailor-made for those who prefer their mysteries under blue skies..."-KIRKUS"Description and dialogue balance to bring both…
the rounded characters and the Rocky Mountain setting alive in this tale of danger, death, and intrigue...Scott Graham has created a satisfying and suspenseful adventure."-FOREWORD REVIEWS"Filled with murder and mayhem, jealousy and good detective work-set against a stunning Colorado backdrop-Mountain Rampage is an exciting, non-stop read. I look forward to more good tales from this talented author."-ANNE HILLERMAN, New York Times bestselling author of Spider Woman's Daughter"In Mountain Rampage, Scott Graham delivers taut writing, solid plot twists, a cast of interesting characters, and an appealing protagonist both men and women will love. Get ready for a leave-you-breathless high country southwestern adventure."-MICHAEL MCGARRITY, New York Times bestselling author of Hard Country and Backlands"Move over Nevada Barr-clean prose and confident storytelling combine to make Scott Graham's second Chuck Bender/National Park Mystery Series novel a must-read for fans of Western outdoor fiction and for mystery lovers everywhere."-CHUCK GREAVES, author of Hush Money, Green-Eyed Lady, and The Last Heir"In archaeologist Chuck Bender, Scott Graham has created a flawed, all-too-human, and memorable investigator who had me rooting for him to the end."-MARGARET COEL, author of Night of the White BuffaloIn the riveting second installment of the National Park Mystery Series, archaeologist Chuck Bender finds himself and his young wife and stepdaughters in the crosshairs of an unknown killer when he defends his brother-in-law from false accusations of murder in the brutal slaying of a resort worker in Rocky Mountain National Park.Scott Graham is author of Canyon Sacrifice: A National Park Mystery and Extreme Kids, winner of the National Outdoor Book Award. He is an avid outdoorsman and amateur archaeologist who enjoys hunting, rock climbing, skiing, backpacking, mountaineering, river rafting, and whitewater kayaking with his wife, an emergency physician, and their two sons. Graham lives in Durango, Colorado.Red
By Terry Tempest Williams. 2002
The beloved author of Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams is one of the country's most eloquent and imaginative writers. The desert…
is her blood. In this potent collage of stories, essays, and testimony, Red makes a stirring case for the preservation of America's Redrock Wilderness in the canyon country of southern Utah. As passionate as she is persuasive, Williams writes lyrically about the desert's power and vulnerability, describing wonders that range from an ancient Puebloan sash of macaw feathers found in Canyonlands National Park to the desert tortoise-an animal that can "teach us the slow art of revolutionary patience" as it extends our notion of kinship with all life. She examines the civil war being waged in the West today over public and private uses of land-an issue that divides even her own family. With grace, humor, and compassionate intelligence, Williams reminds us that the preservation of wildness is not simply a political process but a spiritual one."Lush elegies to the wilderness. . . . Earthy, spiritual, evocative." --The Boston Globe"Erotic, scientific, literary. . . . Her intimacy with this landscape is complex and passionate." --Los Angeles Times Book Review"Her finest writing . . . Use[s] pure language in the face of laws that need to be changed and lawmakers and citizens who need to understand that there is another way to see." --Portland OregonianFrom the Trade Paperback edition.Sixty
By Ian Brown. 2015
From the author of the award-winning The Boy in the Moon comes a wickedly honest and brutally funny account of…
the year in which Ian Brown truly realized that the man in the mirror was actually...sixty. Sixty is a report from the front, a dispatch from the Maginot Line that divides the middle-aged from the soon to be elderly. As Ian writes, "It is the age when the body begins to dominate the mind, or vice versa, when time begins to disappear and loom, but never in a good way, when you have no choice but to admit that people have stopped looking your way, and that in fact they stopped twenty years ago." Ian began keeping a diary with a Facebook post on the morning of February 4, 2014, his sixtieth birthday. As well as keeping a running tally on how he survived the year, Ian explored what being sixty means physically, psychologically and intellectually. "What pleasures are gone forever? Which ones, if any, are left? What did Beethoven, or Schubert, or Jagger, or Henry Moore, or Lucien Freud do after they turned sixty?" And most importantly, "How much life can you live in the fourth quarter, not knowing when the game might end?" With formidable candour, he tries to answer this question: "Does aging and elderliness deserve to be dreaded--and how much of that dread can be held at bay by a reasonable human being?" For that matter, for a man of sixty, what even constitutes reasonableness?From the Hardcover edition.Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes to Thoreau's Woods
By Richard B. Primack. 2014
In his meticulous notes on the natural history of Concord, Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau records the first open flowers of…
highbush blueberry on May 11, 1853. If he were to look for the first blueberry flowers in Concord today, mid-May would be too late. In the 160 years since Thoreau’s writings, warming temperatures have pushed blueberry flowering three weeks earlier, and in 2012, following a winter and spring of record-breaking warmth, blueberries began flowering on April 1--six weeks earlier than in Thoreau’s time. The climate around Thoreau’s beloved Walden Pond is changing, with visible ecological consequences. In Walden Warming, Richard B. Primack uses Thoreau and Walden, icons of the conservation movement, to track the effects of a warming climate on Concord’s plants and animals. Under the attentive eyes of Primack, the notes that Thoreau made years ago are transformed from charming observations into scientific data sets. Primack finds that many wildflower species that Thoreau observed--including familiar groups such as irises, asters, and lilies--have declined in abundance or have disappeared from Concord. Primack also describes how warming temperatures have altered other aspects of Thoreau’s Concord, from the dates when ice departs from Walden Pond in late winter, to the arrival of birds in the spring, to the populations of fish, salamanders, and butterflies that live in the woodlands, river meadows, and ponds. Primack demonstrates that climate change is already here, and it is affecting not just Walden Pond but many other places in Concord and the surrounding region. Although we need to continue pressuring our political leaders to take action, Primack urges us each to heed the advice Thoreau offers in Walden: to "live simply and wisely. ” In the process, we can each minimize our own contributions to our warming climate.Edible Memory: The Lure of Heirloom Tomatoes and Other Forgotten Foods
By Jennifer A. Jordan. 2015
Each week during the growing season, farmers markets offer up such delicious treasures as brandywine tomatoes, cosmic purple carrots, pink…
pearl apples, and chioggia beets varieties of fruits and vegetables that are prized by home chefs and carefully stewarded by farmers from year to year. These are the heirlooms and the antiques of the food world, endowed with their own rich histories. While cooking techniques and flavor fads have changed from generation to generation, a Ribston Pippin apple today can taste just as flavorful as it did in the eighteenth century. But how does an apple become an antique and a tomato an heirloom? In "Edible Memory," Jennifer A. Jordan examines the ways that people around the world have sought to identify and preserve old-fashioned varieties of produce. In doing so, Jordan shows that these fruits and vegetables offer a powerful emotional and physical connection to a shared genetic, cultural, and culinary past. Jordan begins with the heirloom tomato, inquiring into its botanical origins in South America and its culinary beginnings in Aztec cooking to show how the homely and homegrown tomato has since grown to be an object of wealth and taste, as well as a popular symbol of the farm-to-table and heritage foods movements. She shows how a shift in the 1940s away from open pollination resulted in a narrow range of hybrid tomato crops. But memory and the pursuit of flavor led to intense seed-saving efforts increasing in the 1970s, as local produce and seeds began to be recognized as living windows to the past. In the chapters that follow, Jordan combines lush description and thorough research as she investigates the long history of antique apples; changing tastes in turnips and related foods like kale and parsnips; the movement of vegetables and fruits around the globe in the wake of Columbus; and the poignant, perishable world of stone fruits and tropical fruit, in order to reveal the connections the edible memories these heirlooms offer for farmers, gardeners, chefs, diners, and home cooks. This deep culinary connection to the past influences not only the foods we grow and consume, but the ways we shape and imagine our farms, gardens, and local landscapes. From the farmers market to the seed bank to the neighborhood bistro, these foods offer essential keys not only to our past but also to the future of agriculture, the environment, and taste. By cultivating these edible memories, Jordan reveals, we can stay connected to a delicious heritage of historic flavors, and to the pleasures and possibilities for generations of feasts to come. "A Gathering of Birds
By Donald Culross Peattie. 2013
A Gathering of Birds is an anthology containing selected prose about birds by nineteen famous authors, such as Hudson, Audubon,…
and Thoreau, and includes brief biographical information about each. The New York Times called the collection "a delightful 'gathering' that Mr. Peattie has presented, and his own contributions to the book make it something new and valuable in this field."Flowering Earth
By Donald Culross Peattie. 2013
Flowering Earth is an extraordinary work in which Peattie explores the origin and significance of plant life with an unmatched…
sense of astonishment and reflection. According to The New York Times, his prose in Flowering Earth "is pervaded by a continuous sense of beauty and illuminative insight," and Books hails it as a piece "for people who are refreshed by any sort of emancipation from the trivial..."