Environment and Nature Books

Interesting, informative, .............a delight. Yes, "Discovering the Geology of Baja California" is a pleasure and the guided tours that Markes takes one through, will in the end leave the reader with a renewed sense of wonder and appreciation for our planet. In my own case, even before I had gotten to making the actual pilgrimage to Punta Chivato, my eyes had been newly sensitized enough through the reading alone, that I was able to offer up a discovery of my own, which I more or less stumbled upon well south of Professor Johnson's "Living Museum"of Punta Chivato. I can't tell you what a thrill it has been for a novice like myself to help shed even a tiny bit more light on the solution of the geological puzzle of this fascinating penninsula! Since then, between pondering "my site" and actually walking through time at the awesomely beautiful Chivato, I realize that my life has, through exposure to this book, been fundamentally changed for the better. I wasn't looking for a new hobby but it will indeed be hard to shake this one. I therefore highly recommend this book to anyone who might be interested in the geology of Baja California and the associated birth of the Gulf of California. May it broaden your horizons as well.

This book is like a nice walk with a good friend who has a talent for telling great stories. You go along for the pleasantness of the walk, and find yourself transported right into the middle of the story. Here you are, some forty feet above the current level of the sea, standing on a shelf of land that contains the perfectly preserved remains of a coral reef. In another area, some 260 feet above sea level you come across a fossilized seabed jammed with the shells of thousands of oysters. Ancient shark teeth litter the ground on top of a 130-foot high mesa. Your friend walks on a few yards and, with infectious enthusiasm, reads the next chapter of the story to you.

Six hikes around the Punta Chivato area on Baja's Gulf coast introduce you to the fascinating story of Baja's geologic history. If you love Baja, love geology, or just love a nice hike, you'll LOVE this book!

We've all heard the statistics. As Vileisis puts it, "Overall, 221 million acres of wetlands once graced our nation's lower forty-eight states with a rich mosaic of life. More than half of these important landscapes no longer exist." This book traces a history of loss and chronicles the changing attitudes of the settlers from Europe and their descendants about wetlands. Caught up as we frequently are in controversies about how to identify wetlands, how to preserve them and mitigate their loss, this book provides a long perspective and calls for no less than a change in culture if we are to stop the inexorable downward trend.

Vileisis describes how, to the first European settlers, what we call wetlands were "dismal swamps," linked by images such as Pilgrim Progress' "slough of despond" to whatever is dark and evil. Later wetlands represented opportunity: drain them and make a lot of money, whether selling real estate in Florida or planting more and more crops.

This is more than a book about wetlands, however. It is a history of water policy in the United States. It tells the history of the great American institutions that grew up to deal with wetlands issues: the Soil Conservation Service, the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and others. She also tells of the federal legislation that shapes our current ways of dealing with wetlands; how these laws got passed and how they have been enforced. Anyone attempting to understand the changing role of the Corp of Engineers in wetland protection, for example, should read this book.

The book is also gracefully written and filled with great stories about entrepreneurs and dreamers who saw opportunities in controlling the rivers and draining the swamps, and how their plans almost always went awry. It also tells of those who helped change the cultural attitude toward wetlands, people like Mrs. Augustus Hemenway of Boston, who, with William Brewster, founded the Audubon Society and groups like Ducks Unlimited, who saw dramatic decreases of wildlife in their favorite hunting areas. When scientists began to understand the values of wetlands in the early 20th century, long-entrenched attitudes began to change.

Vileisis points to the essential difficulty for understanding and dealing with wetlands: land is property, and our thinking is guided by concepts of "property rights." The waters of the country, on the other hand, have been understood as belonging to all of us. But wetlands are both land -- we can put a fence around it -- and water -- it flows and knows no boundaries. This is the key to why it has been so hard to shape public policy and attitudes about wetlands. As Vileisis puts it, "Americans were stuck somewhere between the conventional view of wetlands as property and the ecological view of wetlands as a life-support system."

Vileisis takes heart from the resiliency of nature, but in her closing chapter she says, "...while there have been changes in attitudes, policies, and laws, and marked decrease in the rate of wetlands loss, the destruction of wetlands continues because powerful interests cling to the status quo that calculates its profits in the ledger of short-term private gain with little concern for the common good." For those of us who work to change this cultural attitude, this book extends our sense of interconnectedness to those who lived before us. Vileisis says, "Informed by history, we can remember the trade-offs already made and turn away from the mistakes and misunderstandings of a time when we knew no better."

This is a great primer for anyone interested in the history of our wetland ecosystems- from armchair ecologists to the PhDs. It helped me enormously in understanding how our wetlands came to be what they are today. Vileisis' style is engaging and clear, making this a real page turner. I didn't want to put it down.

My 9 year old grandson loves this book. It isn't very often that he will read a book over and over but this one he does. He had checked it out at the school library and had a hard time taking it back so I searched for one on this sight and luckily I found one! It is great.

My son really enjoyed this book! LEGOs is his favorite pastime. He really enjoyed seeing the characters which he plays with come to life. It is so hard finding books for boys in the age range 8-10 and this book helps fill in the some of that missing gap. I really liked the glossary in the back where scientific terms are introduce to children as they read about the LEGO adventure. I will be looking forward to seeing more adventures on the lego character. The art in the books is so realistic to LEGOs. Great Book!

Dreams of Dolphins Dancing tells of a young girl, much like anyone's daughter, who encounters a solitary Spinner dolphin while snorkeling. This chance meeting leads to an adventure, perhaps real, perhaps imagined, in which the youth discovers much about the fragile relationship between mankind and the environment, the strength of love and the wonders of the ocean's rich variety of life. Although it deals with a disturbing subject, the environmental assault against our oceans from pollution and questionable fishing practices, it is ultimately a story that empowers the reader to act, rather than despair. The watercolor illustrations are exquisite and in themselves more than worth the price of the book. Don't be fooled by the category "children's book." It is appealing to all ages.

As a mother, scuba diver and teacher I appreciate this book in so many ways.This book inspires children to get involved. Environmentally correct, vividly descriptive narrative stimulates curiosity and promotes an early love of sea life. Professionally painted, full page illustrations celebrate the undersea world in visual explosions that call to children's senses and awaken emerging imaginations and fantasies. But, it is the gentle flow of the tale itself that peaks children's interests while sending a strong emotional message that calls each child to personal environmental action. This very special book is sure to tug at the heart strings of young and old alike as it empowers the human spirit to dare to believe that maybe, just maybe one very small person really can make a difference. To share this book with your family is to embark on an adventure that might just change your life." - Lisa Feeney, MS Edu.

My daughter loved this book. She enjoyed how Steve turns trash into treasure. She laughed out loud at his silly creations. I like the fact that the book promotes recycling.

Her fifth birthday is coming up and I am have been asked to read her favorite book to her class at school for her birthday. I asked my daughter what her favorite book is and she picked The Dumpster Diver. Interestingly, we don't own this book, but we checked it out from the library about a year ago. She still remembers this book as her favorite!

Inspired by Kerry Wade, an artist who takes old skis and turns them into chairs, Janet S. Wong crafted this colorful (thanks to illustrator David Roberts) story about Steve the electrician, also known as The Dumpster Diver. Every month, Steven dons his special dumpster diving suit, dives right in to the big trash bin, and counts on three young friends to assist him: one turns on the faucet, another keeps the hose from getting tangled up, and the other aims the nozzle at all of the nasty bugs and spiders that evacuate the dumpster in the wake of Steve's invasion - and then at Steve once he emerges from the dumpster. They turn "junk" into all kinds of neat toys, gizmos, and furniture.

Lest you think otherwise, the book doesn't really encourage young children to follow in Steve's dumpster-diving footsteps. In fact, Steve ends up sustaining an injury from this little hobby of his. The real point of the story, I believe, is to pass along the idea that you can have fun by turning materials you might normally throw away or just have lying around the house somewhere into useful, fun things. In other words, one man's trash can be another man's treasure.

This is a fairly large and colorful little book that young children should really enjoy - probably little boys more than little girls. Parents would do well to talk to their children about the story, though, not only because it could lead to some fun adventures that the parents can share with the child but also because you really don't want to come home from a hard day's work to find little Johnny sitting there surrounded by a bunch of broken toys and other junk he's collected from the neighbors.

Kirkpatrick Sale has written a vision of the future that should be drilled into politicians' subconscious and taught in grade school. Sustainable, sane, ecologically minded bioregions. I was particularly struck by his definition of "querencia"--"a deep, quiet sense of inner well-being that comes from knowing a particular place of the earth, its diurnal and seasonal patterns, its fruits and scents, its history and its part in your history . . . where, whenever you return to it, your soul releases an inner sigh of recognition and relaxation." Sale is a wonderful writer, balanced in perspective, and able to distill complex problems into a form that the average mind can comprehend, despite all the arguments pro and con. Read it.

If you've come to suspect that most of the world's problems--pollution, warfare, crime, transnational piracy, mental illness--are inherent in a civilization in decline, you might like this vision of small, face-to-face communities living in respectful accord with the natural world.

The author makes the same point as ecopsychologists and the great whale researcher Roger Payne: built by millions of years of evolution to live in close contact with the wilderness, we who have penned ourselves behind fences and buildings carry with us a ten-thousand-year-old wound....a self-inflicted wound of aching alienation (hence our tendency to alienate--to marginalize--other people).

Read this book, then tour the decidedly un-zoolike San Diego Wild Animal Park while seeing how you feel there. For some this might offer a glimpse of a sanity so centering that you can feel it throughout your body.

I met Lorna at a recent conference (April 2004) in Tucson and saw some of her works. We talked briefly and it occured to me that this woman is truly in tune with "Godness." I was inspired to go out to her website and begin reading her books. I started with this one.

She takes us beyond the metaphor of religious myth and to the realities of where science and spirituality truly need to meet.

Her work is not to be taken lightly. Her work is of grave, serious, and immediate import. I believe that every person who influences decisions affecting our mother Gaia need to seriously review what Lorna has to say and make decisions accordingly.

I haven't yet found what she has to say about the serious moral problem of competitive greed and the destruction, and I look forward to what she has to say about this too.

Without a doubt, Lorna Green is one of the prophets of the 21st century. I believe that her vision of God, humanaity, and all earthly phenomenon living in unison and connected by consciousness is an invigorating and ground-breaking concept, worthy of much praise. In this day and age, over-complex and and arbitrary explanations, systems and philosophies steal the show for out-lining reality.

"Earth Age" has to be one of the best books around for sharing truth, knowledge, wisdom and love, all of which are essential to understand because they lie at the very foundation of life. Nature and consciousness are linked eternally, and as a scholar of the sciences as well as a brave woman, if there is a way to prove our eternal connection to consciousness, I have complete faith in Lorna Green's ability to do so.

On a personal note, Lorna is one of my best friends because of her loving kindness and most intriguing beliefs. I would advise anyone I meet to read "Earth Age," especially young people like myself (I am age 21), and also those who have had difficulty trying to make sense of overly complex, scientific explanations. Lorna's book will clarify so many things for those who search for truth with unsatisfying results.

Her book, "Earth Age," can be a step toward illumination. If enough people read this book it could quite literally save us from a terrible earthly tragedy that would be our own fault. We have the power to design new strategies for living, and the first step, I believe, is to read "Earth Age" by Lorna Green.

(Reviewer's age: 21)

I got this book from the library for my 2 year old and he loves it! The illustrations are wonderfully colorful and eyecatching, instantly holding his attention. He wants me to read it over and over. I know this book is meant for kids a little older but the message is great for even the littlest children! Exellent!

A child makes friends with the earth and its creatures. When the earth gets sad because of trash and pollution, the child cleans up the garbage and makes the earth happy. The beautiful color illustrations captivated my daughter before she was one. Now it is still a favorite of hers, and she knows the words by heart and makes observations about the story.

This is an excellent introduction to the concerns of religion and ecology. The volume has leading authors survey topics of religion and science, mutli-religious perspectives on the topic, religion and ethics, and religion and educational policy respecting the topic. The book is ideal for schools and discussion groups.

This book, with chapters from a wide variety of scholars of religion, ecology, and science, is a great introduction to the interaction between ecology and faith. This book will be a rewarding read for anyone interested in how religion must cope with the environmental crisis, as well as those who (wrongly) think that religion has nothing to say about ecology.

Earth Day - Hooray! is a book which combines the social studies topic of Earth Day and recycling with math ideas and place value. Kids enjoy the book as if it were a puzzle and the topic can be included in many topics, not just math. This is important because I teach ESOL and math isn't always considered a topic I am supposed to teach. The book allows me to cover social studies and language concepts and include math tips also.

My kids LOVE this book even though they are younger than the recommended age. Easy to follow story goes well with the math. Teaches how even kids can help clean up the earth. The kids ask for it to be read over and over again!