Environment and Nature Books

I recommend this book because it is a thrilling kindadventure. I didn't want to put it down, as it was an excitingbook.The greatest thing is that I'am doing a book report on this book. The ages I recommend are 8yrs and above.I'm in fourth grade and I'm 10 years old.

I recommend this book because it is a thrilling kind adventure. I didn't want to put it down, as it was an exciting book.The greatest thing is that I'am doing a book report on this book. The ages I recommend are 8yrs and above.I'm in fourth grade and I'm 10 years old.

How on earth can you call a book about sustainability 'Mindful Conservatism', you might ask. Please don't let your preconceptions and the current usage of the term 'conservatism' make you turn away from this important and timely book.
C. A. Bowers opens up one of the most crucial debates that we should lead if we are serious about an ecologically sustainable future. We generally shy away from this discussion because of its potential pitfalls, misunderstandings and a tradition of abuse of the term 'conservatism'.
I believe that Bowers' book is hugely important because it emphasises throughout the concept of mindfulness, as opposed to preconceived convictions. It challenges us 'to rethink our traditional political categories' and to question what the media and politicians want to make us believe. We have to learn to step out of the box because the traditional political vocabulary simply is not fit to cope with the sustainability challenge.
The central question of the book is 'What do we need to conserve in order to have a more sustainable future and just world order?' This clearly calls for a complex answer and is also arguably the most important question to be asked if we want to turn our destructive, exploitative, overdeveloped and overconsuming global world order into something which can sustain itself within the limits of the ecosphere.

How on earth can you call a book about sustainability 'Mindful Conservatism', you might ask. Please don't let your preconceptions and the current usage of the term 'conservatism' make you turn away from this important and timely book.
C. A. Bowers opens up one of the most crucial debates that we should lead if we are serious about an ecologically sustainable future. We generally shy away from this discussion because of its potential pitfalls, misunderstandings and a tradition of abuse of the term 'conservatism'.
I believe that Bowers' book is hugely important because it emphasises throughout the concept of mindfulness, as opposed to preconceived convictions. It challenges us 'to rethink our traditional political categories' and to question what the media and politicians want to make us believe. We have to learn to step out of the box because the traditional political vocabulary simply is not fit to cope with the sustainability challenge.
The central question of the book is 'What do we need to conserve in order to have a more sustainable future and just world order?' This clearly calls for a complex answer and is also arguably the most important question to be asked if we want to turn our destructive, exploitative, overdeveloped and overconsuming global world order into something which can sustain itself within the limits of the ecosphere.

Each fall millions of the orange and black butterflies fly south to Mexico for the winter, then return to the United States and Canada in the spring. These butterflies, which make up the entire breeding stock of monarchs for the Midwest and Eastern United States and Canada, form one of the best-known spectacles to nature lovers.

This book includes essays by 46 contributors from three continents. The essays fit well together because they document the 2001 Monarch Population Dynamics Conference, which aimed "to understand the annual dynamics of a migratory insect with a continental distribution."

The book is divided into four sections: Breeding, Migration, Overwintering and Integrated Biology. Each section begins with an overview chapter followed by more detailed chapters. A third of the book is dedicated to overwintering biology. Wintering populations are very compact (up to 60 million individuals per hectare) and vulnerable to winter storms and land use change. The book contains a chapter on monarch conservation policy in the Mexican wintering grounds. That description of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve is a highlight of the book.

The book encouraged me contribute to the Reserve through the WWF. That's a great way to keep current on new findings about these beautiful insects. It also encouraged me to plant milkweeds in our garden, a beautiful plant made more beautiful by making it possible to observe all phases of the Monarch's summer life span. The book offers other suggestions on how to learn more about Monarchs.

The articles are science based although aimed at "citizen scientists". I would have liked an introductory chapter covering essential features of the insect and its life in order to be better prepared for the more detailed analysis later in the book. (Milkweed, Monarchs and More: A Field Guide to the Invertebrate Community in the Milkweed Patch by by Ba Rea makes an excellent choice.) Even without such an introduction, this is an excellent study on this beautiful butterfly.

Robert C. Ross 2008

Dispite the pretty cover to this work, this is not a "coffee table book" about pretty butterflys. This is an indepth collection of scientific articles addressing all aspects of the Monarch Butterfly. Sections include Breeding Biology, Migration Biology, Overwintering Biology and Integrated Biology. The collection of articles and monographs is very extensive and very technical. The reader should be warned that this is in no way a light read. On the other hand, if you want information on the monarch Butterfly, I cannot think of a single volume which will deliver more information that you have here. Recommend this speciality book quite highly. It is well worth the price.

This is a great book for putting things in perspective. The main character has a tree in her yard which produces money. She becomes the most popular person in town. Everyone comes to her house to gather it's leaves. By winter she is becoming tired of her greedy neighbors. She cuts the tree down and uses it for something purposeful: to keep warm.

The enchanting tale of Miss McGillicuddy and the unusual tree that grew in her yard. It has a such a strange shape,and grew so fast. One day she realizes that the leaves are dollar bills, how strange! Miss McGillicuddy seems strangely unaffected by the money in the tree, she goes about her normal life. She is relieved that strangers come to pick the dollars off the branches, saving them from breaking from under the weight of the bills. As the seasons change, people are still trying to find money from the tree, which bemused the woman. As winter comes, she has the tree chopped down for firewood. Miss McGillicuddy is jusy as happy and content as she was before the magical tree grew. This book will spark any child's imagination. A wonderful story by Sarah Stewart, matched with delightful illustrations by David Small.

The book represents a summary of the experience and knowledge amassed by authors in total of over ninety years of research on foraminifera and thecamoebians. They pioneered the use of fossil testate rhizopods for reconstructing pollution history, storminess and others which constitute the aim of this book. It is worth mentioning chapter five because it is very original as it summarizes some of the relevant general information about thecamoebians. They have been domain of geneticists, biologists, taxonomists and the literature concerning them is mainly in nongeological journals, not always readily available; no attempt has been made to use them as geological proxies until very recently. This book is simply-written, easy to understand and the illustrations and diagrams are very clear. It is, on the whole, a readable book. It is intended for the non-specialist, but since it deliberately emphasizes on continental margin areas where over 50% of the world's people live, where most contemporary marine environmental stress problems occur, specialists in the subject will be able to make good use of it as well.

Sara Ballent
Museo de Ciencias Naturales de La Plata, Argentina

This is an excellent book for Environmental Managers and Junior Scientists who are involved with the monitoring of coastal and estuarine environments; and is also an excellent guide for graduate students who are learning how to utilize Foraminifera and Thecamoebians.

I dare not review this book. Not because of its content, but because of the weather. Semken's latest book of essays and short stories is about the weather. And it seems, in accordance with the surrealism that surrounds, grabs a hold of and fully digests the reader, that the moment I finished _Moving With The Elements_, lightning started to flash outside like an airport search light, sweeping the darkness at regular intervals. If my hair stands on end, if I feel light-headed or if my laptop starts to turn blue and crackle, I can only blame the enchantment placed upon Semken's grimoire, his book of magic. To begin with, Semken's drifting line reminds me of Jim Harrison, "I watch as loose snow whirls up into the air, then falls gently to form a snowdrift, into what I call the wind's footprint." It is fluid, descriptive and gives name to the unnamable. His essays could be compared to those of Sigurd Olson, if not for the shamanistic element in each. ! His stories remind me of Richard Braughtigan's _In Watermelon Sugar_: gentle, with a child-like sense of wonder, and a big heaping glass of surrealism. "How that man had spent two months eating an electric fence. That he had taken a metal file and made a pile of electric dust which he added to his coffee each day." Some of his stories, like Flannery O'Connor, are allegorical. But to compare Semken's work to these other authors would be to overlook the fact that Steve Semken writes like Steve Semken. His voice, style, and command of words are his own. With characters named Levi Toughskin, Rico Rembrandt and Decker Tab, the reader sees that the author is not only being true to his work, he is having a little fun. He also works with themes important to him: being at one with the natural world; being able to look into the lifetime of a tree or a rain cloud; small towns trying to survive; fighting between the monoculture of the established locals and the odd! ity of the rare individual; and finally, a community makin! g contact with the unexplainable (I'm talking weather phenomena, not Roswell!) Some of the four star pieces found in this work include: "Backdoor Painting", a gothic tale that would make Rod Serling and Washington Irving sit up in their graves simultaneously; "Winter Air - Stone Beating", a must read nature essay for those who enjoy winter camping and stargazing; "Slow Rain Birth", a spring evocation appropriate for readings by both naturalists and pagans; and "Broom Totem", a story of a witch-woman who finds a way of becoming one with the landscape of the Great Plains. In this last piece, Semken transcends himself as a writer, being able to take on the female perspective in both the main character and the broomstick vantage he gives the reader. _Moving With The Elements_ is a surrealist venture of the landscape. Semken's stories and essays stroll in the prairie wind that breathes life into them In his work, we find out wh! y astronauts primarily come from the prairie states, what medicine cabinets are found in the trunks of the Osage Orange, and why homemade vanilla ice cream stirs the gravity of a family gathering. As for me, the lightning outside has stopped and, as Semken has put it, "The stars drop another spring hatch of lightning bugs for summer."

Fantasy and Nature play main roles in Semken's "Moving with the Elements"

In a journey through the Great Plains and into Texas, Steve Semken's introspective characters have the ability to show up in trees, paintings and even water. It is a roller coaster ride through realism and fantasy that one can be taken into to escape the doldrums of everyday life that most of us allow ourselves to slip into without ever realizing. Throughout this naturalist handbook, Semken weaves far fetching excursions of characters like Levi Toughskin and Rico Rembrandt in "Bright Dynamite Creek." Toughskin and Rembrandt discover a whirlpool in a nearby creek. Through experimentation with firecrackers, feathers, seeds and eventually themselves they find a place where things change shape under water allowing them to find out what or who they really are. It may sound silly here, but the reader must actually go to this place and experience it as an individual to fully understand reality and to see things from the other side. In another essay, "Vanilla Ice Cream," Semken allows the reader to return to innocent childhood memories where a younger you could be content making ice cream for everybody gathered at a family reunion. Semken writes, "Now I am beginning to realize that this is what real life is about. Collecting the good stuff together a few days a year and being able to smile in a group without doubt. That life is about storing away good memories that give you a sense of time and community and pride." "Backdoor Painting" focuses on Mr. Lystroder and Aunt Mar, characters who have the ability to create paintings with people alive in them. They control the outcome of the victims' painted lives. Lystroder and Mar decide to make a painting of the main character, Aunt Mar's nephew, his wife and child who try to leave the town of Doorall to experience the rest of the world. Lystroder and Mar believe that things shrink when they leave D! oorall. Try to imagine what happens next. The nephew finds himself in one of his Aunt's paintings with no backdoor painted in for him to escape out through. It is a winding ride between reality and fantasy that Semken takes the reader through his essays. He brings enough realistic detail to his stories that the reader thinks, "I've been there before, I know the place he is talking about . . . " only to find out a few sentences later that when you were there things happened differently and maybe you should have let your imagination go a little. Although the characters in Moving with the Elements are not all strongly linked together from one essay to another there is a constant theme of nature and man needing to live harmoniously. I touched the bark on my flowering crab last week and wanted to pull off a little piece that was beginning to curl away from itself. I remembered at the last moment the essay "The Sycamore Throne" with Peron Beet and decided not to pull off the bark just in case Semken's on the right track and the rest of us are all wrong. You'll have to read the book to see what I mean

What a sweet book to read aloud to your kids! If you have just read the Lorax, and your kids like to hear longer stories, try this story about a community of insects that has to deal with a major pollution disaster -- a bagful of trash dumped on their village of mushroom-sized homes. I love Blegvad's illustrations, and the story is neither too long nor too short. It's about the same length and of a similar inspirational quality as "Elsie Piddock skips in her sleep". It is an amazing work of craft to convey this anti-pollution message without any didacticism. Good for both insect-lovers and those who are insect-averse.

Written some three decades ago by the Danish poet N.M. Bodecker, and charmingly illustrated in black-and-white ink drawings by his friend Erik Blegvad, this little book is a tiny overlooked jewel.

The story follows a beetle and his new community of ladybugs, crickets, ants, moths, caterpillars, and other insects as they repair the damage done to their cozy community of mushroom houses by litter dumped in their little corner of the woods. It's a hopeful, none-too-serious tale about recycling and making the best of a bad thing.

A great read-aloud for kids aged 4 and up, and a good short read for ages 7 and up. (Estimated reading level, grade 2-3, but it's a rather short story).

This is a must read for environmentalist, conservationists and everyone who donates money to the cause of saving endangered species. From Oates own experiences in Africa and Asia, Oates tells us how the myth of sustainable development is failing to protect species and parks. He informs us about that what is needed is a return to protecting nature for its own sake. It is a well written book that weaves personal history with the history of the conservation organizations that are telling us they are "saving life on earth." The reality is they are failing and they must change tactics and soon.

If you are at all interested in conservation, then you have to read this book. John Oates shows how the modern concept of community based conservation that looks so good on paper, in reality has been a dismal failure in West Africa. He provieds several examples from his 30 year long career in West Africa. He shows that you have to be realistic when designing conservation programs, and that many people making conservation decisions are more interested in prestige and money than they are in preserving natural ecosystems. It is sad when you read that the World Wildlife Fund conservation planners are not interested to even go see the areas that they are supposed to protect. The intrinsic value of nature is a hard sell, but finally the utilitarian view of nature seems to always lead to exploitation, and increased pressure on the areas that are supposed to be protected. He also very clearly demonstrates that the idea of using zoos for conservation is a bad one. Zoos are probabally the best way to educate the public about conservation, but are very poor ways to protect species, in fact zoos can even do more harm that good. This book really open your eyes, the situation isn't hopeless, but if conservation projects in Africa are going to work, then it has to be done with a realistic approach and the intrinsic value of nature needs to be on the fore front of the effort.

"A real tour de force!"

The National Environmental Policy Act: Judicial Misconstruction, Legislative Indifference, & Executive Neglect by Matthew J. Lindstrom (Assistant Professor, Political Science Department and Environmental Studies Program, Siena College, Loudonville, New York) and Zachary A. Smith (Professor, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona) is a detailed and scholarly analysis of the ramifications of The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) federal law signed by President Nixon more than thirty years ago. Individual chapters of this definitive treatise address NEPA's origins, goals, implementation, and how modern-day courts have vastly limited its powers with possibly detrimental effects upon America's environment. Strongly recommended for professional and academic environmental studies reference collections, The National Environmental Policy Act is a thorough and accessible study for anyone looking to learn more about the nature of the NEPA law and its effect upon the United States from its inception down to the present day.

I bought this book as a resource for Theatre Design and it has proven to be a valuable asset. I can look through the photos in the book while researching and use the CD to put together presentations. The book's overall content is wide ranging and detailed, and is organized well. I would recommend this book to anyone in the arts, even if you don't use it for research, it's cool to look though.

This book is one of the best references for any designer and painter in the industry. Color Photos are amazing and complete. I have been wanting to purchase it for years now and am very glad to add it to my collection. All of her books are worth having in any artists library.