Environment and Nature Books

We've all heard the old saw that those who ignore the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. As we face growing environmental crises throughout the globe at the outset of the 21st century, it's critical for those who hope to maintain our planet's delicate balance to understand the history behind environmental movements of the past, and where reformers have succeeded and failed in their efforts to confront a rapidly changing society's impact on the natural world.

In Reasonable Use, Cumbler, an environmental historian at the University of Louisville, traces the dramatic shift New England experienced between the Colonial era and the pre-World War II period. Focusing mostly on the 19th century and the impact of industrialization, overfishing, deforestation and the arrival of dams and cities along the Connecticut River during that time period, Cumbler describes not only how states like Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire reacted to increased pollution but also the characters who drove the responses and how each of the major players reflected broader themes and approaches to humans' role in the natural world.

The major players - people like Henry David Thoreau, Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, George Perkins Marsh and Theodore Lyman - represented the range of elite thinking during that time. The questions they faced regarding the value of fish to an ecosystem, the effect of pollution on populations, the problem of waste disposal and - most important - the comparative merits of industrial progress versus a clean environment, are all questions that we still confront today. Though the unobservant reader may miss it, Cumbler also offers particularly pointed commentary on the critical lessons those who hope to effect environmental reforms today should learn from the failures of those who sought to go up against the entrenched powers of industry in 19th century New England.

So while the casual observer may mistakenly assume that this book will appeal primarily to those with a regional interest in the area and era, in fact Cumbler offers a wealth of judiciously documented thoughts on the nature of the relations of power, paarticularly as they interact when the object of the struggle - the environment - cannot speak for itself.

Also, besides delivering an engrossing and thoughful historical document, Cumbler additionally weaves a compelling tale that maintains the readers interest, even as he shares scientific data regarding such esoterica as the composition of dissolved oxygen in a water system or the workings of fishways in a dam. The book is well-written and deserves a broader audience than merely environmental history buffs. We can all pick up a thing or two from Henry Bowditch et al, and John Cumbler makes the lessons easy to learn.

A sensitive, comprehensive, prodigiously reasearched and erudite volume. It's about time Christianity is taking ecological destruction seriously, and this book is perhaps the most sophisticated overview of the issues yet assembled. The idea of an anthroharmonic approach is also original and helpful.

The "Garden Of Eden" was a paradise lost, and mankind has spent centuries searching for it. Reinventing Eden reveals how the image and myth of Eden has actually led to further degradation of the planet, revealing its origins, its influence on political and social thought, and related issues concerning man and nature. Human manipulation of the environment in search of Eden has led to an erosion of nature: Reinventing Eden documents exactly how.

Gottlieb is incredible! This easy to read book, was a requirement in one of my classes but honestly no need to require since its like reading a novel. What an awesome book!

Yes, the title is aptly-named.

This book wrangles the diverse apsects of reptile egg biology into a format that someone without specific training in embryology will be able to appreciate (at least for the most part).

It is not a quick read, but the content of each section hints that if you are working on an investigation pertaining to reptile incubation parameters and you're not citing this work, you may be missing something.

This book roundly covers the following topics, with each section authored by an absolute expert in the field...

Reptilian incubation: evolution and the fossil record
Thermal, hydric and respiratory climate of nests
Egg morphology and composition
Patterns of embryonic development
Effects of incubation temperature
Water in reptilian eggs and hatchlings
Energy provision and utilization
Adaptive consequences of developmental plasticity
Temperature-dependent sex determination
Post-hatching phenotypic effects of incubation in reptiles
Artificial incubation
Perspectives in reptilian incubation

All of these 12 sections have multiple sub-sections, with many new questions being raised in each. This book is very academic in nature, right down to the overwhelming price tag, which will unfortunately deter a second audience who could greatly benefit from it - the private herpetoculturist. This book will provide a foundation for independent thought, interpretation and adaptation that step-by-step books on incubation will not. If you have the money and are not a terribly A.D.D. reader, obtain a copy of this book.

I would normally take away one star for failing to recognize Herman Daly's contribution to Ecological Economics and Paul Hawkin's contributions to the ecology of commerce (and most especially "true cost" as an essential metric) but realizing that I came late to this book (it was published in 2002), and respecting the extraordinary value herein, I left it at five stars.

The book should be reprinted after a proper literature search (I grow tired of citation cabals, these folks--20 contributors--need to get out more) and a simple capstone Executive Summary added for the busy policy-maker. The Literature Cited should be consolidated into a single annotated and much expanded syntopical bibliography.

Most importantly, the book was inspired by the Beijer International Institution for Ecological Economics realizing that resilience is the key unifying concept for both ecological and social systems; and that there was a need for demonstrated concepts of ecological resilikence including an understanding of alternative stable states and disturbances.

The book is fully satisfactory and my take-away is that all of the contributors, overseen by the likes of Lester Brown, Medard Gabel, Herman Daly, and Paul Hawkin, are part of the solution and must be fully integrated in the creation of the EarthGame that will one day deliver real-time science and near-real-time stable state options.

It is very well-organized, and the authors are all uniformly competent at presenting the obligatory case studies from which they draw their conclusions.

Theory, metaphors, models, stability disturbances, resilience, are all discussed at length. Stessors are multiplicative not additive. [A better summation is found in Charle's Perrows Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, to wit:

+ Simple systems have single points of failure easy to diagnose and correct

+ Complex systems have multiple points of failure that interact in unpredictable ways and are very hard to fix

+ We have created constellation of complex systems interacting in ways we simply do NOT understand, and therefore we are subject to cataclymic unanticipated break-downs almost impossible to fix.

The book ends with an excellent summary, of value in and of itself, with these key points discussed:

+ Pathology of constancy versus visibility of variability.

+ Diversity & stability versus diversity & resilience

+ Short versus long term sustainability

+ Vulnerability increased as sources of novelty are edliminated and cross-scale functional replication is reduces.

Last two key thoughts:

+ We can increase novelty (I added the word in my own mind, "artificially"

+ Resilience occurs at multiple scales.

This book is recommended for use in undergraduate and graduate instruction, and if the original sponsor cared to fund an update, I have some specific suggestions that would make a new book much more valuable to connecting true costs, real-time science, and digital gaming as well as digically orchestrated independent action (imagine a range of gifts table online, specific down to the district level, with needs from $10 to $100 million, that all foundations, corporations, non-governmental organizations, and individuals (80% of the giving) could use to "opt-in" and turn micro-boxes of need "green.")

I have over 70 lists including one focused on environmental degradation (high level threat to humanity) so I will end with links to just ten books, but there are many many more.

See also:
A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications
The Ecology of Commerce
The True Cost of Low Prices: The Violence of Globalization
The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict
The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink
Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy
Blue Frontier : Saving America's Living Seas

See also books I have written, edited, or published. They are also free online but the Amazon versions are much more exciting to engage.

Explaining something as complex as global warming to children is no easy task, but "Rising Above Global Warming" is a children's picture book that takes on this daunting task anyway. Explaining that some of humanity is destroying the environment and therefore making it very difficult for many of the animals to continue to live. Hoping that this will inspire the leaders of tomorrow to take the necessary changes, and enhanced with charming illustrations by Shari Lynn Myers, "Rising Above Global Warming" is a highly recommended children's picture book for any whose child is a lover of animals and nature.

Let me preface this review by indicating I am reviewing this text as an educator and its applications for my students. Debby Atwell in her book, The River, combines simple, yet poignant words with illustrations that look like paintings. The book is about what happens to a river through time. In the beginning the river nourishes and enables the life around it to prosper. As time goes on, people become careless and the river becomes polluted with wastes. People who live in the community by the river set out to change what the river has become to what it once was. Most people in America can relate to this text since we have experienced what has happened in our own communities due to pollution of our rivers and streams. The River gives us all a remarkable message - we all can work together, like people did in the book, to correct the mistakes of the past; i.e., in this case, pollution. I believe that this book can be used as an outstanding vehicle for discussion for Grades 2 - 5. I really enjoyed this book because it teaches children through remarkable illustrations why the pollution occurred.

This is a wonderful book. There is an adventure with every page turn and the descriptions are deliciously vivid. I always look for books that will "take me away," and at the same time, teach me something new. The Road To El Cielo took me to Mexico's cloud forests and inspired in me a new appreciation for its wildlife, plant life, and way of life. Highly Recommended.

This is an outstanding book that deals with the history of industrial hygiene and risk management. In a step-by-step fashion, the authors walk the reader through the development of large-scale chemical production plants and their need to deal with the waste associated with their production process. The changes from prior to 1930s to the 1950s and into the 1970s shows distinct changes in how industry addressed industrial waste. It is a refreshing approach to see an explanation of how industry slowly developed their procedures based on their dealings with the public and government, without the usual bias against management as evil-doers and tree-killers.

The authors discuss the understanding of industrial wastes and developing rationale with no appologies, but do it in a concise fashion that is readable to the layman as well as professionals. The section discussing how decision makers can be influenced by this information is particularly good-reading. The authors end by discussing several case studies (of course, Love Canal is one of them) and identifying the mistakes made in each case. This is the real lesson of the book - if we can't learn from our mistakes, how will we ever improve?