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› Find signed collectible books: '1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus'
A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.
Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus's landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas was, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last thirty years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.
In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques came to previously unheard-of conclusions. Among them:
? In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe.
? Certain cities-such as Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital-were far greater in population than any contemporary European city. Furthermore, Tenochtitlán, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets.
? The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.
? Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by a breeding process so sophisticated that the journal Science recently described it as "man's first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering."
? Amazonian Indians learned how to farm the rain forest without destroying it-a process scientists are studying today in the hope of regaining this lost knowledge.
? Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively "landscaped" by human beings. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'At the Cutting Edge: The Crisis in Canada's Forests'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Back on the Fire: Essays'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beyond the Last Village: A Journey of Discovery in Asia's Forbidden Wilderness'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Breakfast of Biodiversity: The Political Ecology of Rain Forest Destruction'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Breakfast of Biodiverstiy: The Truth About Rain Forest Destruction'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Building Green : A Complete How-to Guide to Alternative Building Methods: Earth Plaster, Straw Bale, Cordwood, Cob, Living Roofs'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Danger on Peaks: Poems'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Deception Point'
Penzler Pick, December 2001: In the world of page-turning thrillers, Dan Brown holds a special place in the hearts of many of us. After his first book, Digital Fortress, almost passed me by, he wrote Angels and Demons, which was probably one of the half-dozen most exciting thrillers of last year. It is a pleasure to report that his new book lives up to his reputation as a writer whose research and talent make his stories exciting, believable, and just plain unputdownable.
The time is now and President Zachary Herney is facing a very tough reelection. His opponent, Senator Sedgwick Sexton, is a powerful man with powerful friends and a mission: to reduce NASA's spending and move space exploration into the private sector. He has numerous supporters, including many beyond the businesses who will profit from this because of the embarrassment of 1996, when the Clinton administration was informed by NASA that proof existed of life on other planets. That information turned out to be premature, if not incorrect. (This story is true; I repeat, Dan Brown's research is very, very good.) The embattled president is assured that a rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice will prove to have far-reaching implications on America's space program. The find, however, needs to be verified.
Enter Rachel Sexton, a gister for the National Reconnaissance Office. Gisters reduce complex reports into single-page briefs, and in this case the president needs that confirmation before he broadcasts to the nation, probably ensuring his reelection. It's tricky because Rachel is the daughter of his opponent. Rachel is thrilled to be on the team traveling to the Arctic circle. She is a realist about her father's politics and has little respect for his stand on NASA, but Senator Sexton cannot help but have a problem with her involvement.
Adventure, romance, murder, skullduggery, and nail-biting tension ensue. By the end of Deception Point, the reader will be much better informed about how our space program works and how our politicians react to new information. Bring on the next Dan Brown thriller! --Otto Penzler [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Documentary Companion to a Civil Action: Wi Notes, Comments, and Questions'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Earth Rising: American Environmentalism in the 21st Century'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Earth Warrior: Overboard With Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Earth-Wise: A Biblical Response to Environmental Issues'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Environmental Ethics: Concepts, Policy, and Theory'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Everglades: River of Grass'
Originally published in 1947, The Everglades was one of those rare books, like Uncle Tom's Cabin and Silent Spring, to have an immediate political effect: it helped draw public attention to a vast and little-known area that South Florida developers had deemed a worthless swamp and were busily draining, damming, and remaking, and it mustered needed public support for President Harry Truman's controversial order, later that year, to protect more than 2 million acres as Everglades National Park.
Remote and seldom visited, the Everglades nonetheless had a rich human history: several Native American peoples, Spanish explorers, French and English pirates, runaway slaves, and Anglo trappers and fishermen all came to this limestone basin and made their lives among its slowly moving water and fast-growing sawgrass. It is this human history, more than the life histories of the Everglades' deer, panthers, scorpions, serpents, and alligators, that occupies most of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas's pages; even so, her lyrical if sometimes sentimental account of the area's flora and fauna makes for fine reading.
Douglas died in 1998 at the age of 107, having done more than any other one person to protect this magnificent portion of wild America. Anyone wishing to continue her good work--and to understand the Everglades' importance in the shape of things--will find great riches in her book. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Fatal Harvest Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Forest and the Sea: A Look at the Economy of Nature and the Ecology of Man'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'From Naked Ape To Superspecies: Humanity And The Global Eco-crisis'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Gary Snyder Reader'
This monumental collection gathers essays, travel journals, letters, poems, and translations from one of the most influential literary voices of the twentieth century.. Gary Snyder has been a major cultural force in America for five decades-prize-winning poet, environmental activist, Zen Buddhist, and reluctant counterculture guru. Having expanded far beyond the Beat poems that first brought his work into the public eye, Snyder has produced a wide-ranging body of work that encompasses his fluency in Eastern literature and culture, his commitment to the environment, and his concepts of humanity's place in the cosmos. The Gary Snyder Reader showcases the panoramic range of his literary vision in a single-volume survey that will appeal to students and general readers alike. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Good News for a Change: How Everyday People Are Helping the Planet'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Green Alternative: Creating an Ecological Future'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hands-On Environmentalism'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hands-On Nature: Information and Activities for Exploring the Environment With Children'
Revised and Expanded Edition
This long-awaited revision of a popular book provides information and activities to assist educators and parents in exploring the local environment with children. Grouped around five themes (Adaptations, Habitats, Cycles, Designs of Nature, and Earth and Sky), fact-filled essays introduce each subject, followed by field-tested, experiential activities that engage students in learning about the natural world.
With complete instructions and background information for teaching over 40 natural science units, and scientifically accurate drawings illustrating each topic, this easy-to-use, beautifully illustrated, up-to-date environmental education handbook both enables novice leaders to teach nature subjects successfully and offers creative new approaches for experienced educators. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Holes in the Ozone Scare: The Scientific Evidence That the Sky Isn't Falling'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Homeland and Other Stories'
With the same wit and sensitivity that have come to characterize her highly praised and beloved novels Animal Dreams and The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver gives us a rich and emotionally resonant collection of twelve stories. Spreading her memorable characters over landscapes ranging from northern-California to the hills of eastern Kentucky and the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Kingsolver tells stories of hope, momentary joy, and powerful endurance. In every setting, Kingsolver's distinctive voice -- at times comic, but often heartrending -- rings true as she explores the twin themes of family ties and the life choices one must ultimately make alone. Homeland and Other Stories creates a world of love and possibility that readers will want to take as their own.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hoodwinking the Nation'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hope's Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hope, Human And Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Live Well Without Owning a Car: Save Money, Breathe Easier, Get More Mileage Out of Life'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'It's Easy Being Green : A Handbook for Earth-Friendly Living?'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jayber Crow'
The questions who and what and how and why are no doubt useful and occasionally even noble in their place. But for Wendell Berry, whose spare and elegant prose has long testified to the rural American values of thrift and frugality, four interrogatives must seem a waste, when one will do. Where is the ultimate qualifier, the sine qua non, for both the author and his characters. Place shapes them and defines them; the winding Kentucky River and the gentle curves of the Kentucky hills find an echo in their lilting speech and brusque affections.
Jayber Crow is another story of the Port William membership, the community whose life--and lives--Berry has unfurled over the course of a half dozen novels. Jayber himself is an orphan, lately returned to the town. And his status as barber and bachelor places him simultaneously at its center and on its margins. A born observer, he hears much, watches carefully, and spends 50 years learning its citizens by heart.
They were rememberers, carrying in their living thoughts all the history that such places as Port William ever have. I listened to them with all my ears, and have tried to remember what they said, though from remembering what I remember I know that much is lost. Things went to the grave with them that will never be known again.Jayber tells the town's stories tenderly. Gently elegiac, the novel charts the tension between an urge to isolation and an impulse to connectivity, writ both small and large. As the 20th century moves inexorably forward, swallowing in great mechanized gulps rural towns governed by agricultural rhythms, Port William turns in upon itself. And as Jayber admits quietly, "Once a fabric is torn, it is apt to keep tearing. It was coming apart. The old integrity had been broken." Integrity, both whole and shattered, is key to the stories of Burley Coulter, Cecelia Overhold, Troy Chatham, and above all, Athey Keith and his daughter Mattie, to whom Jayber pledges his undying and unrequited love.
Berry's prose, so carefully tuned that you never know it is there, carries us into the very heart of the land itself; his exquisitely constructed sentences suggesting the cyclic rhythms of his agrarian world. Jayber Crow resonates with variations played on themes of change, looping transitions from war into peace, winter into spring, browning flood destruction into greening fields, absence into presence, lost into found. --Kelly Flynn [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jayber Crow : The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, As Written by Himself'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Land's Wild Music: Encounters With Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Terry Tempest William, & James Galvin'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization'
A professor of anthropology by training, Fagan traces the effects of climactic change on civilizations over the past 15,000 years--a period of prolonged global warning that has only accelerated over the past 150 years. In particular, he's interested in how civilizations have responded to, or been radically altered by, changes in environment. One of Fagan's most compelling examples is his detailed history of the city of Ur, in what is now modern-day Iraq. Once a great city in one of the world's earliest civilizations, it first thrived thanks to abundant rainfall and then suffered even more severely when the Indian Ocean monsoons shifted southward, changing rain patterns. By 2000 B.C. its agricultural economy had collapsed, and today it is an abandoned landscape, an assemblage of decaying shrines in the harshest of deserts. Fagan views this event as pivotal. It was, he writes, "the first time an entire city disintegrated in the face of environmental catastrophe." But not, Fagan notes, the last. In his epilogue, which covers the last 800 years of human history, Fagan explores the climatic upheavals that left 20 million dead in famine-related epidemics in the 19th century. He notes that today 200 million people barely survive on marginal agricultural land in places such as northeastern Brazil, Ethiopia, and the Saharan Sahel. If temperatures rise much above current levels, and rising seas flood coastal plains, the devastation could dwarf any disaster humankind has previously known. Fagan doesn't offer easy solutions, but he presents a compelling history of climate's role in the background--and sometimes foreground--of human history. --Keith Moerer [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies: The Search for a Value of Place'
Today's academic economists have, for the most part, withdrawn from "the parochial fray of local economic development policy" in pursuit analyzing broader national and international issues. Not so, says Thomas Michael Power, whose intent in his scholarly and deeply felt Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies is to address the fundamental errors and distractions inherent in folk economics. Power is uniquely suited to the task. A professor at the University of Montana, his is the perfect perch from which to regard the rapacious plunder of local and state economies by the mining and timber companies.
"A popular folk economics," Power writes, "teaches us that the extraction and processing of natural resources are the heart of economic development, that 'all wealth springs from the earth.'" Power argues against this conventional model of extractive-dependent communities. Such models play a role, he proves, in the decline and destabilization of local economies. To see landscape and its preservation not as an aesthetic whim but as an economic necessity is a brave and lonely stance, indeed. Economic health equals nothing less than "avoiding needless damage to the natural--and therefore human--environment."
We recognize the battle lines, clearly drawn between the environmental and resource-industry sides. At stake: both the extinction of whole species and traditional ways of life that have supported families and communities for generations. "If we could lay to rest," Power argues, "the fear that environmental protection will cause the imminent economic collapse of communities, the acrimony would subside and it would be much easier to engage in civil discourse over the real choices communities face." With a persuasive overview and the use of powerful case studies on the impact of ranching, mining, and timber on the land, Thomas Power has himself extracted a clear definition of the real issues from the rubble of misguided passions, paranoia, and a divisive media. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Man Who Planted Trees'
The Man Who Planted Trees is not a detailed how-to guide to planting; it is a touching story of Elzéard Bouffier, who devoted his entire life to reforesting a desolate portion of Provence, in southern France. He single-handedly planted 100 acorns each day before, through, and after two world wars, and transformed a sorrowful place into one full of life and joy. Jean Giono's words offer a tribute to how much good one person can accomplish in a lifetime and advise on how to live life with deep meaning. Illustrated with moving, beautiful wood engravings by Michael McCurdy, The Man Who Planted Trees is simply written but powerful and unforgettable. The text is also available on tape, eloquently narrated by Robert J. Lurtsema and accompanied by music from the Paul Winter Consort. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady'
From the writer of "The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady", these "Nature Notes" from 1905 feature a selection of Edith Holden's watercolours of birds, flowers and landscapes, together with journal extracts, anecdotes and poems. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind 5'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'One With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, And the Human Future'
Named a Notable Book for 2005 by the American Library Association, One with Nineveh is a fresh synthesis of the major issues of our time, now brought up to date with an afterword for the paperback edition. Through lucid explanations, telling anecdotes, and incisive analysis, the book spotlights the three elephants in our global living room-rising consumption, still-growing world population, and unchecked political and economic inequity-that together are increasingly shaping today's politics and humankind's future. One with Nineveh brilliantly puts today's political and environmental debates in a larger context and offers some bold proposals for improving our future prospect.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Place for Butterflies'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Planetwalker: How to Change Your World One Step at a Time'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Planning for Seven Generations: Guideposts for a Sustainable Future'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Reasonable Life: Toward a Simpler, Secure, More Humane Existence'
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FAST SHIPPING out in 1 business day!!! E-mail sent when book ships with confirmation # [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Science Under Siege: The Politicians' War on Nature and Truth'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Seeds of Change: Six Plants That Transformed Mankind'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Short History Of Progress'
No hope, just an awareness of what's being done now and what's been done in the past, is what Ronald Wright will permit in A Short History of Progress, his grim, ammoniacal Massey Lectures, the 43rd in the series. In five lucid, meticulously documented essays, Wright traces the rise and plummet of four regional civilizations--those of Sumer, Rome, Easter Island, and the Maya--and judges that most, perhaps all, of humanity is making and will continue to make mistakes equally disastrous as theirs. He gives general reasons first for not reckoning we'll pull back from the brink. Important among them is an anthropological observation. As individuals, we live long lives. We evolve more slowly than we should, given our lack of vision and our aggressive, selfish nature. We seem to lack the collective wisdom and the insight into cause and effect to realize the limits to what Wright calls the "experiment" of civilization. What Wright calls natural "subsidies" underwrite civilizations' successes. The squandering of those gifts presages inevitable failure, but with careful, canny stewardship, a civilization can manage to muddle through eons. Wright cites Egypt's submission to the limits set by the Nile's annual floods and China's windblown "lump-sum deposit" of topsoil, used for hillside paddies instead of being put to the plough. Wright observes with unrelenting eloquence that our planetary civilization lives precariously, far beyond its means. "Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes," he acknowledges, neither claiming nor wanting to be a prophet. We certainly have the tools for change and remediation; we also know what our ancestors did wrong and what happened to them. We're faced, our author observes, with two choices: either do nothing--what he calls "one of the biggest mistakes"--or try to effect "the transition from short-term to long-term thinking." His evidence suggests we're taking the first alternative, which will include a swift, final ride into the dark future on the runaway train of progress. Wright's account tempts one to bet on the rats and roaches. --Ted Whittaker [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sick Puppy'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stormy Weather'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Story of My Boyhood And Youth'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sustainable America: America's Environment in the 21st Century'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tales of an Empty Cabin'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'To Save the Wild Earth: Field Notes from the Environmental Frontline'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Torah of the Earth: Exploring 4,000 Years of Ecology in Jewish Thought'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry'
Sure, many of us in this modern world are cynical. The most cynical may even suspect that the news is manipulated and massaged by sponsors, that corporations act in their best interests, that political campaigns are determined not by votes, but by bucks, and that we don't get "all the news that's fit to print" but instead, "all the news that gets the ink". But even the most media-savvy amongst you will be awed by the behind-the-scenes descriptions of the Public Relations industry in action so masterfully described in this book. If you want your eyes to be opened, open them upon the pages of this book. (But remember: there are some very important people counting on you, and they really would prefer that you didn't ever hear about this book, much less buy it.) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tree: A Life Story'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Trust Us, We're Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future'
Fearless investigative journalists Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! and Mad Cow USA) are back with Trust Us, We're Experts--a gripping exposé of the public relations industry and the scientists who back their business-funded, anti-consumer-safety agendas. There are two kinds of "experts" in question--the PR spin doctors behind the scenes and the "independent" experts paraded before the public, scientists who have been hand-selected, cultivated and paid handsomely to promote the views of corporations involved in controversial actions. Lively writing on controversial topics such as dioxin, bovine growth hormone and genetically modified food makes this a real page-turner, shocking in its portrayal of the real and potential dangers in each of these technological innovations and of the "media pseudo-environment" created to obfuscate the risks.
Rampton and Stauber introduce the movers and shakers of the PR industry, from the "risk communicators" (whose job is to downplay all risks) and "outrage managers" (with their four strategies--deflect, defer, dismiss or defeat) to those who specialise in "public policy intelligence" (spying on opponents). Evidently, these elaborate PR campaigns are created for our own good. According to public relations philosophers, the public reacts emotionally to topics related to health and safety and is incapable of holding rational discourse. Needless to say, Rampton and Stauber find these views rather antidemocratic and intend to pull back the curtain to reveal the real wizard in Oz. This is one wake-up call that's hard to resist. --Lesley Reed [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, And the Renewal of Civilization'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Valley Of Secrets'
The tradition of the cozy English childrens mystery, so sweetly portrayed in classics like Toms Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce and Mandy by Julie Andrews, has been revived in Charmian Husseys exquisitely wrought The Valley of Secrets. Stephen Lansbury never knew his parents. So the orphan is stunned to receive a letter informing him he has inherited a large estate in the English countryside from his long lost great-uncle Theodore. Upon his arrival to Lansbury Hall, two things immediately strike Stephen: the exotic plant life that seems to bloom everywhere, and the meticulous upkeep of the old manor. When Stephen finds the water-stained journals of his uncles youthful travels up the Amazon River, the unusual greenery suddenly makes sense. But who (or what!) is maintaining the tidy kitchen garden and replenishing his woodbox? As Stephen pores over his uncles journals, his curiosity and apprehension grow. Are plants the only thing Uncle Theodore brought back from the rain forest all those years ago?
Charmian Hussey has given the stale orphan premise a clever 21st century twist by inserting loads of facts and figures about the devastating deforestation of the Amazon into her old-fashioned tale. There is even a list of mentioned flora and fauna included for aspiring young naturalists, who will no doubt be charmed by Stephens surprising "discovery" of a whole new species. For more mystery melded with Amazon lore, follow up The Valley of Secrets with Eva Ibbotsons equally wonderful Journey to the River Sea. --Jennifer Hubert [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Visions upon the Land : Man and Nature on the Western Range'
Applies the ideas of democracy and free markets to the management of Western rangelands. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The War Against the Greens: The "Wise-Use" Movement, the New Right, and the Browning of America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Folly, and the Politics of Thirst'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Welcome to Doomsday'
The influence of the evangelical Christian right on the Bush administration has had a mostly unnoticed impact on America's environmental policy. While some take Gods granting of dominion over the earth to man as a call to good stewardship of our planet, many evangelicals distrust science and disdain environmental protections. They live in anticipation of one event: the Rapture, when Christ will return to cleanse the earth while the true believers are transported to heaven. For those who believe that the Rapture and the destruction of the world are imminent, there is no need to be concerned about saving the planet from environmental catastrophe.
Welcome to Doomsday is an investigation into the coupling of ideology and theology, in particular the intrusion of religion into political life, in America today. Global climate change is a rapid, possibly irreversible occurrence, yet the stance taken by the White House in both international and domestic arenas is one of both ignorance and disbelief. Appeasing the influential agendas of corporations, as well as the uncompromising dominant beliefs of evangelical groups, the Bush administration has firmly established a disastrous record of ignoring the urgency of potentially devastating changing climate.
Welcome to Doomsday is a passionate call to save the planet from the forces not only of greed and exploitation but from those who associate its destruction with a spiritual apocalypse. Written by the compelling and articulate Bill Moyers, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the current dismal state of environmental policy as well as in the growing power of the evangelical movement in the United States. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'World Hunger: Ten Myths'
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