Биология, биофизика, биохимия
6036 кн.
Over vast expanses of time, fire and humanity have interacted to expand the domain of each, transforming the earth and what it means to be human. In this concise yet wide-ranging book, Stephen J. Pyne—named by Science magazine as “the world’s leading authority on the history of fire”—explores the surprising dynamics of fire before humans, fire and human origins, aboriginal economies of hunting and foraging, agricultural and pastoral uses of...
| Автор | Stephen J. Pyne |
The late Edward Said remains one of the most influential critics and public intellectuals of our time, with lasting contributions to many disciplines. Much of his reputation derives from the phenomenal multidisciplinary influence of his 1978 book Orientalism. Said's seminal polemic analyzes novels, travelogues, and academic texts to argue that a dominant discourse of West over East has warped virtually all past European and American representation of the Near East. But despite the...
| Автор | Daniel Martin Varisco |
On May 18, 1980, people all over the world watched with awe and horror as Mount St. Helens erupted. Fifty-seven people were killed and hundreds of square miles of what had been lush forests and wild rivers were to all appearances destroyed.Ecologists thought they would have to wait years, or even decades, for life to return to the mountain, but when forest scientist Jerry Franklin helicoptered into the blast area a couple of weeks after the eruption, he found small plants bursting through the...
| Автор | Eric Wagner |
"If you have a feeling for the mystery and enchantment of the woods, you will want to own this book." — Outlook.Assembled from an enormous range of sources, this fascinating book is a mind-expanding compendium of facts, folklore, superstitions, myths, and anecdotes about trees and the forest. Included are descriptions of old forests; forest customs, temples and sacred groves; mythical forest creatures such as witches, fairies, demons, wood spirits, the «wild huntsman,» and wood...
| Автор | Alexander Porteous |
Winner of the 2017 James M. Blaut Award from the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American GeographersHonorable Mention for the 2016 Book Prize from the Association for Political and Legal AnthropologySince the 1960s, when Brazil first encouraged large-scale Amazonian colonization, violence and confusion have often accompanied national policies concerning land reform, corporate colonization, indigenous land rights, environmental protection, and private...
| Автор | Jeremy M. Campbell |
Nuclear Reactions explores the nuclear consensus that emerged in post�World War II America, characterized by widespread support for a diplomatic and military strategy based on nuclear weapons and a vision of economic growth that welcomed nuclear energy both for the generation of electricity and for other peaceful and industrial uses. Unease about the environmental consequences of nuclear energy and weapons development became apparent by the early 1960s and led to the first challenges...
| Автор | Группа авторов |
In the mid-1990s, the international community pronounced prenatal sex selection via abortion an �act of violence against women� and �unethical.� At the same time, new developments in reproductive technology in the United States led to a method of sex selection before conception; its US inventor marketed the practice as �family balancing� and defended it with the rhetoric of freedom of choice. In Gender before Birth, Rajani Bhatia...
| Автор | Rajani Bhatia |
Ellavut / Our Yup'ik World and Weather is a result of nearly ten years of gatherings among Yup'ik elders to document the qanruyutet (words of wisdom) that guide their interactions with the environment. In an effort to educate their own young people as well as people outside the community, the elders discussed the practical skills necessary to live in a harsh environment, stressing the ethical and philosophical aspects of the Yup'ik relationship with the land, ocean, snow, weather,...
| Автор | Ann Fienup-Riordan |
Two kinds of long-term research are taking place at the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a renowned research facility in the temperate rain forest of the Oregon Cascades. Here, scientists investigate the ecosystem’s trees, wildlife, water, and nutrients with an eye toward understanding change over varying timescales up to two hundred years or more. And writers from both literary and scientific backgrounds spend time in the forest investigating the ecological and human complexities of this...
| Автор | Группа авторов |
Today, Japan defends its controversial whaling expeditions by invoking tradition�but what was the historical reality? In examining the techniques and impacts of whaling during the Tokugawa period (1603�1868), Jakobina Arch shows that the organized, shore-based whaling that first developed during these years bore little resemblance to modern Japanese whaling. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from whaling ledgers to recipe books and gravestones for fetal whales, she traces...
| Автор | Jakobina K. Arch |
Before commercial whaling was outlawed in the 1980s, diplomats, scientists, bureaucrats, environmentalists, and sometimes even whalers themselves had attempted to create an international regulatory framework that would allow for a sustainable whaling industry. In Whales and Nations, Kurkpatrick Dorsey tells the story of the international negotiation, scientific research, and industrial development behind these efforts �and their ultimate failure.Whales and Nations begins in the early...
| Автор | Kurkpatrick Dorsey |
The Environmental Moment is a collection of documents that reveal the significance of the years 1968-1972 to the environmental movement in the United States. With material ranging from short pieces from the Whole Earth Catalog and articles from the Village Voice to lectures, posters, and government documents, the collection describes the period through the perspective of a diversity of participants, including activists, politicians, scientists, and average citizens. Included are the words of...
| Автор | Группа авторов |
From beer labels to literary classics like A River Runs Through It , trout fishing is a beloved feature of the iconography of the American West. But as Jen Brown demonstrates in Trout Culture: How Fly Fishing Forever Changed the Rocky Mountain West , the popular conception of Rocky Mountain trout fishing as a quintessential experience of communion with nature belies the sport’s long history of environmental manipulation, engineering, and, ultimately, transformation. A fly-fishing enthusiast...
| Автор | Jen Corrinne Brown |
George Perkins Marsh (1801�1882) was the first to reveal the menace of environmental misuse, to explain its causes, and to prescribe reforms. David Lowenthal here offers fresh insights, from new sources, into Marsh�s career and shows his relevance today, in a book which has its roots in but wholly supersedes Lowenthal�s earlier biography George Perkins Marsh: Versatile Vermonter (1958). Marsh�s devotion to the repair of nature, to the concerns of...
| Автор | David Lowenthal |
Are humans unwitting partners in evolution with psychedelic plants? Darwin�s Pharmacy shows they are by weaving the evolutionary theory of sexual selection and the study of rhetoric together with the science and literature of psychedelic drugs. Long suppressed as components of the human tool kit, psychedelic plants can be usefully modeled as �eloquence adjuncts� that intensify a crucial component of sexual selection in humans: discourse.Psychedelic plants seduce...
| Автор | Richard M. Doyle |
This first sustained ethnographic study of organic agriculture outside the United States traces its meanings, practices, and politics in two nations typically considered worlds apart: Latvia and Costa Rica. Situated on the frontiers of the European Union and the United States, these geopolitically and economically in-between places illustrate ways that international treaties have created contradictory pressures for organic farmers.Organic farmers in both countries build multispecies networks of...
| Автор | Guntra A. Aistara |
Tanoak ( Notholithocarpus densiflorus ) is a resilient and common hardwood tree native to California and southwestern Oregon. People’s radically different perceptions of it have ranged from treasured food plant to cash crop to trash tree. Having studied the patterns of tanoak use and abuse for nearly twenty years, botanist Frederica Bowcutt uncovers a complex history of cultural, sociopolitical, and economic factors affecting the tree’s fate. Still valued by indigenous communities for its...
| Автор | Frederica Bowcutt |
The watery terrain of the Albufera Natural Park, an area ten kilometers south of Valencia that is widely regarded as the birthplace of paella, has long been prized by residents and visitors alike. Since the twentieth century, the disparate visions of city dwellers, farmers, fishermen, scientists, politicians, and tourists have made this working landscape a site of ongoing conflict over environmental conservation in Europe, the future of Spain, and Valencian identity.In�Cultivating...
| Автор | Sarah R. Hamilton |
Conservation was the first nationwide political movement in American history to grapple with environmental problems like waste, pollution, resource exhaustion, and sustainability. At its height, the conservation movement was a critical aspect of the broader reforms undertaken in the Progressive Era (1890-1910), as the rapidly industrializing nation struggled to protect human health, natural beauty, and «national efficiency.» This highly effective Progressive Era movement was distinct from...
| Автор | Группа авторов |
Throughout the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia, forest spirits share space with ancestral ruins and active agricultural plots, affecting land use and heritage preservation. As their efforts to establish UNESCO World Heritage status continue, Marquesans grapple with questions about when sites should be preserved intact, when neglect is an appropriate option, and when deterioration resulting from local livelihoods should be accepted.In Working with the Ancestors Emily Donaldson considers...
| Автор | Emily C. Donaldson |
In the decades after World War II, the American economy entered a period of prolonged growth that created unprecedented affluence�but these developments came at the cost of a host of new environmental problems. Unsurprisingly, a disproportionate number of them, such as pollution-emitting factories, waste-handling facilities, and big infrastructure projects, ended up in communities dominated by people of color. Constrained by long-standing practices of segregation that limited their...
| Автор | Группа авторов |
From the interactive clockwork world of geology, tides, Northwest weather, and snow, to the hidden roles of dirt, stream life, and mosses and lichens, Pulitzer Prize winning writer William Dietrich explores the natural splendors of the Pacific Northwest. His topics include alder and cedar; jellyfish, geoducks, crabs, and killer whales; mosquitoes and spiders; gulls, crows, and bald eagles; and sea otters, coyotes, raccoons, possums, deer, and cougars.This informative and engaging selection of...
| Автор | William Dietrich |
"Sir William Cecil Dampier's Readings in the Literature of Science has long been a classic. Unlike many other collections, it has the virtue of dealing thoroughly with three major subjects which are at the very heart of science: cosmogony, atomic theory and evolution. For each, the readings have been selected so as to give a continuous story, enabling the reader to share in the great excitement of the process of scientific discovery and the growth of knowledge from the earliest times...
| Автор | Группа авторов |
This treasury of more than 600 royalty-free illustrations of nature's handiwork will be an indispensable resource for anyone in need of plant and flower illustrations. Showcasing the work of 11 different artists, this highly useful compilation attractively and accurately displays a profusion of wildflowers, trees, herbs, cacti, tropical blooms, garden flowers, common weeds, house plants, mushrooms, roses, orchids, medicinal plants, and much more. Each illustration is identified, and an...
| Автор | Группа авторов |