American Earth

American Earth PDF

Author: Bill McKibben

Publisher: Literary Classics of United States

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 1176

ISBN-13:

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Author and activist McKibben gathers the essential American writings that changed the way the public looks at the natural world. "American Earth" features essays by Walt Whitman, Rachel Carson, Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan, and dozens more.

Eaarth

Eaarth PDF

Author: Bill McKibben

Publisher: Knopf Canada

Published: 2010-04-13

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0307399206

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The bestselling author of Deep Economy shows that we’re living on a fundamentally altered planet — and opens our eyes to the kind of change we’ll need in order to make our civilization endure. Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we’ve waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We’ve created, in very short order, a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well call it Eaarth. That new planet is filled with new binds and traps. A changing world costs large sums to defend—think of the money that went to repair New Orleans, or the trillions of dollars it will take to transform our energy systems. But the endless economic growth that could underwrite such largesse depends on the stable planet we’ve managed to damage and degrade. We can’t rely on old habits any longer. Our hope depends, McKibben argues, on scaling back—on building the kind of societies and economies that can hunker down, concentrate on essentials, and create the type of community (in the neighborhood, but also on the Internet) that will allow us to weather trouble on an unprecedented scale. Change—fundamental change—is our best hope on a planet suddenly and violently out of balance.

American Sea Writing

American Sea Writing PDF

Author: Peter Neill

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 712

ISBN-13:

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This anthology of essays captures the full sweep of America's maritime experience, with narratives from voyagers from the 17th century to the 20th century. Included are writings from Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack London, and more.

Massachusetts Curiosities

Massachusetts Curiosities PDF

Author: Bruce Gellerman

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2008-08-03

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1461747228

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Discover more than 200 of the wildest, wackiest, most outrageous people, places, and things the Bay State has to offer in this completely revised and updated edition.

DDT and the American Century

DDT and the American Century PDF

Author: David Kinkela

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2011-11-07

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780807869307

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Praised for its ability to kill insects effectively and cheaply and reviled as an ecological hazard, DDT continues to engender passion across the political spectrum as one of the world's most controversial chemical pesticides. In DDT and the American Century, David Kinkela chronicles the use of DDT around the world from 1941 to the present with a particular focus on the United States, which has played a critical role in encouraging the global use of the pesticide. Kinkela's study offers a unique approach to understanding both this contentious chemical and modern environmentalism in an international context.

George Perkins Marsh

George Perkins Marsh PDF

Author: David Lowenthal

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2009-11-23

Total Pages: 656

ISBN-13: 0295989858

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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 working people, to women’s rights, and to historical stewardship resonate more than ever. His Vermont birthplace is now a national park chronicling American conservation, and the crusade he launched is now global. Marsh’s seminal book Man and Nature is famed for its ecological acumen. The clue to its inception lies in Marsh’s many-sided engagement in the life of his time. The broadest scholar of his day, he was an acclaimed linguist, lawyer, congressman, and renowned diplomat who served 25 years as U.S. envoy to Turkey and to Italy. He helped found and guide the Smithsonian Institution, shaped the Washington Monument, penned potent tracts on fisheries and on irrigation, spearheaded public science, art, and architecture. He wrote on camels and corporate corruption, Icelandic grammar and Alpine glaciers. His pungent and provocative letters illuminate life on both sides of the Atlantic. Like Darwin’s Origin of Species, Marsh’s Man and Nature marked the inception of a truly modern way of looking at the world, of taking care lest we irreversibly degrade the fabric of humanized nature we are bound to manage. Marsh’s ominous warnings inspired reforestation, watershed management, soil conservation, and nature protection in his day and ours. George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation was awarded the Association for American Geographers' 2000 J. B. Jackson Prize. The book was also on the shortlist for the first British Academy Book Prize, awarded in December 2001.

Navy Gray

Navy Gray PDF

Author: Maxine T. Turner

Publisher: Mercer University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9780865546424

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The story of the Confederate Navy been told less often than the spectacular history of the armies, but many of the familiar elements are there: the exuberant hopes of the Confederacy, the risk in spite of very long odds against success, the basic deficits in resources becoming desperate needs, and the dogged, exhausted persistence in the face of certain defeat. The story is epic in its importance to a nation and a people. New strategies and developing technology, however, introduce new elements into this story of the Civil War. The officers and men of the Confederate Navy were defeated at every turn by a national policy and a local tangle of political, economic, and social issues. Southern officers resigned their Union Navy commissions to fight for principle -- and soon found themselves enmeshed in construction schedules and bureaucratic delays. All too often, naval officers on both sides found themselves engaged in what is now termed "modern warfare". In this story of the Civil War, the phrase "arms and the man" begins to take on the contemporary ring of man and machine and man within and against the system.

Frederick Law Olmsted: Writings on Landscape, Culture, and Society

Frederick Law Olmsted: Writings on Landscape, Culture, and Society PDF

Author: Frederick Law Olmsted

Publisher: Library of America

Published: 2016-01-05

Total Pages: 822

ISBN-13: 1598534602

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The biggest and best single-volume collection ever published of the fascinating and wide-ranging writings of a vitally important nineteenth century cultural figure whose work continues to shape our world today. Seaman, farmer, abolitionist, journalist, administrator, reformer, conservationist, and without question America’s foremost landscape architect and urban planner, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) was a man of unusually diverse talents and interests, and the arc of his life and writings traces the most significant developments of nineteenth century American history. As this volume reveals, the wide-ranging endeavors Olmsted was involved in—cofounding The Nation magazine, advocating against slavery, serving as executive secretary to the United States Sanitary Commission (precursor to the Red Cross) during the Civil War, championing the preservation of America’s great wild places at Yosemite and Yellowstone—emerged from his steadfast commitment to what he called “communitiveness,” the impulse to serve the needs of one’s fellow citizens. This philosophy had its ultimate expression is his brilliant designs for some of the country’s most beloved public spaces: New York’s Central Park, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Boston’s “Emerald Necklace,” the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, garden suburbs like Chicago’s Riverside, parkways (a term he invented) and college campuses, the “White City” of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, and many others. Gathering almost 100 original letters, newspaper dispatches, travel sketches, essays, editorials, design proposals, official reports, reflections on aesthetics, and autobiographical reminiscences, this deluxe Library of America volume is profusely illustrated with a 32-page color portfolio of Olmsted’s design sketches, architectural plans, and contemporary photographs. It also includes detailed explanatory notes and a chronology of Olmsted’s life and design projects. From the Hardcover edition.