Call Number: MAC New Titles - Main Level GE160.N7 L44 2017
Publication Date: 2017
The Land Speaks explores the intersections of two vibrant fields, oral history and environmental studies. The pieces range North America, examining wilderness and cities, farms and forests, rivers and arid lands. The authors argue that oral history can capture communication from the land and serve as a tool for environmental problem solving. Essays include transcript excerpts and photographs, and address issues as diverse as climate change, pollution, animal encounters, and firefighting
Books
The Botany of Desire by Michael PollanWhat Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates in The Botany of Desire is that people and domesticated plant species have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship, a relationship that is just as common and essential to the way nature works. In this utterly original narrative that blends history, memoir, and the best science writing, Pollan tells the story of four domesticated species-the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato-from the point of view of the plants. All four species are deeply woven into the fabric of our everyday lives, and Pollan illustrates how each has evolved a survival strategy based on satisfying one of humankind's most basic desires. The apple gratifies our taste for sweetness; the tulip attracts us with its beauty; marijuana offers intoxication; and the genetically modified potato gives us a sense of control over nature. And just as we've benefited from these plants, the plants, in the grand coevolutionary scheme that Pollan so brilliantly evokes, have done remarkably well by us.
Call Number: QK46.5.H85 P66 2001
Publication Date: 2001
The Burden of Southern History by C. Vann Woodward; William E. Leuchtenburg (Foreword by)C. Vann Woodward's The Burden of Southern History remains one of the essential history texts of our time. In it Woodward brilliantly addresses the interrelated themes of southern identity, southern published in 1960, the book quickly became a touchstone for generations of students. The third edition contains a chapter, "Look Away, Look Away," in which Woodward finds a plethora of additional ironies in the South's experience. It also includes previously uncollected appreciations of Robert Penn Warren, to whom the book was originally dedicated, and William Faulkner. This updated third edition also features a new foreword by historian William E. Leuchtenburg in which he recounts the events that led up to Woodward's writing The Burden of Southern History, and reflects on the book's?and Woodward's--place in the study of southern history. The Burden of Southern History is quintessential Woodward--wise, witty, ruminative, daring, and as alive in the twenty-first century as when it was written
Call Number: eBook
Publication Date: 2008
Changes in the Land, Revised Edition by William Cronon (Afterword by); John Demos (Foreword by)[This book offers an] interpretation of the changing circumstances in New England's plant and animal communities that occurred with the shift from Indian to European dominance. [In the book, the author] constructs [an] interdisciplinary analysis of how the land and the people influenced one another, and how that complex web of relationships shaped New England's communities.
Call Number: MAC Stacks - Level 4 GF504.N45 C76 2003
Publication Date: 2003
The Columbia Guide to American Environmental History by Carolyn MerchantHow and why have Americans living at particular times and places used and transformed their environment? How have political systems dealt with conflicts over resources and conservation? This is the only major reference work to explore all the major themes and debates of the burgeoning field of environmental history. Humanity ́s relationship with the natural world is one of the oldest and newest topics in human history. The issue emerged as a distinct field of scholarship in the early 1970s and has been growing steadily ever since. The discipline ́s territory and sources are rich and varied.
The Embers and the Stars by Erazim KohákThe Quest of this volume is one of recalling what we have thus hidden from ourselves. It is a philosopher's book, deeply indebted to the cultural heritage of three millennia of Western thought. It is also a book of philosophy, though in a sense far older than the current acceptation of that term. In a technological age, philosophy, too tends to convince itself as a techne
Call Number: eBook
Publication Date: 1987
The Eye of the Crocodile by Val PlumbwoodVal Plumwood was an eminent environmental philosopher and activist who was prominent in the development of radical ecophilosophy from the early 1970s until her death in 2008. Her book Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1992) has become a classic. In 1985 she was attacked by a crocodile while kayaking alone in the Kakadu national park in the Northern Territory. She was death rolled three times before being released from the crocodile's jaws. She crawled for hours through swamp with appalling injuries before being rescued. The experience made her well placed to write about cultural responses to death and predation. The first section of The Eye of the Crocodile consists of chapters intended for a book on crocodiles that remained unfinished at the time of Val's death. The remaining chapters are previously published papers brought together to form an overview of Val's ideas on death, predation and nature.
Call Number: eBook
Publication Date: 2012
Governing the Commons by Elinor OstromThe governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom uses institutional analysis to explore different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the 'tragedy of the commons' argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries
Call Number: MAC Stacks - Level 4 HQ1121 .H46 2003
Publication Date: 2003
A History of Environmental Politics since 1945 by Samuel P. HaysA History of Environmental Politics Since 1945 develops a comprehensive perspective on environmental affairs in the United States during the last third of the twentieth century for the specialist, the general public, and the student. Sam Hays's depth of knowledge and high level of insight will inform both those who are environmental experts and those who wish to take a first step at grasping the intricacies of environmental politics. And it constitutes a formative guide to a subject that promises to engage the nation even more fully in the twenty-first century.
Call Number: MAC Stacks - Level 4 GE180 .H392 2000
Publication Date: 2000
The Hunter's Game by Louis S. WarrenThis book takes a new look at the angry struggles between American conservationists and local hunters since the rise of wildlife conservation at the end of the 1800s. From Italian immigrants in Pennsylvania to rural settlers and Indians in New Mexico to Blackfeet in Montana, local hunters' traditions of using wildlife have clashed with conservationist ideas of "proper" hunting for over a century. Louis Warren contends that these conflicts arose from deep social divisions and that the bitter history of conservation offers a new narrative for the history of the American West. At the heart of western - and American - history, Warren argues, is the transformation of many local resources, like wildlife, into "public goods," or "national commons.". The Hunter's Game reveals that early wildlife conservation was driven not by heroic idealism, but by the interests of recreational hunters and the tourist industry. As American wildlife populations declined at the end of the nineteenth century, elite, urban sportsmen began to lobby for game laws that would restrict the customary hunting practices of immigrants, Indians, and other local hunters.
Call Number: Available MAC Stacks - Level 3 SK41 .W37 1997
Publication Date: 1999
Hunting Tradition in a Changing World by Ann Fienup-The Yupiit in southwestern Alaska are members of the larger family of Inuit cultures. Including more than 20,000 individuals in seventy villages, the Yupiit continue to engage in traditional hunting activities, carefully following the seasonal shifts in the environment they know so well. During the twentieth century, especially after the construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, the Yup'ik people witnessed and experienced explosive cultural changes. Anthropologist Ann Fienup-Riordan explores how these subarctic hunters engage in a "hunt" for history, to make connections within their own communities and between them and the larger world. She turns to the Yupiit themselves, joining her essays with eloquent narratives by individual Yupiit, which illuminate their hunting traditions in their own words. To highlight the ongoing process of cultural negotiation, Fienup-Riordan provides vivid examples: How the Yupiit use metaphor to teach both themselves and others about their past and present lives; how they maintain their cultural identity, even while moving away from native villages; and how they worked with museums in the "Lower 48" on an exhibition of Yup'ik ceremonial masks. Ann Fienup-Riordan has published many books on Yup'ik history and oral tradition, including Eskimo Essays: Yup'ik Lives and How We See Them, The Living Tradition of Yup'ik Masks and Boundaries and Passages. She has lived with and written about the Yupiit for twenty-five years.
Call Number: MAC Stacks - Level 4 E99.E7 F464 2000
Publication Date: 2000
Mockingbird Song by Jack Temple KirbyJack Temple Kirby offers a personal and passionate recounting of the centuries-old human-nature relationship in the South. In a narrative voice marked by the intimacy and enthusiasm of a storyteller, Kirby explores all of the South's peoples and their landscapeshow humans have used, yielded, or manipulated varying environments and how they have treated forests, water, and animals. Citing history, literature, and cinematic portrayals along the way, Kirby also relates how southerners have thought about their part of Earthas a source of both sustenance and delight.
Call Number: eBook
Publication Date: 2008
Oral History and Public Memories by Paula Hamilton (Editor); Linda Shopes (Editor)Oral History and Public Memories is the first book to explore the relationship between the well-established practice of oral history and the burgeoning field of memory studies. In the past, oral historians have generally privileged the individual narrator, frequently fetishizing the interview process without fully understanding that interviews are only one form of memory-making. Historians engaged in memory studies, on the other hand, have asked broader questions -- about the social and cultural processes at work in remembrance, for example. What distinguishes these essays from much work in oral history is their focus not on the experiences of individual narrators, but on the broader cultural meanings of oral history narratives. What distinguishes them from other work in memory studies is their grounding in real events. Taken together, these contributions explain the processes by which oral histories move beyond interviews with individual people to become articulated memories shared by others.
Call Number: MAC Stacks - Level 4 D16.14 .O735 2008
Publication Date: 2008
The Organic Machine by Richard WhiteIn The Organic Machine, Richard White, a distinguished historian and leading scholar of the American West, explores the intimate relationship between nature and mankind along the Columbia River. Working on the cutting edge of environmental and social history, White demonstrates how, over the centuries, both native peoples and settlers have continually remade the river, treating it as a machine designed to churn out energy and sustenance. He assesses the impact on the Northwest ecology of enterprises that have marked the river's history, from salmon fishing to the Hanford Energy Works nuclear plant, and eloquently reveals the insights and illusions of those who work with the river.
Call Number: MAC Stacks - Level 4 F853 .W675 1995
Publication Date: 1996
Oyster Wars and the Public Trust by Bonnie J. McCayWho owns tidal waters? Are oyster beds common holdings or private property? Questions first raised in colonial New Jersey helped shape American law by giving rise to the public trust doctrine. Today that concept plays a critical role in public advocacy and environmental law." "Bonnie McCay now puts that doctrine in perspective by tracing the history of attempts to defend common resources against privatization. She tells of conflicts in New Jersey communities over the last two centuries: how fishermen dependent on common-use rights employed poaching, piracy, and test cases to protect their stake in tidal resources, and how oyster planters whose businesses depended on the enclosure of marine commons engineered test cases of their own to seek protection for their claims." "McCay presents some of the most significant cases relating to fishing and waterfront development, describing how the oyster wars were fought on the waters and in the courtrooms - and how the public trust doctrine was sometimes reinterpreted to support private interests. She explores the events and people behind the proceedings and addresses the legal, social, and ecological issues these cases represent
Call Number: MAC Stacks - Level 3 PS3569.N88 P7 1990
Publication Date: 1990
Preserving Nature in the National Parks by Richard W. SellarsThis book traces the epic clash of values between traditional scenery-and-tourism management and emerging ecological concepts in the national parks, America's most treasured landscapes. It spans the period from the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 to near the present, analyzing the management of fires, predators, elk, bear, and other natural phenomena in parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Great Smoky Mountains.
Call Number: MAC Stacks - Level 3 SB482.A4 S44 1997
Publication Date: 1997
Reclaiming American Cities by Rutherford H. PlattFor most of the past century, urban America was dominated by top-down policies serving the white business and cultural elite, the suburbs, and the automobile. At times these approaches were fiercely challenged by reformers such as Jane Addams and Jane Jacobs. Yet by the 1980s, mainstream policies had resulted in a nation of ravaged central cities, sprawling suburbs, social and economic polarization, and incalculable environmental damage. In the 1990s, this entrenched model finally yielded to change as local citizens, neighborhood groups, and other stakeholders, empowered by a spate of new laws and policies, began asserting their own needs and priorities. Though hampered by fiscal crises and internal disagreements, these popular initiatives launched what the author terms a new era of humane urbanism marked by a determination to make cities and suburbs greener, healthier, safer, more equitable, more efficient, and generally more people-friendly. In the process, the mayors, architects, engineers, and bureaucrats who had previously dominated urban policy found themselves relegated to supporting roles. As Rutherford H. Platt points out, humane urbanism can take many forms, from affordable housing and networks of bike paths to refurbished waterfronts and urban farms. Often spontaneous, low-tech, and self-sustaining programs, their shared goal is to connect people to one another and to bring nature back into the city. Reclaiming American Cities examines both sides of this historic transformation: the long struggle against patricians and technocrats of earlier decades and the recent sprouting of grassroots efforts to make metropolitan America more humane and sustainable.
Call Number: MAC Stacks - Level 4 HT384.U5 P55 2014
Publication Date: 2013
Reclaiming the Commons by Brian DonahueThis book is a lively account of a community working to combat suburban sprawl, to protect a large part of the landscape as common land, and to enjoy the land productively in an ecologically sustainable way, Based on the practical experience of one New England town, the book urges suburban environmentalists to go beyond preserving open space to actively engaging people with the places where they live
Call Number: MAC Stacks - Level 4 HD1289.U6 D66 1999
The Sea Around Us by Rachel CarsonOriginally published in 1951, The Sea Around Us remains one of the most enduringly influential and beloved books ever written about the natural world. It has inspired generations of readers - future scientists among them - with its combination of insight and poetry. One of them was Sylvia Earle, a pioneer of deep-sea exploration and research, who introduces this new edition. For Earle and countless other readers, Carson's power lies in giving her readers the sense that "she was the living ocean, flowing in a continuously changing dance through time with islands and continents, the sea floor below, the skies above
Walden (with Introductions by Bradford Torrey and Raymond MacDonald Alden) by Henry D. Thoreau; Bradford Torrey (Introduction by); Raymond MacDonald Alden (Introduction by)One of the most influential and compelling books in American literature, Walden is a vivid account of the years that Henry D. Thoreau spent alone in a secluded cabin at Walden Pond. This edition--introduced by noted American writer John Updike--celebrates the perennial importance of a classic work, originally published in 1854. Much of Walden's material is derived from Thoreau's journals and contains such engaging pieces from the lively "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" and "Brute Neighbors" to the serene "Reading" and "The Pond in the Winter." Other famous sections involve Thoreau's visits with a Canadian woodcutter and with an Irish family, a trip to Concord, and a description of his bean field. This is the complete and authoritative text of Walden--as close to Thoreau's original intention as all available evidence allows. This is the authoritative text of Walden and the ideal presentation of Thoreau's great document of social criticism and dissent.
Call Number: MAC Stacks - Level 3 PS3048 .A1 1971
Publication Date: 2015
When Species Meet by Donna J. HarawayWhen Species Meet is a breathtaking meditation on the intersection between humankind and dog, philosophy and science, and macro and micro cultures."--Cameron Woo, Publisher of Bark magazine In 2006, about 69 million U.S. households had pets, giving homes to around 73.9 million dogs, 90.5 million cats, and 16.6 million birds, and spending over $38 billion dollars on companion animals. As never before in history, our pets are truly members of the family. But the notion of "companion species"--knotted from human beings, animals and other organisms, landscapes, and technologies--includes much more than "companion animals." In When Species Meet, Donna J. Haraway digs into this larger phenomenon to contemplate the interactions of humans with many kinds of critters, especially with those called domestic. At the heart of the book are her experiences in agility training with her dogs Cayenne and Roland, but Haraway's vision here also encompasses wolves, chickens, cats, baboons, sheep, microorganisms, and whales wearing video cameras. From designer pets to lab animals to trained therapy dogs, she deftly explores philosophical, cultural, and biological aspects of animal-human encounters. In this deeply personal yet intellectually groundbreaking work, Haraway develops the idea of companion species, those who meet and break bread together but not without some indigestion. "A great deal is at stake in such meetings," she writes, "and outcomes are not guaranteed. There is no assured happy or unhappy ending--socially, ecologically, or scientifically. There is only the chance for getting on together with some grace." Ultimately, she finds that respect, curiosity, and knowledge spring from animal-human associations and work powerfully against ideas about human exceptionalism. One of the founders of the posthumanities, Donna J. Haraway is professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Author of many books and widely read essays, including The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness and the now-classic essay "The Cyborg Manifesto," she received the J.D. Bernal Prize in 2000, a lifetime achievement award from the Society for Social Studies in Science
Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Frazier NashA study of America's changing attitude toward wilderness, discussing efforts to protect the Alaskan wilderness, trends in wilderness management, and the international perspective.
Call Number: MAC Stacks - Level 4 GE150 .N365 2001