Showing 1–12 of 904 results
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Ocean Outbreak: Confronting the Rising Tide of Marine Disease
Artist/Author: Harvell, Drew$60.00 Add to cartThere is a growing crisis in our oceans as rates of infectious disease outbreaks are on the rise. Marine epidemics have the potential to cause a mass die-off of wildlife from the bottom to the top of the food chain, impacting the health of ocean ecosystems as well as lives on land. Ocean outbreaks are a sentinel of an impending global environmental disaster, fueled by sewage dumping, unregulated aquaculture, and drifting plastic in a warming ocean.
Ocean Outbreak follows renowned scientist Drew Harvell and her colleagues as they investigate how four iconic marine animals—corals, abalone, salmon, and starfish—have been devastated by disease. Based on over twenty years of research, this firsthand account of the sometimes creeping, sometimes exploding impact of disease outbreaks on our ocean’s biodiversity ends with a hopeful message. Through policy changes and the implementation of innovative solutions from nature, we can reduce major outbreaks, save some ocean ecosystems, and protect our fragile environment.
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A Sea of Glass: Searching for the Blaschkas’ Fragile Legacy in an Ocean at Risk
Artist/Author: Harvell, Drew$50.00 Add to cartIt started with a glass octopus. Dusty, broken, and all but forgotten, it caught Drew Harvell’s eye. Fashioned in intricate detail by the father-son glassmaking team of Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, the octopus belonged to a menagerie of unusual marine creatures that had been packed away for decades in a Corning Museum of Glass storage unit. More than 150 years earlier, the Blaschkas had been captivated by marine invertebrates and spun their likenesses into glass, documenting the life of oceans untouched by climate change and human impacts. Inspired by the Blaschkas’ uncanny replicas, Harvell set out in search of their living counterparts. In A Sea of Glass, she recounts this journey of a lifetime, taking readers along as she dives beneath the ocean’s surface to a rarely seen world, revealing the surprising and unusual biology of some of the most ancient animals on the tree of life. On the way, we glimpse a century of change in our ocean ecosystems and learn which of the living matches for the Blaschkas’ creations are, indeed, as fragile as glass.
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The Fifth Beginning: What Six Million Years of Human History Can Tell Us About Our Future
Artist/Author: Kelly, Robert L.$36.00 Add to cart“I have seen yesterday. I know tomorrow.” This inscription in Tutankhamun’s tomb summarizes The Fifth Beginning. Here, archaeologist Robert L. Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity.
In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author examines the long-term processes that resulted in a definitive, no-turning-back change for the organization of society. Kelly then looks ahead, giving us evidence for what he calls a fifth beginning, one that started about AD 1500. Some might call it “globalization”, but the author places it in its larger context: a five-thousand-year arms race, capitalism’s global reach, and the cultural effects of a worldwide communication network.
Kelly predicts that the emergent phenomena of this fifth beginning will include the end of war as a viable way to resolve disputes, the end of capitalism as we know it, the widespread shift toward world citizenship, and the rise of forms of cooperation that will end the near-sacred status of nation-states. It’s the end of life as we have known it. However, the author is cautiously optimistic: he dwells not on the coming chaos, but on humanity’s great potential.
Contents:
1. The End of the World as We Know It
2. How Archaeologists Think
3. Sticks and Stones: The Beginning of Technology
4. Beads and Stories: The Beginning of Culture
5. Bread and Beer: The Beginning of Agriculture
6. Kings and Chains: The Beginning of the State
7. Nothing Lasts Forever: The Fifth Beginning -
The Environment: A History of the Idea
Artist/Author: Warde, Paul, Libby Robin, Sverker Sörlin$65.00 Add to cartIs it possible for the economy to grow without the environment being destroyed? Will our lifestyles impoverish the planet of our children and grandchildren? Is the world sick? Can it be healed? Less than a lifetime ago, these questions would have made no sense. This was not because our ancestors had no impact on nature – nor because they were unaware of the serious damage they had done. What people lacked was an idea: a way of imagining the web of interconnection and consequence of which the natural world is made. Without this notion, we didn’t have a way to describe the scale and scope of human impact upon nature. This idea was “the environment”.
In this fascinating book, Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin trace the emergence of the concept of the environment following World War II, a period characterized by both hope for a new global order and fear of humans’ capacity for almost limitless destruction. It was at this moment that a new idea and a new narrative about the planet-wide impact of people’s behaviour emerged, closely allied to anxieties for the future. Now we had a vocabulary for talking about how we were changing nature: resource exhaustion and energy, biodiversity, pollution, and – eventually – climate change.
With the rise of “the environment”, the authors argue, came new expertise, making certain kinds of knowledge crucial to understanding the future of our planet. The untold history of how people came to conceive, to manage, and to dispute environmental crisis, The Environment: A History of the Idea is essential reading for anyone who wants to help protect the environment from the numerous threats it faces today.
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Extreme Conservation: Life at the Edges of the World
Artist/Author: Berger, Joel (Author), John G Robinson (Foreword By)$70.00 Add to cartOn the Tibetan Plateau, there are wild yaks with blood cells thinner than horses’ by half, enabling the endangered yaks to survive at 40 below zero and in the lowest oxygen levels of the mountaintops. But climate change is causing the snow patterns here to shift, and with the snows, the entire ecosystem. Food and water are vaporizing in this warming environment, and these beasts of ice and thin air are extraordinarily ill-equipped. A journey into some of the most forbidding landscapes on earth, Joel Berger’s Extreme Conservation is an eye-opening, steely look at what it takes for animals like these to live at the edges of existence. But more than this, it is a revealing exploration of how climate change and people are affecting even the most far-flung niches of our planet.
Berger’s quest to understand these creatures’ struggles takes him to some of the most remote corners and peaks of the globe: across Arctic tundra and the frozen Chukchi Sea to study muskoxen, into the Bhutanese Himalayas to follow the rarely-sighted takin, and through the Gobi Desert to track the proboscis-swinging saiga. Known as much for his rigorous, scientific methods of developing solutions to conservation challenges as for his penchant for donning moose and polar bear costumes to understand the mindsets of his subjects more closely, Berger is a guide bar none. He is a scientist and storyteller who has made his life working with desert nomads, in zones that typically require Sherpas and oxygen canisters. Recounting animals as charismatic as their landscapes are extreme, Berger’s unforgettable tale carries us with humor and expertise to the ends of the earth and back. But as his adventures show, the more adapted a species has become to its particular ecological niche, the more devastating climate change can be. Life at the extremes is more challenging than ever, and the need for action, for solutions, has never been greater.
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Great Walks of New Zealand
Artist/Author: Potton, Craig with Shaun Barnett$62.00 Add to cartGreat Walks of New Zealand is a tribute to New Zealand’s eight finest walking tracks, by renowned wilderness photographer Craig Potton. Based on the best-selling Classic Walks of New Zealand, this book has been updated and revised to focus on New Zealand’s Great Walks, a reflection of the international prominence these tracks now rightly enjoy.
Tracks included are Stewart Island’s Rakiura Track, the Kepler Track, the Milford Track, the Routeburn Track, the Heaphy Track, the Abel Tasman Coast Track, the Tongariro Northern Circuit Great Walk, and the Lake Waikaremona Track in Te Urewera.
With 3D overview maps from Geographx and up-to-date track information, Great Walks of New Zealand combines words and photographs to rekindle memories of past trips, and to inspire readers to new experiences on these magnificent tracks.
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Pathway of the Birds: The Voyaging Achievements of Māori and Their Polynesian Ancestors
Artist/Author: Crowe, Andrew$62.00 Add to cartThis book tells of one of the most expansive and rapid phases of human migration in prehistory, a period during which Polynesians reached and settled nearly every archipelago scattered across some 28 million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean, an area now known as East Polynesia.
Through an engaging narrative and over 400 maps, diagrams, photographs, and illustrations, Crowe conveys some of the skills, innovation, resourcefulness, and courage of the people that drove this extraordinary feat of maritime expansion.
In this masterful work, Andrew Crowe integrates a diversity of research and viewpoints in a format that is both accessible to the lay reader and required reading for any serious scholar of this fascinating region.
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Te Taiao: Maori and the Natural World
Artist/Author: Bateman, David$63.00 Add to cartIn traditional Maori knowledge, the weather, birds, fish and trees, sun and moon are related to each other, and to the people of the land, the tangata whenua. It is truly an interconnected world – a vast family of which humans are children of the earth and sky, and cousins to all living things. In this richly illustrated book, Maori scholars and writers share the traditional knowledge passed down the generations by word of mouth. It provides a unique window on the relationship of the people of New Zealand with their environment, as well as the profound knowledge and necessary skills they needed to survive there. How did Maori describe and predict the weather, use the moon as a guide for successful fishing and planting, and celebrate Matariki, the Maori New Year? How did they describe and move about their environment, and survive. Discover forest lore and traditional uses of forest plants, how Maori hunted moa, harvested birds, fish and shellfish, and cultivated plants they bought with them from Polynesia.
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The People of Budj Bim
Artist/Author: Wettenhall, Gib, contributions from the Gunditjmara people$28.00 Add to cartIn 2009, carbon dating found that a fishtrap system at Lake Condah in south-west Victoria was an incredible 6,700 years old. Constructed by the Gunditjmara people, it is one of five sophisticated fishtrap systems that were built around the lake’s edge. A permanent supply of freshwater and abundant eels, fish and water plants meant the Gunditjmara led a settled life there – an experience without parallel among Aboriginal societies and landscapes in Australia. The People of Budj Bim brings to life the amazing, unknown story about their traditional eel aquaculture systems and associated stone house settlements, once dotted throughout the lakes, streams and ponds on the Mt Eccles lava flow in south-west Victoria. Known as the Budj Bim landscape, it was the setting for what Robbery Under Arms author, Rolf Boldrewood, called the Eumeralla War, a six year battle fought by Gunditjmara clans against squatters taking over their land. Budj Bim was the first Indigenous landscape to gain National Heritage listing in 2004.
The full colour book with images throughout provides an accessible, plain English introduction to the Budj Bim landscape and its Indigenous history
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The People of Gariwerd: The Grampians’ Aboriginal Heritage
Artist/Author: Wettenhall, Gib$28.00 Add to cartThe People of Gariwerd draws on a new interpretation of the Grampian region’s archaeology by La Trobe University and Aboriginal Affairs Victoria in collaboration with Gariwerd’s Aboriginal communities. It tells how Aboriginal people have maintained an intense and unbroken relationship with the peaks and plains of Gariwerd since the last Ice Age to the present day. It recounts how, in the eons prior to European settlement, they lived together, managed the land, and used the landscape as a map telling them how to live. With over 120 rock art sites catalogued, the Gariwerd-Grampians ranges have a richer and more diverse record of Aboriginal occupation than any other place in southeastern Australia.
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The Place for a Village: How Nature Has Shaped the City of Melbourne
Artist/Author: Presland, Gary$40.00 Add to cartForgotten landscapes and erased eco-systems are brought to life by Gary Presland who so eloquently reconstructs Melbourne at the time of European settlement. He looks at the history of Melbourne from the point of view of nature and considers the ways that urban development has been influenced by the nature of local environments. Gary Presland shows how natural landscapes have influenced the contours of the city and how we, in turn, have altered them. He draws on both historical and scientific sources to create a detailed and fascinating picture of diverse landscapes, supporting an enormous range of flora and fauna.
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Traditional Healers of Central Australia: Ngangkari
Artist/Author: NPY Women's Council Aboriginal Corporation$50.00 Add to cartTraditional Healers of the Central Desert contains unique stories and imagery and primary source material: the ngangkari speak directly to the reader. Ngangkari are senior Aboriginal people authorised to speak publicly about Anangu (Western Desert language speaking Aboriginal people) culture and practices. It is accurate, authorised information about their work, in their own words.The practice of traditional healing is still very much a part of contemporary Aboriginal society. The ngangkari currently employed at NPY Women’s Council deliver treatments to people across a tri-state region of about 350,000 sq km, in more than 25 communities in SA, WA, and NT. Acknowledged, respected, and accepted, these ngangkari work collaboratively with hospitals and health professionals even beyond this region, working hand-in-hand with Western medical practitioners.
