Download or read book Agrotopias written by Abby L. Goode and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2022-08-24 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Abby L. Goode reveals the foundations of American environmentalism and the enduring partnership between racism, eugenics, and agrarian ideals in the United States. Throughout the nineteenth century, writers as diverse as Martin Delany, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Walt Whitman worried about unsustainable conditions such as population growth and plantation slavery. In response, they imagined agrotopias—sustainable societies unaffected by the nation's agricultural and population crises—elsewhere. Though seemingly progressive, these agrotopian visions depicted selective breeding and racial "improvement" as the path to environmental stability. In this fascinating study, Goode uncovers an early sustainability rhetoric interested in shaping, just as much as sustaining, the American population. Showing how ideas about race and reproduction were central to early sustainability thinking, Goode unearths an alternative environmental archive that ranges from gothic novels to Black nationalist manifestos, from Waco, Texas, to the West Indies, from city tenements to White House kitchen gardens. Exposing the eugenic foundations of some of our most well-regarded environmental traditions, this book compels us to reexamine the benevolence of American environmental thought.

Download or read book The Rich Earth between Us written by Shelby Johnson and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2024-03-01 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this theory-rich study, Shelby Johnson analyzes the works of Black and Indigenous writers in the Atlantic World, examining how their literary production informs "modes of being" that confronted violent colonial times. Johnson particularly assesses how these authors connected to places—whether real or imagined—and how those connections enabled them to make worlds in spite of the violence of slavery and settler colonialism. Johnson engages with works written in a period engulfed by the extraordinary political and social upheavals of the Age of Revolution and Indian Removal, and these texts—which include not only sermons, life writing, and periodicals but also descriptions of embodied and oral knowledge, as well as material objects—register defiance to land removal and other forms of violence. In studying writers of color during this era, Johnson probes the histories of their lived environment and of the earth itself—its limits, its finite resources, and its metaphoric mortality—in a way that offers new insights on what it means to imagine sustainable connections to the ground on which we walk.

Download or read book The Farmer the Gastronome and the Chef written by Daniel J. Philippon and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2024-08-15 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The role of food writing in the sustainable food movement At turns heartfelt and witty, accessible and engaging, The Farmer, the Gastronome, and the Chef explores how Wendell Berry, Carlo Petrini, and Alice Waters have changed America’s relationship with food over the past fifty years. Daniel Philippon weighs the legacy of each of these writers and activists while planting and harvesting vegetables in central Wisconsin, speaking with growers and food producers in northern Italy, and visiting with chefs and restaurateurs in southeastern France. Following Berry, Petrini, and Waters in pursuit of his own “ideal meal,” Philippon considers what a sustainable food system might look like and what role writing can play in making it a reality. Warning of the dangers of “agristalgia,” Philippon instead advocates for a diverse set of practices he calls “elemental cooking,” which would define sustainable food from farm to table, while also acknowledging the importance of seeking social justice throughout the food system. A rigorous yet generous appraisal of three central figures in the sustainable food movement, The Farmer, the Gastronome, and the Chef demonstrates how the written word has the power to change our world for the better, one ideal meal at a time.

Download or read book Ants written by Eleanor Spicer Rice and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature’s most successful insects captured in remarkable macrophotography In Ants, photographer Eduard Florin Niga brings us incredibly close to the most numerous animals on Earth, whose ability to organize colonies, communicate among themselves, and solve complex problems has made them an object of endless fascination. Among the more than 30 species photographed by Niga are leafcutters that grow fungus for food, trap-jaw ants with fearsome mandibles, bullet ants with potent stingers, warriors, drivers, gliders, harvesters, and the pavement ants that are always underfoot. Among his most memorable images are portraits—including queens, workers, soldiers, and rarely seen males—that bring the reader face-to-face with these creatures whose societies are eerily like our own. Science writer Eleanor Spicer Rice frames the book with a lively text that describes the life cycle of ants and explains how each species is adapted to its way of life. Ants is a great introduction to some of the Earth’s most successful creatures that showcases the power of photography to reveal the unseen world all around us.

Download or read book Radical Sewing written by Kate Weiss and published by Microcosm Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Radical Sewing is a guide for learning how to make your own clothes. Kate introduces you to the basics and best practices of garment sewing for yourself at home, as well as advice and info on things you wouldn’t even know to ask about sewing. Topics include hand sewing, picking out a sewing machine, adding pockets to anything, sewing a button so it stays on, altering your clothes to fit your unique body, and so much more! Regardless of your sewing experience, gender, or body type, this illustrated guide will empower you to make your wardrobe your own. With loads of encouragement to try things out, all you’ll need to do is experiment and break the rules to create the clothes and outfits that you want to wear.

Download or read book Rebuilding the Foodshed written by Philip Ackerman-Leist and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Droves of people have turned to local food as a way to retreat from our broken industrial food system. From rural outposts to city streets, they are sowing, growing, selling, and eating food produced close to home—and they are crying out for agricultural reform. All this has made "local food" into everything from a movement buzzword to the newest darling of food trendsters. But now it's time to take the conversation to the next level. That's exactly what Philip Ackerman-Leist does in Rebuilding the Foodshed, in which he refocuses the local-food lens on the broad issue of rebuilding regional food systems that can replace the destructive aspects of industrial agriculture, meet food demands affordably and sustainably, and be resilient enough to endure potentially rough times ahead. Changing our foodscapes raises a host of questions. How far away is local? How do you decide the size and geography of a regional foodshed? How do you tackle tough issues that plague food systems large and small—issues like inefficient transportation, high energy demands, and rampant food waste? How do you grow what you need with minimum environmental impact? And how do you create a foodshed that's resilient enough if fuel grows scarce, weather gets more severe, and traditional supply chains are hampered? Showcasing some of the most promising, replicable models for growing, processing, and distributing sustainably grown food, this book points the reader toward the next stages of the food revolution. It also covers the full landscape of the burgeoning local-food movement, from rural to suburban to urban, and from backyard gardens to large-scale food enterprises.

Download or read book The Lives of Bees written by Thomas D. Seeley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seeley, a world authority on honey bees, sheds light on why wild honey bees are still thriving while those living in managed colonies are in crisis. Drawing on the latest science as well as insights from his own pioneering fieldwork, he describes in extraordinary detail how honey bees live in nature and shows how this differs significantly from their lives under the management of beekeepers. Seeley presents an entirely new approach to beekeeping--Darwinian Beekeeping--which enables honey bees to use the toolkit of survival skills their species has acquired over the past thirty million years, and to evolve solutions to the new challenges they face today. He shows beekeepers how to use the principles of natural selection to guide their practices, and he offers a new vision of how beekeeping can better align with the natural habits of honey bees.

Download or read book Navigating CHamoru Poetry written by Craig Santos Perez and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, Navigating CHamoru Poetry focuses on Indigenous CHamoru (Chamorro) poetry from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). In this book, poet and scholar Craig Santos Perez navigates the complex relationship between CHamoru poetry, cultural identity, decolonial politics, diasporic migrations, and native aesthetics.

Download or read book We the Dead written by Brian Michael Murphy and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2022-05-16 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Locked away in refrigerated vaults, sanitized by gas chambers, and secured within bombproof caverns deep under mountains are America's most prized materials: the ever-expanding collection of records that now accompany each of us from birth to death. This data complex backs up and protects our most vital information against decay and destruction, and yet it binds us to corporate and government institutions whose power is also preserved in its bunkers, infrastructures, and sterilized spaces. We the Dead traces the emergence of the data complex in the early twentieth century and guides readers through its expansion in a series of moments when Americans thought they were living just before the end of the world. Depression-era eugenicists feared racial contamination and the downfall of the white American family, while contemporary technologists seek ever denser and more durable materials for storing data, from microetched metal discs to cryptocurrency keys encoded in synthetic DNA. Artfully written and packed with provocative ideas, this haunting book illuminates the dark places of the data complex and the ways it increasingly blurs the lines between human and machine, biological body and data body, life and digital afterlife.

Download or read book Redesigning Higher Education written by Donald Birx and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 2020-03-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Redesigning Higher Education: Systemic Integration and Cluster-Based Learning tells the story of ongoing organizational transformation grounded in holistic integration with student-centered decision-making at Plymouth State University.

Download or read book Laws of the State of New Hampshire Passed June Session 1874 written by Anonymous and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-10-17 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.

Download or read book Taming Manhattan written by Catherine McNeur and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-03 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Perkins Marsh Prize, American Society for Environmental History VSNY Book Award, New York Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America Hornblower Award for a First Book, New York Society Library James Broussard Best First Book Prize, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic With pigs roaming the streets and cows foraging in the Battery, antebellum Manhattan would have been unrecognizable to inhabitants of today’s sprawling metropolis. Fruits and vegetables came from small market gardens in the city, and manure piled high on streets and docks was gold to nearby farmers. But as Catherine McNeur reveals in this environmental history of Gotham, a battle to control the boundaries between city and country was already being waged, and the winners would take dramatic steps to outlaw New York’s wild side. “[A] fine book which make[s] a real contribution to urban biography.” —Joseph Rykwert, Times Literary Supplement “Tells an odd story in lively prose...The city McNeur depicts in Taming Manhattan is the pestiferous obverse of the belle epoque city of Henry James and Edith Wharton that sits comfortably in many imaginations...[Taming Manhattan] is a smart book that engages in the old fashioned business of trying to harvest lessons for the present from the past.” —Alexander Nazaryan, New York Times

Download or read book Ecospatiality written by Lowell Wyse and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "John Steinbeck's Salinas Valley. Richard Wright's Chicago. Leslie Marmon Silko's New Mexico. Readers often have strong connections with literary places like these. And some works of literature can even change our understanding of the world we live in. But can place also change our view of literature? Site-Reading advances a place-based approach to literature, reading classic texts through the twin lenses of geographical awareness and environmental thought. This book highlights recent developments in ecocriticism and geocriticism to argue for a theory of "ecospatiality" with nature, space, and story as the three elements of place. Site-Reading reconsiders well-known works of twentieth-century American prose and shows how social and environmental issues always overlap. Travel writer William Least Heat-Moon, whose work embodies the ecospatial perspective, portrays his experiences with place on the local, regional, and continental scales. Classic novels by Silko, Willa Cather, and Ana Castillo-usually discussed in isolation-converge in a way that maps diverse cultural perspectives and environmental threats onto the shared geography of Central New Mexico. A reading of Steinbeck's Salinas Valley Watershed texts investigates the impacts of literary tourism in "Steinbeck Country" before drilling down into Steinbeck's portrayals of spatial development and environmental history. And an innovative analysis of Native Son shows how Richard Wright uses cartographic details to decry the spatial/racial politics of South Side Chicago in the 1930s. In this book, Lowell Wyse shows how place provides the grounds for both human experience and critical practice. By bringing together concepts like literary cartography, deep mapping, and bioregionalism in an "ecospatial" approach, Site-Reading not only maps new terrain between ecocriticism and geocriticism, but also shows why place matters-in the world and in the text"--

Download or read book Lyrical Strains written by Elissa Zellinger and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Elissa Zellinger analyzes both political philosophy and poetic theory in order to chronicle the consolidation of the modern lyric and the liberal subject across the long nineteenth century. In the nineteenth-century United States, both liberalism and lyric sought self-definition by practicing techniques of exclusion. Liberalism was a political philosophy whose supposed universals were limited to white men and created by omitting women, the enslaved, and Native peoples. The conventions of poetic reception only redoubled the sense that liberal selfhood defined its boundaries by refusing raced and gendered others. Yet Zellinger argues that it is precisely the poetics of the excluded that offer insights into the dynamic processes that came to form the modern liberal and lyric subjects. She examines poets—Frances Sargent Osgood, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and E. Pauline Johnson—whose work uses lyric practices to contest the very assumptions about selfhood responsible for denying them the political and social freedoms enjoyed by full liberal subjects. In its consideration of politics and poetics, this project offers a new approach to genre and gender that will help shape the field of nineteenth-century American literary studies.

Download or read book Stop Saving the Planet An Environmentalist Manifesto written by Jenny Price and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Pithy, funny, exasperated, and informed…You cannot read a more important hundred pages than Stop Saving the Planet!" —Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands We’ve been "saving the planet" for decades!…And environmental crises just get worse. All this hybrid driving and LEED building and carbon trading seems to accomplish little to nothing—and low-income communities continue to suffer the worst consequences. Why aren’t we cleaning up the toxic messes and rolling back climate change? And why do so many Americans hate environmentalists? Jenny Price says Enough already! with this short, fun, fierce manifesto for an environmentalism that is hugely more effective, a whole lot fairer, and infinitely less righteous. She challenges you, corporate sustainability officers, and the EPA to think and act completely anew—and to start right now—to ensure a truly habitable future.

Download or read book Saving Yellowstone written by Megan Kate Nelson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-04-25 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From historian and critically acclaimed author of The Three-Cornered War comes the captivating story of how Yellowstone became the world’s first national park in the years after the Civil War, offering “a fresh, provocative study…departing from well-trodden narratives about conservation and public recreation” (Booklist, starred review). Each year nearly four million people visit Yellowstone National Park—one of the most popular of all national parks—but few know the fascinating and complex historical context in which it was established. In late July 1871, the geologist-explorer Ferdinand Hayden led a team of scientists through a narrow canyon into Yellowstone Basin, entering one of the last unmapped places in the country. The survey’s discoveries led to the passage of the Yellowstone Act in 1872, which created the first national park in the world. Now, author Megan Kate Nelson examines the larger context of this American moment, illuminating Hayden’s survey as a national project meant to give Americans a sense of achievement and unity in the wake of a destructive civil war. Saving Yellowstone follows Hayden and two other protagonists in pursuit of their own agendas: Sitting Bull, a Lakota leader who asserted his peoples’ claim to their homelands, and financier Jay Cooke, who wanted to secure his national reputation by building the Northern Pacific Railroad through the Great Northwest. Hayden, Cooke, and Sitting Bull staked their claims to Yellowstone at a critical moment in Reconstruction, when the Ulysses S. Grant Administration and the 42nd Congress were testing the reach and the purpose of federal power across the nation. “A readable and unfailingly interesting look at a slice of Western history from a novel point of view” (Kirkus Reviews), Saving Yellowstone reveals how Yellowstone became both a subject of fascination and a metaphor for the nation during the Reconstruction era. This “land of wonders” was both beautiful and terrible, fragile and powerful. And what lay beneath the surface there was always threatening to explode.

Download or read book A Terrible Thing to Waste written by Harriet A. Washington and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "powerful and indispensable" look at the devastating consequences of environmental racism (Gerald Markowitz) -- and what we can do to remedy its toxic effects on marginalized communities. Did you know... Middle-class African American households with incomes between $50,000 and $60,000 live in neighborhoods that are more polluted than those of very poor white households with incomes below $10,000. When swallowed, a lead-paint chip no larger than a fingernail can send a toddler into a coma -- one-tenth of that amount will lower his IQ. Nearly two of every five African American homes in Baltimore are plagued by lead-based paint. Almost all of the 37,500 Baltimore children who suffered lead poisoning between 2003 and 2015 were African American. From injuries caused by lead poisoning to the devastating effects of atmospheric pollution, infectious disease, and industrial waste, Americans of color are harmed by environmental hazards in staggeringly disproportionate numbers. This systemic onslaught of toxic exposure and institutional negligence causes irreparable physical harm to millions of people across the country-cutting lives tragically short and needlessly burdening our health care system. But these deadly environments create another insidious and often overlooked consequence: robbing communities of color, and America as a whole, of intellectual power. The 1994 publication of The Bell Curve and its controversial thesis catapulted the topic of genetic racial differences in IQ to the forefront of a renewed and heated debate. Now, in A Terrible Thing to Waste, award-winning science writer Harriet A. Washington adds her incisive analysis to the fray, arguing that IQ is a biased and flawed metric, but that it is useful for tracking cognitive damage. She takes apart the spurious notion of intelligence as an inherited trait, using copious data that instead point to a different cause of the reported African American-white IQ gap: environmental racism - a confluence of racism and other institutional factors that relegate marginalized communities to living and working near sites of toxic waste, pollution, and insufficient sanitation services. She investigates heavy metals, neurotoxins, deficient prenatal care, bad nutrition, and even pathogens as chief agents influencing intelligence to explain why communities of color are disproportionately affected -- and what can be done to remedy this devastating problem. Featuring extensive scientific research and Washington's sharp, lively reporting, A Terrible Thing to Waste is sure to outrage, transform the conversation, and inspire debate.