Koncocoo

Best Environmental Ecology

1491 (Second Edition): New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492. but by boat along the Pacific coast 10 or even 20 thousand years earlier; the Americas were a far more urban, more populated, and more technologically advanced region than generally assumed; and the Indians, rather than living in static harmony with nature, radically engineered the landscape across the continents, to the point that even "timeless" natural features like the Amazon rainforest can be seen as products of human intervention. And those who came later and found an emptied landscape that seemed ripe for the taking, Mann argues convincingly, encountered not the natural and unchanging state of the native American, but the evidence of a sudden calamity: the ravages of what was likely the greatest epidemic in human history, the smallpox and other diseases introduced inadvertently by Europeans to a population without immunity, which swept through the Americas faster than the explorers who brought it, and left behind for their discovery a land that held only a shadow of the thriving cultures that it had sustained for centuries before. Groups likely traveled across the Pacific in boats.Wheat and barley grown from wild ancestors in Sumer.60005000In what many scientists regard as humankind's first and greatest feat of genetic engineering, Indians in southern Mexico systematically breed maize (corn) from dissimilar ancestor species.First cities established in Sumer.40003000The Americas' first urban complex, in coastal Peru, of at least 30 closely packed cities, each centered around large pyramid-like structuresGreat Pyramid at Giza265032First clear evidence of Olmec use of zero--an invention, widely described as the most important mathematical discovery ever made, which did not occur in Eurasia until about 600 A.D., in India (zero was not introduced to Europe until the 1200s and not widely used until the 1700s)800-840 A.D.Sudden collapse of most central Maya cities in the face of severe drought and lengthy warVikings briefly establish first European settlements in North America.1000Reconstruction of Cahokia, c. 1250 A.D.*Abrupt rise of Cahokia, near modern St. Louis, the largest city north of the Rio Grande. Population estimates vary from at least 15,000 to 100,000.Black Death devastates Europe.1347-13511398Birth of Tlacaélel, the brilliant Mexican strategist behind the Triple Alliance (also known as the Aztec empire), which within decades controls central Mexico, then the most densely settled place on Earth.The Encounter: Columbus sails from Europe to the Caribbean.1492The Encounter: Columbus sails from Europe to the Caribbean.Syphilis apparently brought to Europe by Columbus's returning crew.1493Ferdinand Magellan departs from Spain on around-the-world voyage.1519Sixteenth-century Mexica drawing of the effects of smallpox**Cortes driven from Tenochtitlán, capital of the Triple Alliance, and then gains victory as smallpox, a European disease never before seen in the Americas, kills at least one of three in the empire.1525-1533The smallpox epidemic sweeps into Peru, killing as much as half the population of the Inka empire and opening the door to conquest by Spanish forces led by Pizarro.1617Huge areas of New England nearly depopulated by epidemic brought by shipwrecked French sailors.English Pilgrims arrive at Patuxet, an Indian village emptied by disease, and survive on stored Indian food, renaming the village Plymouth.1620*Courtesy Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, Collinsville, Ill., painting by Michael Hampshire.
Reviews
"Read this book at the library and decided I wanted a copy for myself."
"A wonderful insight into the true history of the western hemisphere before and after the conquest from the east."
"This is the kind of book that I pick up and read over and over again."
"Well written, very readable and full of information your history teacher probably doesn't know!"
"so much of what was written questions the way we all think of the Americas pre 1491."
"Mann likes to jump around the time rather than stay chronological which my little brain has a hard time with - but the content is fascinating and I highly recommend this to any history buff!"
"Terrific book, a real education into the huge population of the many nations that lived on our continent prior to the invasion of the Europeans with their disease and predation."
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The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
In The Sixth Extinction , two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. *Starred Review* It didn’t take long for Homo sapiens to begin “reassembling the biosphere,” observes Kolbert, a Heinz Award–winning New Yorker staff writer and author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (2006). To lay the groundwork for understanding this massive die-off, Kolbert crisply tells the stories of such earlier losses as the American mastodon and the great auk and provides an orienting overview of evolutionary and ecological science. Intrepid and astute, Kolbert combines vivid, informed, and awestruck descriptions of natural wonders, from rain forests to the Great Barrier Reef, and wryly amusing tales about such dicey situations as nearly grabbing onto a tree branch harboring a fist-sized tarantula, swimming among poisonous jellyfish, and venturing into a bat cave; each dispatch is laced with running explanations of urgent scientific inquiries and disquieting findings. Ms. Kolbert shows in these pages that she can write with elegiac poetry about the vanishing creatures of this planet, but the real power of her book resides in the hard science and historical context she delivers here, documenting the mounting losses that human beings are leaving in their wake.” ― The New York Times. “Natural scientists posit that there have been five extinction events in the Earth's history (think of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs), and Kolbert makes a compelling case that human activity is leading to the sixth.” ― Bill Gates. “[Kolbert] grounds her stories in rigorous science and memorable characters past and present, building a case that a mass extinction is underway, whether we want to admit it or not.” ― Discover Magazine. “The factoids Kolbert tosses off about nature's incredible variety--a frog that carries eggs in its stomach and gives birth through its mouth, a wood stork that cools off by defecating on its own legs--makes it heartbreakingly clear, without any heavy-handed sermonizing from the author, just how much we lose when an animal goes extinct. In the same way, her intrepid reporting from far-off places--Panama, Iceland, Italy, Scotland, Peru, the Amazonian rain forest of Brazil, and the remote one tree Island, off the coast of Australia--gives us a sense of the earth's vastness and beauty.” ― Bookforum. “Kolbert accomplishes an amazing feat in her latest book, which superbly blends the depressing facts associated with rampant species extinctions and impending ecosystem collapse with stellar writing to produce a text that is accessible, witty, scientifically accurate, and impossible to put down.” ― Publishers Weekly (starred review). Like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction is destined to become one of the most important and defining books of our time.” ― David Grann, author of The Lost City of Z. “With her usual lucid and lovely prose, Elizabeth Kolbert lays out the sad and gripping facts of our moment on earth: that we've become a geological force, driving vast swaths of creation over the brink.
Reviews
"Along the way, other startling observations emerge: biodiversity is declining not only due to the "old causes" such as hunted to extinction for various reasons but also new ones such as global warming impact on life-sustaining ranges, the loss of habitat space, the inability to regenerate a species due to slower reproduction rate and the rapid vulnerability to new diseases (fungal, bacterial or viral). In the prior roughly 500 million years there have been upwards of 25 periods of species extinction, of which five are considered to have been major ones due to breadth and probably rate of surrounding change. Nearly all of these were due to factors beyond the control of the inhabitants at the time: changes in chemical balances, glaciations and global warming due to Earth orbit wobbles, volcanic eruptions and asteroid impact leading to global cooling that killed off many of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. At a speed of change far beyond anything that has happened before - be it global warming by burning millions of years of fossil fuels, by eliminating living space on land or in sea for other species, or by sheer carelessness."
"One con to some people would be that the book does not end like a regular fiction book but it simply ends like all the other chapters ended in the book. but this book truly gives a look into the reality of our future environment and of many people/scientists who have dedicated much of their life to preserving the diversity of life."
"This is a fascinating book, and I am really just joining the chorus of readers who have appreciated the research and excellent presentation by the author."
"This book takes you through a series of vignettes and focuses less on the politics of today than on the quest to understand our planet and the special role played by our species."
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Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Called the work of "a mesmerizing storyteller with deep compassion and memorable prose" ( Publishers Weekly ) and the book that, "anyone interested in natural history, botany, protecting nature, or Native American culture will love," by Library Journal , Braiding Sweetgrass is poised to be a classic of nature writing. In such a culture, Everyone knows that gifts will follow the circle of reciprocity and flow back to you again... She writes about the natural world from a place of such abundant passion that one can never quite see the world the same way after having seen it through Kimmerer's eyes.
Reviews
"But reading this book has deepened my experience of the natural world into a much more spiritual level unlike any other book I have read previously."
"One of the best books I have read in 20 years."
"One of the most beautiful books I've ever read."
"Very interesting book."
"So important to see the connections between our modern world and the genius of the rest of our brothers and sisters on the planet."
"This book is valuable reading in so many ways."
"This book was suggested in passing by a friend and colleague."
"Insightful, thoughtful and descriptive."
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Best Environmental Pollution Engineering

The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
The Geography of Nowhere traces America's evolution from a nation of Main Streets and coherent communities to a land where every place is like no place in particular, where the cities are dead zones and the countryside is a wasteland of cartoon architecture and parking lots. Kunstler, who writes ably, casts a very wide net: he finds the roots of American individualism in pre-colonial property ownership, decries the abstracting influence of modernism on city architecture and slams road-builder Robert Moses to support his contention that suburbia is a social environment without soul.
Reviews
"My first intro to Kunstler was watching his equally informative speech on Americas urban design nightmares on You.Tube TED talks. My awakening began in the early 2000 when I got a job working housing construction then later landscaping and later again installing storm doors and windows."
"The part that I loved, first of all, is that there is a new forward in here from 2013-2014. Other than that, this book was so interesting!"
"A lot of text is devoted to New York (both the city and upstate), and it also covers several other places, including but not limited to Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Disney World."
"Everything you sensed was wrong with our environment, our homes, our public spaces is lucidly explained here, along with plenty of solutions."
"The book is light on data, heavy on rhetoric, but hammers its point home through anecdotes, allegory, and turns of phrase that make the read analyze what, exactly, they see in these suburban (and some urban) same places."
"Politicians, developers, planners of the pre-New Urbanism era, Big SpOil, and captains of industry all get skewered, and rightly so...to know how to proceed with the future, it's essential to understand who goofed in the past, and what the motivations were. Many of the chapters end in amusing and venomous rants, some of which left me pumping my fist in the air and engaging my treadmill to expire the energy. As I indicated previously, this is essential to anyone interested in the arts of city planning...for those of you out there jobs related to the planning field, the content in here is a great way to have a more informed approach to land use recommendations, planning policy, and engage better in heated discussion during those painful public hearings...or just impress the director and commissioners over lunch."
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Best Ecology

A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There
First published in 1949 and praised in The New York Times Book Review as "a trenchant book, full of vigor and bite," A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land. --Professor Marshall Spector, State University of New York "A fine book--Robert Finch's introduction enhances a classic text." --Burton E. Vaughan, Ph.D., Washington State University Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) began his professional career in 1909 when he joined the U.S. Forest Service.
Reviews
"Anyone interested in the outdoors needs to read this book, in fact I think everyone should just read it anyways."
"If you like nature and only somewhat like to read this is the book for you."
"Beautiful book with stunning pictures that go well with the Essays by Aldo."
"I was introduced to the author by researching and constructing a comfortable wooden bench he designed during his career as a conservationist."
"Absolute poetry to read."
"If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not."
"This is a must read for anyone interested in conservation."
"Such a lovely book with great content and beautiful sketches!"
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Best Evolution

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.”. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas. Tackling evolutionary concepts from a historian’s perspective, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , describes human development through a framework of three not-necessarily-orthodox “Revolutions”: the Cognitive, the Agricultural, and the Scientific. His ideas are interesting and often amusing: Why have humans managed to build astonishingly large populations when other primate groups top out at 150 individuals? Because our talent for gossip allows us to build networks in societies too large for personal relationships between everyone, and our universally accepted “imagined realities”--such as money, religion, and Limited Liability Corporations—keep us in line. Though the concepts are unusual and sometimes heavy (as is the book, literally) Harari’s deft prose and wry, subversive humor make quick work of material prone to academic tedium. He’s written a book of popular nonfiction (it was a bestseller overseas, no doubt in part because his conclusions draw controversy) landing somewhere in the middle of a Venn diagram of genetics, sociology, and history. An engrossing read.” (Dan Ariely, New York Times Bestselling author of Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality , and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty ). “Yuval Noah Harari’s celebrated Sapiens does for human evolution what Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time did for physics.… He does a superb job of outlining our slow emergence and eventual domination of the planet.” ( Forbes ). “Writing with wit and verve, Harari…attempts to explain how Homo sapiens came to be the dominant species on Earth as well as the sole representative of the human genus.… Provocative and entertaining.” ( Publishers Weekly ). “In this sweeping look at the history of humans, Harari offers readers the chance to reconsider, well, everything, from a look at why Homo sapiens endured to a compelling discussion of how society organizes itself through fictions.” ( Booklist Best Books of the Year).
Reviews
"Parts of it were downright fascinating such as "imagination" being a keystone to human activity, e.g. corporations, money, and religion. Finally he keeps touching on the fact that animals have paid a terrible price for the rise of sapiens. Incidentally our family has a farm background and I eat no chicken, turkey, pork, or beef. Now I didn't give the book five stars because he makes positive references to the misguided but widely read Jared Diamond. Let me emphasize that on this snowy March day the cat and I are both glad we don't need to go out and scavenge something off the frozen earth."
"A standard history of the human race begins with Paleolithic proto-humans, traces the development of modern man or homo sapiens sapiens, then chronicles the beginnings and expansions of human civilization from agriculture to the present. He asks how "An Animal of No Significance" managed to become the dominant life form, and whether that animal's learning to produce his own food and then to further harness the natural world to his will through science were boons or setbacks, both for that animal and for the rest of the biosphere."
"A fascinating read that clarified many ideas I had on how our species has come to dominate and systematically destroy much of this wonderful planet."
"Every chapter had mind-bending insights into our history."
"Not simply cataloging history without opinion or perspective, Mr. Harari's analysis examines the happiness quotient as the central judgment of man's success as a social animal."
"a well written master piece that gives the reader unique insight in our history, while making some of the difficult trade-offs in our society visible and comprehensible."
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Best Botany

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World
In The Hidden Life of Trees , Peter Wohlleben shares his deep love of woods and forests and explains the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in the woodland and the amazing scientific processes behind the wonders of which we are blissfully unaware. "The matter-of-fact Mr. Wohlleben has delighted readers and talk-show audiences alike with the news — long known to biologists — that trees in the forest are social beings." — Sally McGrane, The New York Times “This fascinating book will intrigue readers who love a walk through the woods”— Publishers Weekly. "Soon after we begin to recognize trees for what they are — gigantic beings thriving against incredible odds for hundreds of years — we naturally come to ask, 'How do they do it?'. "Wohlleben’s book is at once romantic and scientific, beautifully articulating his personal relationship with the trees he has dedicated his life to. "With colorful and engaging descriptions of little-known phenomena in our natural world, Wohlleben helps readers appreciate the exciting processes at work in the forests around them." Peter Wohlleben spent over twenty years working for the forestry commission in Germany before leaving to put his ideas of ecology into practice.
Reviews
"At this job, he was expected to produce as many high quality saw logs as possible, with maximum efficiency, by any means necessary. Luckily, he made friends in the community of Hümmel, and was given permission to manage their forest in a less destructive manner. In one portion of the forest, old trees are leased as living gravestones, where families can bury the ashes of kin. The book is built on a foundation of reputable science, but it reads like grandpa chatting at fireside. He’s a gentle old storyteller explaining the wondrous magic of beautiful forests to befuddled space aliens from a crazy planet named Consume. Their root systems intermingle, allowing them to send nutrients to their hungry children, and to ailing neighbors. When a Douglas fir is struck by lightning, several of its close neighbors might also die, because of their underground connections. Analyzing the rings of their trunks, they learned that the pines that survived a climate that warmed 42°F, and then cooled about the same amount — in a period of just 30 years! Dinosaurs still exist in the form of birds, winged creatures that can quickly escape from hostile conditions. (Far more questionable is the future of corn, wheat, and rice, whose genetic diversity has been sharply reduced by the seed sellers of industrial agriculture.). They unfold in the spring, capture sunlight, and for several months manufacture sugar, cellulose, and other carbohydrates. When the tree can store no more sugar, or when the first hard frost arrives, the solar panels are no longer needed. Now, with bare branches, the tree is far less vulnerable to damage from strong winds, heavy wet snows, and ice storms. In addition to rotting leaves, a wild forest also transforms fallen branches and trunks into carbon rich humus. By the end, readers are likely to imagine that undisturbed forests are vastly more intelligent than severely disturbed communities of radicalized consumers. More and more, scientists are muttering and snarling, as the imaginary gulf between the plant and animal worlds fades away. Wohlleben is not a vegetarian, because experience has taught him that plants are no less alive, intelligent, and sacred than animals."
"Review The Hidden Life of Trees Peter Wohlleben. The Hidden Life of Trees” is an amazing book presenting trees as sentient, purposeful beings living in dynamic relationship with each other. This single fact has hidden the true life of the trees from us. “The Hidden Life of Trees” is carefully and well presented with humor, with gentleness, with compassion, with joy, even with love."
"He outlines how trees work in terms of light and water, their intricate relationship and co-dependence with the mushroom family. How they communicate, how they deal with pests and warn nearby trees of danger, how they even feed and support each other. These are very human characteristics and we share them with most animals as they are necessary to stop us killing ourselves as we learn to move about our environment and also to make choices. But it is hard to see how they would be of any advantage to a sessile tree with limited options, and so there is no obvious reason to think they would have evolved in plants."
"Wohlleben is a charming guide to magical, but very real, world."
"Live on a tree-filled island in the summer and have always "felt" the companionship of the trees but thought I was crazy."
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Best Nature Writing

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (Official Guides to the Appalachian Trail)
The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes — and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings. When this American transplant to Britain decided to return home, he made a farewell walking tour of the British countryside and produced Notes from a Small Island . Accompanied only by his old college buddy Stephen Katz, Bryson starts out one March morning in north Georgia, intending to walk the entire 2,100 miles to trail's end atop Maine's Mount Katahdin. As Bryson and Katz haul their out-of-shape, middle-aged butts over hill and dale, the reader is treated to both a very funny personal memoir and a delightful chronicle of the trail, the people who created it, and the places it passes through. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance.
Reviews
"I'm a sexagenarian who, on a recent vacation, happened to walk out and back on the first three miles or so of the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail (Springer Mtn, GA) and, in a fit of exhilaration, decided then and there that I would, by golly, hike the AT before I died. As I was joyfully entertained by his incisive sense of humor, I was simultaneously and seriously learning history, biology, geology (and several other -ologies) as well as being discomfitted by Bryson's documentation of our culture's dismissive practices regarding ecology."
"In total Bryson hiking around 800 miles of the 2,500 mile trail."
"You young guys can deal with that...[...], I should have done this trail 30 years ago!! What's funny is just a couple weeks back we did a small day hike in north Georgia on the High Shoals trail, down to a beautiful water fall, just a 1.2 mile hike. On the hike back up to the car I was huffing and puffing, my hip was hurting, I was sweating heavily in GOOD weather... and I think I want to do this with a 40 pound pack on my back??!! We spoke with the first two guys, one who wanted to celebrate his 65 birthday on the trail, the other guy, much younger, hiking the trail for several days on his own. I topped off their water bottles and thanked them, thinking I should do this hike!"
"Was told it was "Hilarious.""
"Read one and except for a few events, you've pretty much read them all and almost any extended backpacking trip involves the same rigors, risks, weather and that mixture of misery and exhilaration."
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Best Conservation

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (Official Guides to the Appalachian Trail)
The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes — and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings. When this American transplant to Britain decided to return home, he made a farewell walking tour of the British countryside and produced Notes from a Small Island . Accompanied only by his old college buddy Stephen Katz, Bryson starts out one March morning in north Georgia, intending to walk the entire 2,100 miles to trail's end atop Maine's Mount Katahdin. As Bryson and Katz haul their out-of-shape, middle-aged butts over hill and dale, the reader is treated to both a very funny personal memoir and a delightful chronicle of the trail, the people who created it, and the places it passes through. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance.
Reviews
"I'm a sexagenarian who, on a recent vacation, happened to walk out and back on the first three miles or so of the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail (Springer Mtn, GA) and, in a fit of exhilaration, decided then and there that I would, by golly, hike the AT before I died. As I was joyfully entertained by his incisive sense of humor, I was simultaneously and seriously learning history, biology, geology (and several other -ologies) as well as being discomfitted by Bryson's documentation of our culture's dismissive practices regarding ecology."
"Read one and except for a few events, you've pretty much read them all and almost any extended backpacking trip involves the same rigors, risks, weather and that mixture of misery and exhilaration."
"One of the funniest books you will every read."
"Bill's storytelling captured me immediately...I was taking every step he took, I enjoyed every vista he looked out on, I was eavesdropping on his conversations with his fellow hikers and feeling the spectrum of emotions held for his friend and hiking companion."
"An adventure that walks you experientially and historically through the nation's longest series of trails from Georgia to Maine while feeling every fear from blisters, hunger, thirst, wildlife, climate changes, man's limitations and nature's nuances, all the while trekking with a forty pound pack on your back, and any one of these could do you in, well it's a wonder why the wild is so compelling."
"With the film in theaters, I decided to pick it up and give it a go. I loved this book, and place it among Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild," Cheryl Strayed's "Wild," and Elizabeth Gilbert's "The Last American Man" in terms of well-written essays that explore our yearning to return to a simpler, untethered way of life."
"Unfortunately some of his stories about what happened to people along the trail, made me not that interested in walking any trail."
"I think Bill Bryson is an incredibly good writer whose humor extends to poking as much fun at himself as he does at others."
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Best Recycling

Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash
By showing us what happens to the things we've "disposed of," Royte reminds us that our decisions about consumption and waste have a very real impact-and that unless we undertake radical change, the garbage we create will always be with us: in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we consume. Royte is a journalist with a nose for the "sordid afterlife" of trash, thoroughly at home in the putrid world of "Coney Island whitefish" (used condoms); "disco rice" (maggots); and—the darling of American consumer culture and the nemesis of waste activists—"Satan's resin" (plastic). Her book takes the form of a quest for the surprising final resting places of her yogurt cups, beer bottles, personal computer, and organic-fig-cookie packaging, and leads to an impassioned attack on overconsumption in America. If Royte does not quite demonstrate the muckraking skills of an Eric Schlosser in "Fast Food Nation," she does expose the feculent underside of our appetite for things and challenges her readers to disprove the resigned assessment of a former New York sanitation commissioner: "In the end, the garbage will win."
Reviews
"I found the book interesting, especially since I will soon be working at a solid waste management company (which is the reason I wanted to do some research on the industry)."
"A good attempt by the author to actually trace the flow of her own garbage and other waste through the system of collection, processing, and final disposal. Also, she works on reducing her incoming stream of material (grocery store plastic bags as an example) that will go to either recycling, or the landfill. Some things of note: She does mention the amount of waste in a Fast Food Restaurant & follows the trail of the commercial side of the trash (what she gets when she buys a meal). (As an aside, I was camping at a KOA this summer & next to the facility was a special dumpster that a fast food restaurant used only for paper & cardboard waste. One final note: I had not considered the sheer volume of plastic that I personally go through in a typical weekly trash cycle until I read this book."
"It's the next best thing to being there - up close and personal with garbage, where we all need to be if we are to raise consciousness about the dirty little secrets of trash management, reverse the misconceptions that 'garbage goes away' and start the process of seriously shifting to a more mindful consumption culture."
"It's a matter of time before it comes back to you in some form through dangerous poisons in your drinking water or food, being washed up on a nearby shore, or in the air you breathe. I personally think her efforts to reduce her own waste footprint, while admirable and noble, is too small to make a difference and the burden should be put on the massive industry that creates this junk that will either never break down or will wind up as lethal poisons. It's not an easy pill to swallow, but Garbage Land made me aware of the scope of the problem and making industy responsible for their waste is now one of my personal issues."
"It was an interesting topic, but the book was very repeative and oversaturated in unnecessary details."
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Best Water Supply

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition
"The definitive work on the West's water crisis." ''When archaelogists from another planet sift through the bleached bones of our civilization, they may conclude that our temples were dams, says Reisner in this angry, exhaustive and gracefully written account of America's quest to turn the inhospitable, irredeemably dry West into a Garden of Eden…Not the first book on the subject, but one of the best.''. -- Kirkus Reviews ''[This] timely and important book should be required reading for all citizens.''. ''Masterful…Among the most influential environmental books published by an American since Silent Spring .''.
Reviews
"This is a timeless work detailing the history of water wealth and distribution in the West."
"Man this book is encyclopedic, with all that implies."
"While the editing causes some revisiting of projects ant times, this book gives a clear picture of the technical, economic, political, and bureaucratic forces surrounding the largest group of public works in American history."
"I recommend this book to anyone wanting to understand the history of the water "crisis" or has the least bit of interest in our nation's history!"
"While the activities recounted in the book paved the way to agriculture and population growth (and clearly contributed to the rise of the United States as a world leader), the calculated and manipulative things people of the time did to drive "progress" were monumental and jaw-dropping in some cases."
"It is not a perfect work: the author occasionally allows his passion to overwhelm his recounting of the facts, and it detracts from both his case and the flow of the book."
"A really excellent dissertation on the history of US water and the institutions that control it."
"It's easy to call all cities in the American West "cancers", and state or imply how and how much the West should've been settled, based on 20/20 hindsight and without thought for where settlers could've gone if every inch West of the 100th meridian had been settled only by a very limited number of environmentally prophetic, conscientious stewards."
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Best Weather

Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
Isaac Cline was one of the era's new men, a scientist who believed he knew all there was to know about the motion of clouds and the behavior of storms. That August, a strange, prolonged heat wave gripped the nation and killed scores of people in New York and Chicago. As the bureau's forecasters assured the nation that all was calm in the Caribbean, Cuba's own weathermen fretted about ominous signs in the sky. Hundreds of people gathered at the beach to marvel at the fantastically tall waves and gorgeous pink sky, until the surf began ripping the city's beloved beachfront apart. In Galveston alone at least 6,000 people, possibly as many as 10,000, would lose their lives, a number far greater than the combined death toll of the Johnstown Flood and 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. As barometers plummet and wind gauges are plucked from their moorings, Larson (Lethal Passage) cuts cinematically from the eerie "eyewall" of the hurricane to the mundane hubbub of a lunchroom moments before it capitulates to the arriving winds, from the neat pirouette of Cline's house amid rising waters to the bridge of the steamship Pensacola, tossed like flotsam on the roiling seas. Major ad/promo; author tour; simultaneous Random House audio; foreign rights sold in Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan and the U.K. (Sept.). Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Reviews
"I enjoyed reading about the story about the terrible hurricane that hit Galveston Texas in 1900. If you have an interest in learning about the history of weather forecasting, then this is the book for you. If you have an interest in the social history of the United States around 1900, then this is a good book to read."
"Extensive notes and references give sources for every word the people say or write, and for every fact stated--but there's nothing dry about this history; even if you already know about the Galveston Storm, this book is a page-turner."
"I live a short distance from Galveston and wanted to know more about the great storm."
"I would recommend this and his other books--Devil in the White City, Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts--whole heartedly."
"I was totally caught up in this section and "felt" the hurricane and "felt" the agony and "felt" the despair."
"Larson's ability to place the reader in the midst of a place and time is amazing, and his ability to translate the experience of being in the midst of a storm that happened before any of us were alive makes the terror, sadness and desperation come alive in a way that even today's movies can't equal."
"Isaac Cline was head of the Galveston Meteorological Bureau, nationally part of a behemoth bureaucracy tipping into corruption, hellbent on never mentioning the word "hurricane" as a threat to the great wheel of commerce."
"If one has been to Galveston they find a beautiful coastal city full of mansions and lovely Victorian houses and cottages."
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