Human Geography Books - Page 3

The End of Nature

Bill Mckibben

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Subjects -> Outdoors & Nature -> Conservation -> General
Subjects -> Outdoors & Nature -> Conservation -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Reissued on the tenth anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the progress and ground lost in the fight to save the earth.

This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. McKibben's argument that the survival of the globe is dependent on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more relevant than ever. McKibben writes of our earth's environmental cataclysm, addressing such core issues as the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer. His new introduction addresses some of the latest environmental issues that have risen during the 1990s. The book also includes an invaluable new appendix of facts and figures that surveys the progress of the environmental movement.

More than simply a handbook for survival or a doomsday catalog of scientific prediction, this classic, soulful lament on Nature is required reading for nature enthusiasts, activists, and concerned citizens alike.

The Meme Machine

Susan Blackmore

List Price: $25.00 By: Oxford University Press, USA Amazon Marketplace: 30 new & used starting at $3.00

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Child Psychology -> General AAS
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Developmental Psychology
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Total reviews: 87 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

What is a meme? First coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, a meme is any idea, behavior, or skill that can be transferred from one person to another by imitation: stories, fashions, inventions, recipes, songs, ways of plowing a field or throwing a baseball or making a sculpture. The meme is also one of the most important--and controversial--concepts to emerge since The Origin of Species appeared nearly 150 years ago.
In The Meme Machine Susan Blackmore boldly asserts: "Just as the design of our bodies can be understood only in terms of natural selection, so the design of our minds can be understood only in terms of memetic selection." Indeed, Blackmore shows that once our distant ancestors acquired the crucial ability to imitate, a second kind of natural selection began, a survival of the fittest amongst competing ideas and behaviors. Ideas and behaviors that proved most adaptive--making tools, for example, or using language--survived and flourished, replicating themselves in as many minds as possible. These memes then passed themselves on from generation to generation by helping to ensure that the genes of those who acquired them also survived and reproduced. Applying this theory to many aspects of human life, Blackmore offers brilliant explanations for why we live in cities, why we talk so much, why we can't stop thinking, why we behave altruistically, how we choose our mates, and much more.
With controversial implications for our religious beliefs, our free will, our very sense of "self," The Meme Machine offers a provocative theory everyone will soon be talking about.

The Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography (9th Edition)

James M. Rubenstein

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Editorial Review:

Trusted for its timeliness and readability, this book introduces geography by emphasizing the relevance of geographic concepts to human problems. Two years after Rubenstein's Update Edition was created to encompass the events of September 11, 2001, this revision also begins the careful process of putting those events into perspective. Provides new "Global Forces and Local Impacts" boxes in each chapter that explore in depth an issue related to chapter material, focusing on particular regions of the world. Includes new material on medical geography, terrorism, mineral resources, sustainable development, conservation, and biodiversity. Presents new information on gender differences in development . Expands material on Ethnicity, relating ethnicity problems to political conflict; also incorporates material previously found elsewhere in the book, such as U.S. urban patterns and South Africa's history of apartheid. For anyone interested in learning more about world geography.

Arts and Culture, Combined Volume (3rd Edition) (MyHumanitiesKit Series)

Janetta Rebold Benton, Robert DiYanni

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Culture on a Shelf 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This is the sort of book that a student buys for a Humanities class and keeps the rest of their life. Children growing up with this in the home will immediately identify the worlds greatest art and buildings having already seen it here in this book. This book represents an investment in a cultured home and is one the whole family will appreciate for a lifetime. The pictures are beautiful. The organization is state of the art.

Beautiful Images 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I personally felt the best thing about this text book was its beautiful images--the pieces of art are from all over the world, with varied mediums, differing meanings, and from differing time periods. The book is detailed and lengthy--it is not only ideal for those who thrive in artistry, but also for those who are studying the given topic.

Editorial Review:

Offering an exploration of Western and World civilization's cultural heritage, this book is richly illustrated, beautifully designed and engaging. Readers move chronologically through major periods and styles–from prehistoric culture to 20th Century America–to gain insight into the achievements and ideas in painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, philosophy, religion, and music. For arts and cultural coordinators, professionals and enthusiasts.

The Dream of the Earth

Thomas Berry

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Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This acclaimed inaugural volume of the Sierra Club Nature and Natural Philosophy Library considers our ecological fate from a species perspective, the way The Fate of the Earth viewed our prospects for nuclear annihilation. Thomas Berry's seminal thesis proposes a universal "biocratic" criterion to evaluate human history, development, and activity. He contends that the validity of any human enterprise is the degree to which it enhances the universal life force.
Berry builds his case on a comprehensive review of the history of ideas, and he points toward a transformation of consciousness that is needed if we and the planet are to survive. The Dream of the Earth provides the insights, inspiration, and ethical guidance we need to move beyond exploitation or disengagement toward a transcendent vision of a restorative, creative relationship with the natural world.
Drawing upon the wisdom of thinkers from Buddha and Plato to Teilhard de Chardin and E. F. Schumacher, from ancient Chinese philosophy and Native American shamanism to contemporary astrophysics, Berry forges a balanced, deeply felt declaration of planetary independence from the sociological, psychological, and intellectual conditioning that threatens the death of nature, offering a path that will avert ecological catastrophe and move our traumatized planet toward health.

Plagues and Peoples

William H. McNeill

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Subjects -> Medicine -> Internal Medicine -> Infectious Disease -> General AAS

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Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Upon its original publication, Plagues and Peoples was an immediate critical and popular success, offering a radically new interpretation of world history as seen through the extraordinary impact--political, demographic, ecological, and psychological--of disease on cultures. From the conquest of Mexico by smallpox as much as by the Spanish, to the bubonic plague in China, to the typhoid epidemic in Europe, the history of disease is the history of humankind. With the identification of AIDS in the early 1980s, another chapter has been added to this chronicle of events, which William McNeill explores in his new introduction to this updated editon.

Thought-provoking, well-researched, and compulsively readable, Plagues and Peoples is that rare book that is as fascinating as it is scholarly, as intriguing as it is enlightening. "A brilliantly conceptualized and challenging achievement" (Kirkus Reviews), it is essential reading, offering a new perspective on human history.

Environmental Science

William P. Cunningham, Barbara Woodworth Saigo

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Great 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 3 people found this review helpful.

My book was recieved before I expected it and it was in good condition. It was a pleasure buying from Belkisa.

Do not buy from this seller 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I contacted the seller after I found out I did not need this book for the class I was taking. The seller gave me an address to send the book back to with a promise that she would refund my money without shipping of course. I sent the book to the address and it returned to me with a delivery failure. I suggest the seller is a bit more professional next time and promptly refunds a return,as well as giving the correct address.

Editorial Review:

This book is intended for use in a one- or two-semester course in environmental science, human ecology, or environmental studies at the college or advanced placement high school level. Because most students who will use this book are freshman or sophomore nonscience majors, the authors have tried to make the text readable and accessible without technical jargon or a presumption of prior science background. At the same time, enough data and depth are presented to make this book suitable for many upper-division classes and a valuable resource for students who will keep it in their personal libraries after their formal studies are completed. The goal of this book is to provide an up-to-date, introductory view of essential themes in environmental science along with emphasis on details and case studies that will help students process and retain the general principles.

Living in the Environment

Miller, G. Tyler Miller

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Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

G. Tyler Miller's worldwide bestsellers have evolved right along with the changing needs of your diverse student population. Focused specifically on energizing and engaging all your students, Miller and new contributor Scott Spoolman have been at work scrutinizing every line--enhancing, clarifying, and streamlining to reduce word density as well as updating with the very latest environmental news and research. The resulting texts are shorter, clearer, and so engaging that your students will actually want to read their assignments. The Fifteenth Edition's engaging, streamlined coverage includes over 4,000 updates and new topics; hundreds of new "Thinking About" exercises that engage students in critical thinking about environmental science topics; "Core Case Studies" that reinforce chapter concepts; 127 new photos; and superb, integrated coverage of sustainability! New to this edition for instructors is PowerLecture, a one-stop shop for lecture prep that includes everything you need to create dynamic lectures all in one place.

Landscape And Memory

Simon Schama

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

450 pages too long 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 21 people found this review helpful.

The author had a great idea for a book. He collected enough 'meat' for about 30-50 pages and then exploded it into almost 500 pages of boring talk, so typical of many historians.

There are a few gems in this book and those few who manage to persevere through the boredom of the text may find it somewhat rewarding. Had the author written a 50-page book that covers the essence of what he has to offer, this would have been a four or five star book.

The world seen on another sphere 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I love Schama's work ! His approach is always original and this book is proof of his creative mind, once again, at work. I have lived and worked on both sides of the Atlantic for more than 25 years and I thoroughly appreciate the way Schama has brought me to see the rhyme & reason to the cultural quirks I've come across in all these countries. The umbrella effect in action ! For a younger adult today, studying art, social dynamics, economics or even psychiatry there is food for thought !

Editorial Review:

An extraordinary book that explores how the earth itself has shaped the Western imagination and how, as a result, our interaction with the environment is far richer and more complex than today's doomsayers would have us believe.

The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects

Lewis Mumford

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Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Good Until the Last Hundred or So Pages 4 out of 5 stars.
20 of 21 people found this review helpful.

After two hundred pages I wanted to give this book five stars, but after finishing it, I was almost ready to give it three stars.

This book is what it says it is, "The City in History". Starting in the neolithic era, Mumford marches through all of recorded time and place (place being limited to the Near East, Greece, Rome, Europe and America) to bring, you, the reader, his thoughts on the role and "prospects" of the city.

In the beginning, it's an exhilerating ride. Mumford is not shy about advancing bold arguments. Although the book starts with sections on the city in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, he doesn't really get excited until he gets to Ancient Greece. I'd say it's clear from the text that Mumford is a fan of Ancient Greece, particularly Athens between the 7th and 6th century B.C.

Then it's off to Rome. Mumford is a harsh critic of Roman culture. His critique of the Roman method of burial (take bodies just outside city limits, dump, bury) contrains so much righteous indigination you might think the Romans were still pottering around when he wrote this book.

After Rome, we get an equally stirring defense of the Middle (don't call them "Dark" around Mumford) Ages. Mumford is a big fan of the city in the late middle ages. As an example, Mumford uses Amsterdam. Specifically, what Mumford likes about this time period is the community involvement by the ruling elites.

Like many other social critics, Mumford is not a huge fan of the impact that capitalism and industrialization have had on the modern city. Unlike some of the other reveiwers below, I don't really hold that against him. He was writing in the sixties, people!!!

However, I do admit that by the last hundred or so pages, when Mumford starts despairing of the future of the city, the whole tirade started to get tired.

I'm not sure I would recommend this for a general reader.

Editorial Review:

The city’s development from ancient times to the modern age. Winner of the National Book Award. “One of the major works of scholarship of the twentieth century” (Christian Science Monitor). Index; illustrations.