Human Geography Books - Page 4

Changes in the land: Indians, colonists, and the ecology of New England

William Cronon

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A seminal work 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

William Cronon's book was a seminal effort in 1983 that established a new way of thinking about history. It has stood the test of time. The book describes the modes and manner of the ecological impacts that English settlers had on the New England landscape in the colonial era. Some impacts were intentional, others not so much. For example, by the time first permanent settlements were established beginning at Plymouth in 1620, many Indian villages had already been devastated by European diseases (Europeans, especially fishermen had been frequenting the New England fisheries for decades).

The English settlers brought the English methods of farming, new concepts of property, and a market economy that overwhelmed the tribes and transformed the landscape. Forests were cleared, beaver were over-hunted, fences erected, new and domesticated animals and plants were introduced.

An added bonus in this 20th anniversary edition is a delightful afterword by the author reflecting on the book and how it came to be only through repeated serendipity. An added bonus for Wisconsin readers are his reflections on growing up in Madison as the son of a UW history professor and how those experiences shaped his professional life.

Cronon sagely instructs us to asks 'how so Alien a Then could have become so familiar a Now'. Changes in the Land also wrought changes in the way we think.

Editorial Review:

Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize

Changes in the Land offers an original and persuasive interpretation of the changing circumstances in New England's plant and animal communities that occurred with the shift from Indian to European dominance. With the tools of both historian and ecologist, Cronon constructs an interdisciplinary analysis of how the land and the people influenced one another, and how that complex web of relationships shaped New England's communities.

Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World

Joanna R. Macy, Molly Young Brown

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Many of us feel called to respond to the ecological destruction of our planet, yet we feel overwhelmed, immobilized, and unable to deal realistically with the threats to life on Earth. Noted spiritual and environmental thinkers Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown contend that this crippling response to world crisis is a psychological defense mechanism that has been endemic since the years of the Cold War arms race, when we had to adapt within a single generation to the horrific possibility of nuclear holocaust.

Since its publication in 1983, Joanna Macy's book, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age has sold nearly 30,000 copies and has been the primary resource for groups of men and women confronting the challenging realities of our time without succumbing to paralysis or panic. Coming Back to Life provides a much needed update and expansion of this pioneering work. At the interface between spiritual breakthrough and social action, Coming Back to Life is eloquent and compelling as well as being an inspiring and practical guide. The first third of the book discusses with extraordinary insight the angst of our era, and the pain, fear, guilt and inaction it has engendered; it then points forward to the way out of apathy, tio "the work that reconnects". The rest of the book offers both personal counsel and easy-to-use methods for working with groups in a number of ways to profoundly affect peoples' outlook and ability to act in the world.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Mathew Fox
1. To Choose Life
2. The Greatest Danger: Apatheia, The Deadening of Mind & Heart
3. The Basic Miracle: Our True Nature & Power
4. The Work that Reconnects
5. Guiding Group Work
6. Affirmation: Coming from Gratitude
7. Despair Work: Owning & Honoring Our Pain for the World
8. The Shift: Seeing with New Eyes
9. Deep Time: Drawing on Past & Future Generations
10. The Council of All Beings: Rejoining the Natural World
11. Going Forth
12. Meditations for Coming Back to Life


Joanna Macy has developed an international following over the course of 40 years as a speaker and workshop leader on Buddhist philosophy and the deep ecology movement

The Language of Miracles: A Celebrated Psychic Teaches You to Talk to Animals

Amelia Kinkade

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

More than a book on animals 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The cover gives the impression this book is all about animals, and yes it is, however there is much more beneath it's cover. This book gives an insight into the nature of consciousness and how to work with it. Practical, scientific, mystical; it covers aspects of quantum physics as well as practical exercises to expand the mind. Good book for life learning in general. Communication with all species would be improved through your experience with this book. It was much more than I was expecting.

Editorial Review:

As a professional animal psychic, Amelia Kinkade helps clients locate lost pets, diagnose baffling behavior, and further explore the indelible bond that exists between people and their animal companions. But her real mission is to convince people that, with the proper dedication, training, and understanding, everyone can do what she does . Here, she explains the subtle cues that form the foundation of animal communication, and provides guided exercises that allow readers to explore these cues for themselves. With gentle encouragement, she shows how to look for communications typically drowned out in the noise and chaos of modern life, whether they take the form of clairaudience or clairvoyance. Filled with amazing stories, The Language of Miracles inspires readers to sit down with the animals in their lives and explore the unspoken world between them.

Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development

David Harvey

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

a great theoretical resource 4 out of 5 stars.
20 of 20 people found this review helpful.

Harvey is one of the most influential theorists of our times. He has been doing some great work on global development issues. Some of his initial thoughts are recorded in a recent book called _Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a theory of uneven geographical development_. This is continuation of his earlier works - New Imperialism and A brief history of Neoliberlism. He repeats some of the idea in this smaller book, however, he is working on some new ideas. So if you haven't read the other books, this can be good introduction. However, to get a better idea I would recommend reading his other works.

According to Harvey, uneven development is nothing new. However, extreme volatile geopolitical situation made it necessary for better theoretical interpretation. Harvey outlines four different ways currently we think of uneven development:

1)"Catch up": In this paradigm uneven development is the product of the process from the center that leaves behind residuals from preceding eras or "meets with pockets of resistances towards the progress and modernization that capitalism promotes". He continues, "Backwardness (the term is highly significant) arises out of an unwillingness or an inability (in racist versions considered innate, in environmentalist versions seen as naturally imposed, and in culturalist versions understood in terms of weight of historical, religious etc.) to "catch up" with the dynamics of a western-centered capitalism, usually portrayed as the highpoint of modernity and civilization."

2)Constructivist arguments: The focus here is exploitative practices of capitalism backed by political and military establishment of powerful nations.

3)Environmentalist: Jared Diamond and Jeffery Sachs are one of the biggest proponents of this approach.

4)Geopolitical interpretation: These interpretations focuses on territorially organized powers. "These powers can be organized as states or blocs of states but struggles also occur between regions, cities, communities, local neighborhoods, turfs etc."

Harvey points out that there are many overlaps between these approaches. However, depending on the approach, the line of argument is can change. So he is trying to develop a "unified" theory of uneven geographical development. He proposes four conditionalities that is simple enough to aid comprehension and complex enough to embrace the nuances:

a) The material embedding of capital accumulation process in the web of socio-ecological life .
b) Accumulation by dispossession.
c)The law-like character of capital accumulation in space and time.
d) The political, social and "class" struggles at a variety of geographical scales.

Editorial Review:

An essential introduction to the field of historical geography, which offers a radical new way of understanding global capitalism.

Fiscal crises have cascaded across much of the developing world with devastating results, from Mexico to Indonesia, Russia and Argentina. The extreme volatility in contemporary political economic fortunes seems to mock our best efforts to understand the forces that drive development in the world economy.

In this groundbreaking book, David Harvey shows how the disciplines of historical geography yield decisive new insights into the workings of global capitalism, and introduces the concept of uneven geographical development as a revelatory perspective on the forces which create economic success or failure.

Tom Brown's Field Guide To City And Suburban Survival

with Brandt Morgan Tom Brown Jr.

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good ideas on how to survive in the Big City 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Where to get food, water, shelter in the city? What happens when there's a disaster? This book is a decent start. Lots of helpful chapters on how to get the essentials, as well as what common edible plants grow in the city.

Another food-for-thought thing you can read is the chapter in Way of the Scout (also by Brown) on his first solo trip to New York City.

Poorly organized, not very useful 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

This book rambles quite a bit and provides a wealth not very targeted information. Do I really need to know how the rain cycle works to survive in the suburbs? Or how a generator works (without instructions on how to build my own out of scraps)?

In all, the useful information in this book would fill a smallish pamphlet. The rest is filler.

A great disappointment.

Tom Brown's Field Guide: City and Suburban Survival 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The purpose behind this book differs significantly from Cory Lundin's When All Hell Breaks Loose, which I previously reviewed, even though both books are concerned with survival within a city. Whereas Lundin focused on post-disaster survival -- mainly within the confines of your home and backyard and dependent upon your own resources -- Tom Brown differs in that he imagines the reader needing to survive a personal emergency, with the rest of the city essentially unaffected. He allows, therefore, that you may have uninvited access to city resources outside your home, such as water and shelter in public areas, and restaurant or grocery store dumpsters for food.

He schools the reader in the basics of how electricity and water are supplied in a city and how they move within a house. An entire chapter is devoted to how weather occurs. Avoiding an emergency is as much his intent as surviving one. It is not till the end of the book that he discusses disasters and how to deal with them. Unlike Lundin, Brown briefly shows a debris hut, fire by friction, and a few traps.


Chapter titles: Introduction, Shelter, Water, Heat and Light, Food, Crime, Weather, Disasters, Enjoying the City. Appendices: Common Urban Edibles, Common Urban Animals, Survival Supplies.

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are

Carl Sagan

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Total reviews: 52 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Years later, still effective 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I read this as a teenager when it first came out, and am in the middle of giving it another read. I was worried that it would be outdated information, but it really covers the subject well and any new information just compliments what this book is saying. I recommend it highly to anyone who is curious of our origins.

Editorial Review:

"Dazzling...A feast. Absorbing and elegantly written, it tells of theorigins of life on earth, describes its variety and charaacter, and culminates in a discussion of human nature and teh complex traces ofhumankind's evolutionary past...It is an amazing story masterfully told."
FINANCIAL TIMES (LONDON)
World renowned scientist Carl Sagan and acclaimed author Ann Druyan have written a ROOTS for the human species, a lucid and riveting account of how humans got to be the way we are. It shows with humor and drama that many of our key traits--self-awareness, technology, family ties, submission to authority, hatred for those a little different from ourselves, reason, and ethics--are rooted in the deep past, and illuminated by our kinship with other animals. Astonishing in its scope, brilliant in its insights, and an absolutely compelling read, SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS is a triumph of popular science.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators

David Sobel

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Childhood and Nature, Design Principles for Educators, (and Others too!) 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

David Sobel, already the author of four influential books, including Beyond Ecophobia and Children's Special Places, has just published a fifth. Called Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators, the book provides a guide for fostering in children a love of nature and an understanding of the complexity and seriousness of the issues facing our world. Though geared toward educators, the book is also quite useful for parents and others who are involved with kids or, like me, simply have a strong interest in our human relationship with nature, and how we might mend it. Of particular note is Sobel's last chapter in which he explores the challenge of talking with kids about climate change.

What most children learn in school is divorced from the landscape they see right outside their classroom windows, according to Sobel. His life work has been dedicated to fostering children's direct experience of their natural surroundings right alongside learning about history, math, art, and other subjects. In Sobel's words "we must show how School and Mother Nature can become friends again." When the study of nature and the environment occurs outside in real landscapes, children learn much more than just facts and concepts. Such engagement provides students with not only the thinking skills needed to pass tests, but also helps them to grow into responsible citizens and stewards of the Earth. To help educators create nature-based curricula, Sobel articulates seven "play motifs" that he has observed during children's interactions with nature. Based on these motifs, such as "making friends with animals" or "constructing adventures," Sobel offers design principles for developing nature-based curricula.

Design with nature

Ian L McHarg

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"In presenting us with a vision of organic exuberance and human delight, which ecology and ecological design promise to open up for us, McHarg revives the hope for a better world." --Lewis Mumford

". . . important to America and all the rest of the world in our struggle to design rational, wholesome, and productive landscapes." --Laurie Olin, Hanna Olin, Ltd.

"This century's most influential landscape architecture book." --Landscape Architecture

". . . an enduring contribution to the technical literature of landscape planning and to that unfortunately small collection of writings which speak with emotional eloquence of the importance of ecological principles in regional planning." --Landscape and Urban Planning

In the twenty-five years since it first took the academic world by storm, Design With Nature has done much to redefine the fields of landscape architecture, urban and regional planning, and ecological design. It has also left a permanent mark on the ongoing discussion of mankind's place in nature and nature's place in mankind within the physical sciences and humanities. Described by one enthusiastic reviewer as a "user's manual for our world," Design With Nature offers a practical blueprint for a new, healthier relationship between the built environment and nature. In so doing, it provides nothing less than the scientific, technical, and philosophical foundations for a mature civilization that will, as Lewis Mumford ecstatically put it in his Introduction to the 1969 edition, "replace the polluted, bulldozed, machine-dominated, dehumanized, explosion-threatened world that is even now disintegrating and disappearing before our eyes."

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

William R. Catton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The seminal, absolutely finest environmental book ever written.... 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book months ago (my first of several copies), as I was trying to decide whether to buy Heinberg's "Peak Everything". I read one of the Heinberg reviews, which suggested that I buy "Overshoot...", and I was so impressed by the review that I purchased Overshoot, instead of another "peak" book.

I cannot possibly say it better than the 12 other current reviewers of Catton's book, but I can say that Overshoot....is THE best ecological/environmental book I've ever seen, no qualifications possible.

Why more people don't know about this book, is hard to say, but the fact is that anyone who is interested in where the world is today in terms of energy and other environmental resources, how we got here and WHY we got here, needs to read this absolutely beautifully written book.

No other overview of the world's current predicaments, comes close to this gem of a document..it is almost as though all the powers of the Universe suddenly descended on Earth and provided the reasons for (and also some of the answers to) our situation, in this one superb book!

Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth

Marcia Bjornerud

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Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Wonderful, rich memoir of our planet 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

What a delight! In the short span of reading this book, I was converted. I am not a geologist or even a novice. I began reading the book with almost no knowledge of our planet (and, I admit, little interest). By the time I finished, I had a comfortable and inspired sense that I understood how the solar system formed and how the earth developed and maintains it remarkable balancing act to sustain life.

The author writes of the life and origin of the earth as though it were the neighborhood of your youth. She claims no certainty in knowing exactly what happened or why it happened, but proposes alternate theories and notions of how the earth developed. As you read, the delicate yet robust nature of the world becomes clear. In the weeks since I finished, I have read articles about the geologic history of life on earth with a new understanding and keen interest.

I recommend "Reading the Rocks" to anyone! You will enjoy this wonderful book whether you are already interested in geology, in the marvel of how the earth developed and sustains life, or you just want to better understand how our planet manages its tidal flow of life, death, and renewal.

Editorial Review:

To many of us, the Earth’s crust is a relic of ancient, unknowable history. But to a geologist, stones are richly illustrated narratives, telling gothic tales of cataclysm and reincarnation. For more than four billion years, in beach sand, granite, and garnet schists, the planet has kept a rich and idiosyncratic journal of its past. Fulbright Scholar Marcia Bjornerud takes the reader along on an eye-opening tour of Deep Time, explaining in elegant prose what we see and feel beneath our feet. Both scientist and storyteller, Bjornerud uses anecdotes and metaphors to remind us that our home is a living thing with lessons to teach. Containing a glossary and detailed timescale, as well as vivid descriptions and historic accounts, Reading the Rocks is literally a history of the world, for all friends of the Earth.