Green Phoenix : Restoring the Tropical Forests of Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Book Description

Can we prevent the destruction of the world's tropical forests? In the fire-scarred hills of Costa Rica, award-winning science writer William Allen found a remarkable answer: we can not only prevent their destruction--we can bring them back to their former glory. In Green Phoenix, Allen tells the gripping story of a large group of Costa Rican and American scientists and volunteers who set out to save the tropical forests in the northwestern section of the country. It was an area badly damaged by the fires of ranchers and small farmers; in many places a few strands of forest strung across a charred landscape. Despite the widely held belief that tropical forests, once lost, are lost forever, the team led by the dynamic Daniel Janzen from the University of Pennsylvania moved relentlessly ahead, taking a broad array of political, ecological, and social steps necessary for restoration. They began with 39 square miles and, by 2000, they had stitched together and revived some 463 square miles of land and another 290 of marine area. Today this region is known as the Guanacaste Conservation Area, a fabulously rich landscape of dry forest, cloud forest, and rain forest that gives life to some 235,000 species of plants and animals. It may be the greatest environmental success of our time, a prime example of how extensive devastation can be halted and reversed. This is an inspiring story, and in recounting it, Allen writes with vivid power. He creates lasting images of pristine beaches and dense forest and captures the heroics and skill of the scientific teams, especially the larger-than-life personality of the maverick ecologist Daniel Janzen. It is a book everyone concerned about the environment will want to own.

Customer Reviews:

Hope for the forest, the people, and biodiversity.......2007-03-31

I have the greatest respect and admiration for Dan Janzen and have supported the Rincon Rainforest project before seeing this book. This book is a good explanation for why the Guanacaste Conservation Area in Costa Rica may be the key to all successful tropical forest conservation projects.

The book also describes the life work of one of the most important conservation biologist of all time and all of those who have been pushed, coereced, reluctantly persuaded and inspired to do this most significant project. If you are discouraged in any way about the fate of the diverse tropical forests you should read this book. It truely is an inspiration.

Good case study of an important conservation project.......2006-04-21

Without duplicating the book description, I'll just explain why I would recommend this book to anyone interested in conservation.

Although the creation of Guanacaste Conservation Area -- which combines pre-existing national parks and added land between and around them, along with a marine sector -- is unique in representing the world's only large-scale tropical forest restoration project, the story illustrates elements common to nature conservation projects in general. These include the importance of understanding the local ecology (in this case, especially forest succession and the necessity of controlling fires); political aspects, both local and national (Costa Rican president, parks service, etc.); how money is raised and land purchased or otherwise secured; and ways of involving people from the local area in conservation and the importance of that.

I have just returned from Guanacaste and was impressed by the program that trains local people as "parataxonomists" to help with the huge task of identifying and cataloguing the area's many species. Another program gives instruction on natural history to children in local schools. The result has been an important cultural shift toward appreciating nature and the many benefits it provides.

The writing is sometimes long-winded and ponderous, but the careful recounting of details was worthwhile, and the integration of interesting snippets of tropical biology and anectodes of the people involved made it an enjoyable read.

Of particular interest as well was the recounting of the reaction to the revolutionary suggestion that tropical forest can indeed be restored on land taken out of agriculture, an assertion that initially met with skepticism and alarm from conservation organizations, as it conflicted with the conservation message that a tropical forest, once cut down, can "never" regenerate.

In this end, this is a great and stirring conservation success story. The book illustrates how much hard work that entailed on the part of many dedicated people.

RE-CREATION.......2005-07-12

Author William Allen takes you to a world you have truly never seen: to the remarkable life that teems in the forests, far beyond Costa Rica's cities and towns. A powerful saga of courage, leadership and stewardship, this epic tale of a hardy (and sometimes foolhardy) group of scientists who feel compelled to fight the destruction a fragile community reads like a swashbuckling romance with Mother Earth! Another book I enjoyed immensely along with this one before visiting the country, was the history "Costa Rica The Last Country The Gods Made." It came out almost exactly ten years before this one and has an elegant literary flair, providing a very satsifying blend of scholarship and imagination.

Deforestation? How about rainforest restoration!?!.......2002-01-31

How often have you've heard the tales of gloom and doom regarding the deforestation of the tropics? Undoubtedly, the numbers are grim and the outlook for many forests is not good. This is why this story, wonderfully told by William Allen, a science writer at the ST. LOUIS DISPATCH, is particularly refreshing and guardedly optimistic.

Allen craftily weaves anecdote with history, real people with events to present a story that tells how a relatively small park in NW Costa Rica (Guanacaste National Park) developed into the Guanacaste Conservation Area, some 10 times larger than its original size. But the story is not limited to the success in creating a larger park. Rather, the author depicts the efforts of a determined group of Costa Rican and foreign scientists (led by Daniel Janzen) as they attempt to reverse the effects of deforestation and actually bring a substantial area back to some semblance of its original state.

The story delves quite a bit into Janzen's personality and raises the issue of a foreigner's role in a project such as this. Would it succeed without him? Just what would it take to restore non-virgin forest? Is this an idea that might work elsewhere? Just a few of the intriguing questions dealt with in this book.

I particularly enjoyed the beginning of each chapter, where the author introduces an anecdote upon which the rest of chapter usually builds. The anecdotal information is highly entertaining of itself, and when used as metafor, it is easier to remember the larger points made.

If you're into eco-whatever, this is great stuff...

Book Description

In 1532, eleven years after the Spanish conquest, Mexico is in crisis. As the conquistadors discover an earthly paradise, its peoples and their Gods are being destroyed. This is a time of greed, uncertainty—and idealism. Despairing of his surroundings, Vasco de Quiroga, a new member of the Spanish ruling council, forges a commune on Mexico City's outskirts, using Thomas More's book, Utopia, as his blueprint. As Toby Green explores Quiroga’s story, he begins to sense an eerie resonance between Quiroga’s age and our own. With vivid reconstructions of 16th-century Spain and Mexico, the narrative becomes an account not only of Quiroga, but also of Utopia as both an idea and a literary form.

Average customer rating:

A slightly misleading title.

Best Easy Day Hikes Phoenix
Stewart M. Green
Manufacturer: Falcon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Walking | Hiking & Camping | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

General | Sports | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1560449241

Book Description

Hikes varying from half-hour strolls to full-day adventures, this guidebook is for everyone, including families.

Customer Reviews:

A slightly misleading title........2002-04-05

Falcon Press has produced a number of "Best Easy Day Hikes" guides over the past few years. They usually feature hikes under 8 miles with an emphasis on shorter walks the whole family can enjoy. This guide to Phoenix hiking, however, should perhaps be called "Best Short Hikes" as the trails Green recommends are anything but easy. Quite apart from the weather in Phoenix, which makes hiking anytime from the beginning of May until mid October a real chore, many of these trails are incredibly steep. People used to hiking well graded trails such as the Pacific Crest Trail will be stunned at the number of hikes which gain close to (and in some cases more than) 1000ft/mile. At least a third of the trails described in the book exceed the maximum grade that modern trail designers use. This is at least partly due to the Phoenix Parks department simply picking which of the "use" trails they want to designate as official trails, rather than putting in the expense to build good ones.
That said, this guide is thorough, and it does include a number of hikes which even non-athletes would enjoy. Green's trail descriptions are helpful, especially in light of all the unofficial trails which dart in and about the designated routes of the Phoenix Mountains. Finally, his guide is to be commended for the excellent descriptions of getting to the trailhead. Non-residents wishing to hike in Phoenix will find his directions very easy to follow.
On the whole, a good book for winter conditioning hikes. I visit Phoenix regularly, but would not consider most of these trails in the summer.

Average customer rating:

Spell-binding 70's sci-fi

Green phoenix
Thomas Burnett Swann , and George Barr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: B00005XEL7

Customer Reviews:

Spell-binding 70's sci-fi.......2006-06-11

Paperback, 1972, DAW books.
Sub-title: The Last Stand of the Prehumans

Though this was my first exposure to Swann, he is obviously
an academic and a scholar of classical Greek literature,
history, and mythology. Set in the time of the fall of Troy,
the book borrows characters out of Homeric legend and/or
history (Aeneus and his son Ascanius), adds Centaurs, Dryads
and Fauns, and tells a very modern-sounding story of the
Battle of the Sexes which could easily have inspired some of
today's popular Goddess mythology.

Mathematical Papers: Edited by N. M. Ferrers (Dover Phoenix Editions)

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Mathematical Papers: Edited by N. M. Ferrers (Dover Phoenix Editions)
George Green
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Science | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0486442675

Book Description

Best known for Green’s theorem, George Green (1793–1841) also published influential essays, or papers, in the fields of hydrodynamics, electricity, and magnetism. This collection comprises his most significant works, including “An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism,” “Mathematical Investigations concerning the Laws of the Equilibrium of Fluids analogous to the Electric Fluid,” “On the Determination of the Exterior and Interior Attractions of Ellipsoids of Variable Densities,” and two of his most valuable memoirs, “On the Reflexion and Refraction of Sound” and “On the laws of Reflexion and Refraction of Light at the common surface of two non-crystallized Media.” 1871 ed.

Average customer rating:

Extraordinary and idiosyncratic
HENRY GREEN WAS BRILLIANT!!!!

Concluding (Phoenix Fiction)
Henry Green
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

British | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0226306119

Book Description

Concluding is probably the most lyrical novel by a writer whom Rebecca West has called "the most original" of his time. "Within the compass of a summer's day for all time yet intensely and closely centered upon a particular time and place, we are made aware of man's predicament in a world of transcendent sadness and beauty."—Horizon

"[A] novel of projections, protractions, long shots, and shadows flying ahead, a slow fall. . . . The sinister world of Concluding is . . . beautiful, side-lit and colored like an undersea kingdom."—from the Foreword by Eudora Welty

Customer Reviews:

Extraordinary and idiosyncratic.......2001-02-25

Henry Green's Concluding is an extraordinary novel. Remarkably idiosyncratic, it is a work that may not appeal to everybody equally. Green humorously, and tragically, presents the common misunderstandings that language and our private emotions provoke. Although natural beauty and light's dazzling improvisations illuminate the novel, the recurrent theme of what is secret, underground and buried offers a disturbing and unsettling contrast. Passions bloom abruptly through the dryness and formality of a community stifled by Rules and Directives. A striking example of Green's powers is the lunch episode in which the manipulative Principal Miss Edge feels a missing girl's corpse is buried underneath the azaleas and rhododendrons behind her table. This book deserves to be read and reread.

HENRY GREEN WAS BRILLIANT!!!!.......1998-07-09

If you love human beings and/or are one, you will love Henry Green's books! REAL stories, told in VERY imaginative ways, about REAL people expressing REAL EMOTION. Check out: Living, Loving, Nothing, Party Going, Caught, Doting, Blindness, Back, and Pack My Bag; A Self-Portrait -- all by Green!!!

Average customer rating:

Double Phoenix
Edmund & Green, Roger Lancelyn Cooper
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000LBWRTU

Average customer rating:

Rich Reading
Rising from the ashes ...

Double Phoenix

ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Magic & Wizards | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0345024206

Product Description

Two allegorical enchantments based on a theme as old as fantasy itself - the great and glorious bird of life, ever destroying itself, ever awakening to pristine splendor.

Customer Reviews:

Rich Reading.......2005-10-20

This volume is not a single work, but two: "The Firebird", by Edmund Cooper, and "From the World's End" by Roger Lancelyn Green (of Robin Hood fame) are bound into a single volume. Both are very well-written fantasies, focusing on the famed Phoenix and its legendary rebirth. Both novels are said to be allegories rich in imagery and analogues; I think they're just fine writing. Read them for the story.

These will both soon be rediscovered as modern classics of fantasy.

Rising from the ashes ..........2004-12-30

While the fantasy masters (Morris, Dunsany, etc.) republished in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series continue to remain in print, the authors of this slim but rewarding volume have been sadly forgotten. Presenting a pairing of two allegorical novellas dealing with the Phoenix of myth, it succeeds both as entertainment & something deeper. Let me especially note Cooper's "The Firebird" -- if his use of the Journey of Life is straightforward, his detailed images, rich colors, & evocative landscapes bring that journey to vivid life. The novella is as much a tone poem, a flowing music, as it is narrative; it deserves to be much better known. And Green's "From the World's End" is subtle & literate work, with pyschological depth. Together, these two novellas will transport readers & leave them thoughtful afterwards. Those looking for typical action & adventure will be disappointed; those looking for insight & mythic resonance will find both in abundance. Highly recommended!

Average customer rating:

Green Phoenix
Thomas Burnett Swann
Manufacturer: DAW
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000GRGOPW

Average customer rating:

First reading difficult
The G.M.Food;its historical perspective

The Green Phoenix
Paul F. Lurquin , and Paul Lurquin
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Biotechnology | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

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Genetically Engineered Food | Nutrition | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0231122624

Book Description

-- Choice

Providing the first account of the story behind genetically engineered plants, Paul F. Lurquin covers the controversial birth of the field, its sudden death, phoenixlike reemergence, and ultimate triumph as not only a legitimate field of science but a new tool of multinational corporate interests. In addition, Lurquin looks ahead to the potential impact this revolutionary technology will have on human welfare.

As Lurquin shows, it was the intense competition between international labs that resulted in the creation of the first transgenic plants. Two very different approaches to plant genetic engineering came to fruition at practically the same time, and Lurquin's account demonstrates how cross-fertilization between the two areas was critical to success. The scientists concerned were trying to tackle some very basic scientific problems and did not foresee the way that corporations would apply their methodology. With detailed accounts of the work of individual scientists and teams all over the world, Lurquin pieces together a remarkable account.

Customer Reviews:

First reading difficult.......2002-06-16

More easy to read popular books need to be written about plants transgenics. I was thrown at first because the first couple of chapters are about failures to incorporate DNA into plants, but that wasn't made clear until later. So you were reading thinking that this worked. Some of the figures have the wrong numbers but I didn't figure that out until I was reading the appendix. The book gets better when discussing successful attempts to incorporate DNA into plants. A lot of this work has been taken up by corporations that tend to work in secret. No wonder the public is suspicious of Genetically modified food. I am thankful for the light that this book throws upon the topic.

The G.M.Food;its historical perspective.......2001-12-14

I can review the book if a reviewer's copy is supplied to me at my address:Dr.K.L.mehra, 38 Munirka Enclave,New Delhi-110067,India.I look forward to receive the copy.Thanks and with best wishes.K.L.Mehra

Book Description

The terrorist attacks in September 2001 turned PTSD into a household word. Documented throughout history, posttraumatic stress disorder—officially recognized as a diagnosis by DSM-III in 1980—is only the most recent term used to describe the suffering of trauma victims.

Few could have foreseen PTSD's profound impact on litigation. Often dubbed the "black hole" of litigation—where allegations are easy to assert but difficult to defend because the symptoms are subjective—PTSD has deeply influenced civil and criminal law in cases ranging from malpractice and personal injury to sexual harassment and child abuse, and has even been used as an insanity defense in criminal cases. It is thus vital that forensic examiners perform credible psychiatric and psychological examinations of PTSD claimants.

Intended to add direction and discipline to the forensic assessment of PTSD litigants, this expanded second edition includes new chapters about disability determinations in PTSD litigation, PTSD in employment litigation, and forensic laboratory testing for PTSD. Updated chapters cover current and future trends, recent research findings, forensic psychiatric assessment in claimants, guidelines for diagnosing PTSD in children and adolescents, forensic psychological assessment, and guidelines for evaluating malingering in PTSD.

This essential collection by 13 leading U.S. experts sheds important new light on forensic guidelines for effective assessment and diagnosis and determination of disability, serving both plaintiffs and defendants in litigation involving PTSD claims. Mental health and legal professionals, third-party payers, and interested laypersons will welcome this balanced approach to a complex and difficult field.

Customer Reviews:

Still Current and Relevant for Forensic Psychology.......2000-04-26

This edited volume continues to be a classic in the field of assessing and testifying in court on the subject of post-traumatic stress disorder. As an expert witness in these types of litigation for both the prosecution and defense, I find the rigor of the assessment chapter by Dr. Terence Keane as well as the overarching strategic review chapter by Dr. Robert Simon himself, to be consistently relevant to my practice. Don't be deterred by the book's diagnostic datedness (DSM-IIIR versus DSM-IV)--it's a "must-have" for everyone interested in fair and ethical litigation related to psychological trauma.

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