Book Description
Sustainability has become a buzzword in the last decade, but its full meaning is complex, emerging from a range of different sectors. In practice, it has become the springboard for millions of individuals throughout the world who are forging the fastest and most profound social transformation of our time - the Sustainability Revolution.
The Sustainability Revolution paints a picture of this largely unrecognized phenomenon from the point of view of five major sectors of society:
- Community (government and international institutions)
- Commerce (business)
- Natural Resources (forestry, farming, fisheries, etc.)
- Ecological Design (architecture, technology)
- Biosphere (conservation, biodiversity, etc.).
The book analyses sustainability as defined by each of these sectors in terms of the principles, declarations and intentions that have emerged from conferences and publications, and which serve as guidelines for policy decisions and future activities. Common themes are then explored, including:
- an emphasis on stewardship
- the need for economic restructuring promoting no waste and equitable distribution
- an understanding and respect for the principles of nature
- the restoration of life forms, and
- an intergenerational perspective on solutions.
Concluding that these themes in turn represent a new set of values that define this paradigm shift, The Sustainability Revolution describes innovative sustainable projects and policies in Colombia, Brazil, India and the Netherlands and examines future trends. Complete with a useful resources list, this is the first book of its kind and will appeal to business and government policy makers, academics, and all interested in sustainability.
Customer Reviews:
Building Awareness of the Sustainability Revolution.......2007-10-03
This is an interesting book in its positioning of the sustainability movement as a revolution. Let's hope. As the recent movie, the 11th Hour, emphasizes, the challenge before us is to build awareness of sustainability. One way to begin this is to do some self education and, most importantly,begin to identify the PEOPLE who are involved in moving us forward on the sustainability front. This book references ten+ people to include the work of:
Stuart Cowan
Alan Durning
Catherine Austin Fitts
Barbara Harwood
Dee Hock
David Holmgren
Wes Jackson
Jaime Lerner
Paul MacCready
Allan Savory
George Sessions
Nancy Todd
In addition to identifying some key players, the book also makes it clearer as to what sustainability encompasses. There are many, many books on the topic, and this is a good one.
fast delivery.......2007-08-05
The book meets my expectation of content. Amazon has been a fantastic delivery systme with great customer service.
useful book.......2007-08-01
I appreciated both what was presented about sustainability and how carefully Edwards compares the environmentalism and sustainability movements. He doesn't "diss" environmentalism, but illuminates a lot of general principles of the sustainability movement that show it to be significantly more sustainable as a movement.
I found each chapter to be complete, but there is a lot of parallel structure in the book so I limited myself to a chapter a day so I wouldn't confuse things between chapters.
Next edition: I could have used more explanation for why social equity is the third E (Ecology, Economy, Equity) of sustainability. I can deduce it on my own, but I just could have used some help understanding this at a fundamental level.
Overall, I loved this book and read just about every word of the text. I have marked up and flagged the extensive reference sections and have already chased down a few follow-up topics.
A complete primer on sustainability.......2005-08-05
"The Sustainability Revolution" is a thorough review of the evolution of sustainability. For a text loaded with facts and details, Andres wrote it so it would be understandable for those who are new to the history and principles of sustainability. The resources section is especially helpful because it lists organizations and contacts mentioned in the book along with brief descriptions about them. I'm sure that many of our customers -- for the DVD "Architecture to Zucchini: The people, companies and organizations pioneering sustainability" -- would be very interested in this book. I highly recommend it to higher education, consultants and business leaders.
Book Description
A dramatic story of the interplay between environment and economy in New England.
Customer Reviews:
Came for the topic, stayed for the author.......2005-02-17
Ms Muir is a great storyteller. I was interested in the topic and prepared to slog through boring text to learn something, but this was AMAZING. Read like a novel. She sees inter-relationships and draws conclusions which taught me a lot. Now I want to read everything she's written. I was sorry when I finished this book.
Not just for New Englanders.......2003-01-25
Other reviewers have discussed the virtues of the book, so I will only add that the lessons to be learned from this well written and fascinating study are relevant to the entire planet, not just New England. As such, the book is highly recommended to anyone anywhere who is interested in mankind's relationship to the environment and its effects on culture and economics.
An Intriguing Glimpse at New Englandýs History.......2002-10-31
Using a pond near her home in Newton, MA as a backdrop, Diana Muir weaves a compelling view of New England history, which she argues is a series of ecological crises.
From pre-Columbian times, Muir says, New England was populated by individuals struggling on a land that was not conducive to making a living. Radical solutions to unsolvable problems were their only escape. In the 1790s, when farming was the only occupation, a growing population and a soil spent by generations of misuse, resulted in a dearth of farmable land. With no prospects and no future, individuals like Eli Whitney and Thomas Blanchard, were forced to look for creative solutions to society's problems and set in motion an industrial revolution.
I was particularly intrigued by the story of Frederick Tudor, the man who in 1806 introduced ice to Martinique. It is one thing to sell ice to people who because of their location, understand the concept. It is quite another, to sell ice to people who have never experienced it, to say nothing about the practical necessities of ice houses to warehouse the product.
His father's real estate speculation losses left Tudor with nothing but ambition and a house with a pond in Saugus, MA. He succeeded after two difficult decades. There was always a wrinkle to be solved before a fortune could be built. Iceboxes had to be designed and then marketed in southern ports to people who had to be taught how to preserve it.
This phenomenon explains why there so many Crystal and Silver Lakes dot the New England landscape, relics of an enterprising age. Savvy ice dealers understood that attractive names sell products. For a brief period even Muir's Bullough's Pond was briefly renamed Silver Lake.
Diana Muir e-mailed me twice during the past two years introducing her book to me. Having read her book, I am grateful for her persistence. If you enjoy reading unique looks at our history, I implore not to wait for her to contact you. Read her book; you will not regret it.
on reflection, dazzling.......2002-08-02
This is one of the best books I have ever read- period! At the core of the book is Ms. Muir's message that we are part of nature, not separate from or above nature, and we have a great responsibility to maintain the integrity of the environment. Granted, this message is not new. Where this book is very different is how Ms. Muir leads up to this message. She shows how the New England landscape changed from one where farming dominated to one that was a mixture of many different types of mills and factories. You learn the consequences of everything that was done along the way: the consequences to fish and birds of damming rivers; the consequences to forests and to the air we breath of heavy logging; the consequences of catching too many of one type of fish, etc. What is great about this book is that Ms. Muir does not deal in hazy generalities. She takes you step by step and shows you specifically how certain actions cause certain changes in the environment, often unforseen. There is nothing simplistic in her observations and she knows there are no easy answers. She lays out the data for you and you can come to your own conclusions. But what really takes this book to another level is the fascinating biographical information that Ms. Muir provides concerning the many, many New Englanders that invented the machines of the Industrial Revolution and kept the economy vibrant as the importance of agriculture diminished. The way this book is put together is very unusual, due to the combination of all of the above factors and in the space of 248 pages you will learn a great deal of information. The research Ms. Muir must have done in writing this book is staggering and her knowledge across many different areas is amazing. Don't miss reading this book.
breaks new ground.......2002-07-25
It is hard to imagine how Reflections in Bullough's Pond could have been better written. Diana Muir gives an account of the interplay between New England's economic history and its environment in a lapidary prose which never leaves the reader behind. By the end of the book we are enlightened about the ebb and flow of these matters over the five hundred-odd years from early European settlement to modern times without ever being overwhelmed, for Ms Muir always wears her erudition lightly.
She breaks new ground in her treatment of the environment as both an economic resource and as a complex-often vulnerable-amalgam of ecosystems. Her thesis is that we are living on capital, be it fossil fuel, topsoil or forest-she is particularly compelling on the vulnerable biochemistry of these last. Unusually, however, Ms Muir is scrupulous in her use of statistics and fastidious in her argument. She never seeks to undermine the legitimacy of the economic impulse, though she does not flinch from her conclusion: an argument for restraint in economic activity and population.
Nor does she lose sight of the propensity of ecosystems to renew themselves, albeit often in new forms: she is pleased-almost amused-by the return of the beaver and the moose, while regretting the extinction of the elm and the emergence of local spruce monocultures. Indeed Ms Muir expresses herself more forcefully on the loss of flora than fauna. Perhaps this is because the long life cycles of the former make it harder to take an optimistic view of their capacity to renew themselves. Alternatively it may be because the collapse of agriculture in New England following the opening up of the West, has stimulated the return to southern New England of so many species formerly evicted to Canada.
Reflections in Bullough's Pond is no naïve elegy for a Paradise Lost; it never loses sight of a human interplay with the landscape which long antedates industrialisation, not to say European settlement. In a particularly ingenious section of the book, Ms Muir reminds us that in the middle of the nineteenth century, the courts and legislatures altered common law doctrines of liability to free up industrial activity. This reflected the climate of the times. Ms Muir argues that the climate of our own times may well give rise to more extensive liability concepts to restrain the corporations, notions very much with the tail wind of popular and professional thinking.
Given the book's generosity and elegance, it seems curmudgeonly to cavil at any part of it. But a couple of issues do arise. First forests. Since the invention of agriculture, we have cleared them for the simple reason that we have better uses for the land. This has been going on in the Old World for millennia. Of course there have been local environmental disasters, eg in North Africa and Mesopotamia, but nothing sufficiently general to justify veneration of forests as a precautionary measure. This is an artefact of late-twentieth century sentiment in the New World. There such virgin forests as have not lost within living memory are being destroyed even now, thus the local salience of the issue. Over the past fifteen years their defenders have sought to enlist support by arguing that they served one or another vital purpose: producing oxygen, acting as feedstock for drugs, now Ms Muir points to their role in topsoil. The first two arguments are infrequently heard these days. As to the last, let me point out that where I grew up in the eastern part of England, the ground was cleared eight or nine hundred years ago, but the topsoil remains sufficiently fertile for the local farmers to get out record yields.
I was also left uncertain as to the course Ms Muir might prescribe for the several billion who have never seen Bullough's Pond, and whose habitats have been profoundly altered by economic activity for millenia rather than centuries. The residents of Asia's great river valleys cleared the forests long before Columbus saw the New World. They have to eat-with luck raise themselves above thoughts of the next meal. Ms Muir has practical suggestions as to how the courts might restrain US corporations, but nothing on how to restrain the aspirations of those who dream of a fraction of American prosperity. I suspect she is wise enough to know that there is nothing to be done on this score. In a rare nod towards the nether reaches of environmental alarmism, she hints that she expects nature to impose population restraint, if we do not. I am more sanguine. In whatever might come to pass as in what has come before, we will wade through. As we must.
Book Description
Set in the context of a sophisticated critique of the privileged epistemological position oachieved by modern science, whereby it both aspires to provide technological solutions for social and political problems while at the same time disclaiming responsibility for the new problems which it creates in its wake, the author looks to the future in an analysis of the new project to apply the latest Gene Revolution technology to India and warns of the further environmental and social damage which will ensue.
Book Description
An examination of the Scientific Revolution that shows how the mechanistic world view of modern science has sanctioned the exploitation of nature, unrestrained commercial expansion, and a new socioeconomic order that subordinates women.
Customer Reviews:
A landmark, if flawed work.......2006-06-02
Merchant's book is the only one out there which incorporates the history of environmental degradation with the history of ideas and ideology. I had never considered the power of "mechanism" as an ideology; I had assumed it was an objective account of natural processes as they actually occur. So, that was a good point the book brings into the center of the discussion. But the problem is that this idea of mechanism is inadequately theorized in this book. Where did it come from? How did it become the authoritative worldview? I read Merchant's "Radical Ecology" published 20 years later, and the idea of mechanism is still underdeveloped here too. The world is corpuscular, mechanical, lifeless -- why? Says who? Why do they start saying it? There are links here to Protestantism, but Merchant does not realize this.
Boring ad nauseum.......2003-09-05
This is, without a doubt, the most boring book I've ever read. The analogies are absolutely ridiculous and the imagery--Please!
The best part of this book was the Preface & Introduction. After that, it went downhill and so did my interest. Had to fight to stay awake from sentence to sentence.
Flat treatment of important topic.......2000-07-26
This is a book on the important topic of ecofeminism. The author wants to show how the modern destruction of nature and our environment ties in with the subjugation of women during the same period. However, to understand how these assaults occurred, we have to first examine the history of ideas. As Merchant shows, these destructive attitudes toward women and nature reflect changing ideas of how we think about people and our place in the world. What characterizes this new way of thinking which began about 500 years ago is the idea that trees, colors, ideas, people, in short, the entire cosmos, are really just the mechanical actions of matter in motion, no matter how much things may seem otherwise. From this modern perspective, the natural world and everything in it really amounts to a gigantic machine in motion, thereby debasing our ordinary experience of that world. Nonetheless, this reduction of things to numbers greatly helps the rise of modern science, especially technology, by showing how mathematics can be applied concretely and experimentally to just about everything there is. Moreover, during this period, how people think about society also changes. Society too is conceived as a colossal machine, a human one, possessing definite structures, with components conceived as self-contained and independent little atoms, who associate with one another not because of inner need but because of external advantage. Thus, moral philosophy too, follows modern thinking by becoming a credo of "it's okay for the selfish man to get ahead in life", while economic science becomes a means of determining how we can all get ahead without destroying the social fabric. Or, put another way, we're really only interested in ourselves, but cooperate with others as a means of gaining our own ends and avoiding a consuming war of all against all. It's not too hard to see the seeds of destructive assault in such thinking.
Nature thus undergoes a profound change from the traditional conception of nurturing mother to one of dead machine, that is, from an object of affection to an object of subjugation and exploitation. Correspondingly, the traditionally moral way of looking at our natural surroundings changes to a non-moral, strictly neutral, it-is-there-to-be-used point of view. Moreover, these new aggressive attitudes are associated with how men should act, are supposed to act; while women,on the other hand, are thought of (like nature) as passive, there-to-be-used objects of exploitation. Such thinking thus enables industry and technology to historically combine in an ongoing assault upon the environment, on one hand, and women, on the other. What is needed, of course, is a new way of thinking that will end these horrific abuses - What has changed, can be changed. Unfortunately, Merchant treats this fascinating subject in a lifeless manner. She walks through the historical precedents in dry, uninspired, and thoroughly descriptive fashion, leaving the impression of an embroidered postgraduate dissertation. Her thesis cries out for greater color, synthesis and argumentation. As a student of the humanist philosopher Theodore Roszak, she could use more of his chutzpah.
This insightful book unpeels the scientific revolution........1999-06-16
Merchant sets the record straight in this powerful, straightforward book. She illustrates the abuses of political power that drove the scientific revolution, dethrones its "father," Sir Francis Bacon, and unravels the presumption of the scientific, paternal myth. This scholarly book provides the reader with the knowledge to ask the right questions and demand answers: about ecology, nature, the economics of science, and the torture and sexualization of the feminine. And even better, Merchant gifts us with the opportunity to imagine something better.
Book Description
By exploring the stages of ecological transformation that took place in New England as European settlers took control of the land, Carolyn Merchant develops a fresh approach to environmental history. Her analysis of how human communities are related to their environment opens a perspective that goes beyond overt changes in the landscape.
Merchant brings to light the dense network of links between the human realm of economic regimes, social structure, and gender relations, as they are conditioned by a dominant worldview, and the ecological realm of plant and animal life. Thus we see how the integration of the Indians with their natural world was shattered by Europeans who engaged in exhaustive methods of hunting, trapping, and logging for the market and in widespread subsistence farming. The resulting "colonial ecological revolution" was to hold sway until roughly the time of American independence, when the onset of industrialization and increasing urbanization brought about the "capitalist ecological revolution." By the late nineteenth century, Merchant argues, New England had become a society that viewed the whole ecosphere as an arena for human domination. One can see in New England a "mirror of the world," she says. What took place there between 1600 and 1850 was a greatly accelerated recapitulation of the evolutionary ecological changes that had occurred in Europe over a span of 2,500 years.
Customer Reviews:
Fundamental text.......2007-06-23
Ecological Revolutions is an absolutely fundamental text in the fields of Colonial and Environmental American history. This book, along with William Cronon's Changes in the Land, transformed historians' understandings of Native American relationships to the land, as well as the ecological, economic, and reproductive changes brought by European colonists. Changes in the Land is more entertaining to read, but Ecological Revolutions is more advanced methodologically. I recommend both books heartily.
Average customer rating:
|
Revolutionary War Days: Discover the Past with Exciting Projects, Games, Activities and Recipes (American Kids in History Series)
David C. King , and
Cheryl Kirk Noll
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Colonial & Revolutionary
| United States
| History & Historical Fiction
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
General
| United States
| History & Historical Fiction
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Social Science
| People & Places
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Ages 4-8
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Ages 9-12
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Experiments & Projects
| Science, Nature & How It Works
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Colonial Days: Discover the Past with Fun Projects, Games, Activities, and Recipes (American Kids in History Series)
-
The American Revolution for Kids: A History with 21 Activities (For Kids series)
-
Civil War Days: Discover the Past with Exciting Projects, Games, Activities, and Recipes
-
Pioneer Days: Discover the Past with Fun Projects, Games, Activities, and Recipes (American Kids in History Series)
-
Colonial Kids: An Activity Guide to Life in the New World (Kid's Guide series, A)
ASIN: 0471393088 |
Book Description
Discover life in America during the Revolutionary War with dozens of exciting projects, games, and recipes.
Step back in time to 1776 America and visit with the Logan family on their farm in Virginia, and the Wentworths at their inn in Philadelphia. Join eleven-year-old Joshua Logan and twelve-year-old Peggy Wentworth as they share the excitement, adventure, and hard work of Revolutionary War days. Let Joshua and Peggy show you how to play their favorite games, cook up yummy recipes, and even make cool toys and crafts!
Learn to make a pair of comfy moccasins, design your own flag, play the exciting game of Siege, and taste the scrumptious flavors of the time by baking your own cranberry nut bread or delicious Independence Day shortcake. Brimming with authentic sights, tastes, and activities, Revolutionary War Days will bring the past to vivid life and take you on an exhilarating journey into a fascinating time in American history.
Customer Reviews:
rev war days.......2007-05-06
My son is 9 and absolutely enjoys this book so much. It is well written and entertaining for his age group.
Average customer rating:
|
Generating Wind Power (Energy Revolution)
Niki Walker
Manufacturer: Crabtree Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Electricity & Electronics
| Science, Nature & How It Works
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
Nonfiction
| Environment & Ecology
| Science, Nature & How It Works
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Science, Nature & How It Works
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
Nonfiction
| Environment
| Nature
| Science, Nature & How It Works
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Ages 9-12
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
Renewable Energy
| Technology
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
Ages 9-12
| Children's Books
| 4-for-3 Books Store
| Stores
| Books
Electricity & Electronics
| Science, Nature & How It Works
| Children's Books
| 4-for-3 Books Store
| Stores
| Books
Nonfiction
| Environment & Ecology
| Science, Nature & How It Works
| Children's Books
| 4-for-3 Books Store
| Stores
| Books
General
| Science, Nature & How It Works
| Children's Books
| 4-for-3 Books Store
| Stores
| Books
Nonfiction
| Environment
| Nature
| Science, Nature & How It Works
| Children's Books
| 4-for-3 Books Store
| Stores
| Books
Technology
| Science
| 4-for-3 Books Store
| Stores
| Books
| General & Reference
| History of Technology
All 4-for-3 Deals
| 4-for-3 Books Store
| Stores
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Harnessing Power from the Sun (Energy Revolution)
-
Hydrogen: Running on Water (Energy Revolution)
-
Biomass: Fueling Change (Energy Revolution)
-
Wind Power (True Books)
-
Alternative Energy (True Books)
ASIN: 0778729273 |
Average customer rating:
|
World History by Era - Vol. 10 The Technological Revolution (hardcover edition) (World History by Era)
Manufacturer: Greenhaven Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Board book
History & Historical Fiction
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
| Africa
| Ancient
| Asia
| Australia & Oceania
| Biographical
| Canada
| Central & South America
| Europe
| Exploration & Discovery
| Fiction
| General
| Holocaust
| Medieval
| Mexico
| Middle East
| Military & Wars
| Modern
| Prehistoric
| Renaissance
| United States
General
| Science, Nature & How It Works
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
20th Century
| World
| History
| Subjects
| Books
History of Technology
| Technology
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Science & Technology
| Teens
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0737707062 |
Book Description
The 1980s and 1990s witnessed dramatic social, political, and technological transformations around the world. The personal computer and the World Wide Web facilitated the exchange of information and vastly increased the pace of communication. In the international arena, the tense stability of the Cold War gave way to a world beset with a growing number of regional and ethnic conflicts. Contributors to this anthology discuss the dramatic events that unfolded during the last two decades of the second millennium.
Book Description
"A very significant contribution.... This book tells a story that is usually left out of the master narrative of the history of exploration.... Moreover, it tells a story based on real expeditions and experiences, and it quotes liberally and effectively from engaging reports and sixteenth-century treatises, so it should appeal to general readers as well."
—Carla Rahn Phillips, Union Pacific Professor in Comparative Early Modern History, University of Minnesota
As Spain colonized the Americas during the sixteenth century, Spanish soldiers, bureaucrats, merchants, adventurers, physicians, ship pilots, and friars explored the natural world, gathered data, drew maps, and sent home specimens of America's vast resources of animals, plants, and minerals. This amassing of empirical knowledge about Spain's American possessions had two far-reaching effects. It overturned the medieval understanding of nature derived from Classical texts and helped initiate the modern scientific revolution. And it allowed Spain to commodify and control the natural resources upon which it built its American empire.
In this book, Antonio Barrera-Osorio investigates how Spain's need for accurate information about its American colonies gave rise to empirical scientific practices and their institutionalization, which, he asserts, was Spain's chief contribution to the early scientific revolution. He also conclusively links empiricism to empire-building as he focuses on five areas of Spanish activity in America: the search for commodities in, and the ecological transformation of, the New World; the institutionalization of navigational and information-gathering practices at the Spanish Casa de la Contratación (House of Trade); the development of instruments and technologies for exploiting the natural resources of the Americas; the use of reports and questionnaires for gathering information; and the writing of natural histories about the Americas.
Books:
- The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, The Original Teachings in a Deluxe 30th Anniversary Edition
- The Translucent Revolution: How People Just Like You are Waking Up and Changing the World
- The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West
- Things Fall Apart: A Novel
- Ulysses S. Grant : Memoirs and Selected Letters : Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant / Selected Letters, 1839-1865 (Library of America)
- War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime 1618-1789 (War and European Society)
- War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
- Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition (Book with CD-ROM)
- White Night (The Dresden Files, Book 9)
- Who Killed Jesus?: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Essentials of Investments with Standard & Poor's Bind-in Card
- The Price Guide to Antique Silver
- The Cold War in Welfare: Stock Markets versus Pensions
- Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court
- The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
- The Wind in the Willows
- The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960-2000
- Volunteers Wanted
- Principles of Financial Accounting, Sixth Edition
- Roy Lichtenstein: Prints 1956-1997
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage
The Next Sustainability Wave: Building Boardroom Buy-in (Conscientious Commerce)
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature
