American Environment

The American Adrenaline Narrative considers the nature of perilous outdoor adventure tales, their gendered biases, and how they simultaneously promote and hinder ecological sustainability. To explore these themes, Kristin J. Jacobson defines and compares adrenaline narratives by a range of American authors published after the first Earth Day in 1970, a time frame selected as a watershed moment for the contemporary American environmental movement.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a wake-up call: The all-in stance in favor of renewables has rendered Europe's economy and national security vulnerable to Russian President Vladimir Putin. And America is in danger of making the same catastrophic energy mistake as Europe. Award-winning author Bill Herrington delivers the truth about U.S. energy, national security, and the environment—and exposes the misrepresentations of fossil fuels protestors and climate change activists.

This text provides a practical guide to the great American national parks, how to avoid the crowds, the walking tours, facilities and how to get there. This edition has been expanded to include 49 parks, information on accommodation and dining, camping and tours.

When Samuel de Champlain founded the colony of Quebec in 1608, he established elaborate gardens where he sowed French seeds he had brought with him and experimented with indigenous plants that he found in nearby fields and forests. In A Not-So-New World, Christopher Parsons observes how it was that French colonists began to learn about Native environments and claimed a mandate to cultivate vegetation that did not differ all that much from that which they had left behind.

Hemp, the non-psychoactive variant of cannabis and one of humanity's oldest plant allies, has quietly become the fastest industry ever to generate a billion dollars of annual revenue in North America. From seed to fiber to the currently ubiquitous cannabinoid CBD, hemp is leading the way to a new regenerative economy that contributes to soil and climate restoration – but only if we do it right.

Inspired by the still-revolutionary theories of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, James E. McWilliams argues for a more harmonious and rational approach to our relationship with insects, one that does not harm our environment and, consequently, ourselves along the way.

When the terrorist attacks struck New York City on September 11, 2001, boat operators and waterfront workers quickly realized that they had the skills, the equipment, and the opportunity to take definite, immediate action in responding to the most significant destructive event in the United States in decades. For many of them, they were “doing what needed to be done”. American Dunkirk shows how people, many of whom were volunteers, mobilized rescue efforts in various improvised and spontaneous ways on that fateful date.

In Americans at Risk, Dr. Irwin Redlener draws on his broad experience as a pediatrician working with mobile emergency units both for children and adults, his time making recommendations to legislators about the vulnerabilities of children to biological and chemical agents and his regular meetings with Tom Ridge of the office of Homeland Security over a period of four years to write this urging a plan for a coordinated plan between government and the private sector.

In 2005, the United States imported 12 billion dollars' worth of seafood, nearly double what we had imported 10 years earlier. During that same period, our seafood exports rose by a third. In American Catch, our foremost fish expert Paul Greenberg looks to New York oysters, gulf shrimp, and Alaskan salmon to reveal how it came to be that 91 percent of the seafood Americans eat is foreign.

Part memoir, part critique, and paean to the value of national parks, American Covenant distills the experience and insights from two long careers in conservation. Soukup and Machlis show how the national parks are essential to maintaining the essence of our national heritage, and key to America's future in a changing climate and political landscape. Sharing real-world examples of both victories and defeats in protecting national parks, this candid, thoughtful book reminds us that the national parks are a promise - a covenant - within and between generations of Americans.

Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century.

Award-winning author Thom Hatch presents the definitive biography of George Bird Grinnell (1849-1938), who was recognized in his time as "The Father of American Conservation." This book chronicles not only Grinnell's life, but also offers a history of his accomplishments in saving the wildlife and natural resources of this country. A remarkable man, Grinnell was known as a model of intellectual diversity, integrity, and professional dedication.

At the age of 33, Erik Reece's father, a Baptist minister, took his own life, leaving Erik in the care of his grandmother and his grandfather - also a fundamentalist Baptist preacher and a pillar of his rural Virginia community. While Erik grew up with a conflicted relationship with Christianity, he unexpectedly found comfort in the Jefferson Bible. Inspired, he undertook what would become a spiritual and literary quest to identify an "American gospel" coursing through the work of both great and forgotten American geniuses, from William Byrd to Walt Whitman to Lynn Margulis.

Wild American ginseng, America's most famous medicinal plant, is in trouble. In plain prose, James McGraw explains why as he translates the latest in ecological and conservation science findings on this unassuming understory herb. As the world's foremost authority on wild ginseng, McGraw is uniquely poised to present this story based on more than twenty years of uninterrupted field research.

This book chronicles the creation of Everglades National Park, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States. Prior to the park's creation, the Everglades was seen as a reviled and useless swamp, unfit for typical recreational or development projects. Park advocates drew on new ideas concerning the value of biota and ecology, the importance of wilderness, and the need to protect habitats, marine ecosystems, and plant life to redefine the Everglades. Using these ideas, the Everglades began to be recognized as an ecologically valuable and fragile wetland.

The fourth book in our Ask the Experts series, The Environment tackles questions about the world around us. In this book, our experts field queries on the weather, natural disasters, natural resources, climate change, and unusual phenomena.

A promising literary star makes his debut with this emotionally powerful saga, set in 1980s Maine, that explores family love, the power of myths and storytelling, survival and environmental exploitation, and the ties between cultural identity and the land we live on.

The Promise of Wilderness examines how the idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. Wilderness preservation has engaged diverse groups of citizens, from hunters and ranchers to wildlife enthusiasts and hikers, as political advocates who have leveraged the resources of local and national groups toward a common goal.

In the spring of 1964, Anchorage, Alaska, was a modern-day frontier town yearning to be a metropolis - the largest, proudest city in a state that was still brand-new. But just before sundown on Good Friday, the community was jolted by the most powerful earthquake in American history, a catastrophic 9.2 on the Richter Scale. This Is Chance! is the thrilling, cinematic story of a community shattered by disaster - and the extraordinary woman who helped pull it back together.

Each year nearly four million people visit Yellowstone National Park—one of the most popular of all national parks—but few know the fascinating and complex historical context in which it was established. In late July 1871, the geologist-explorer Ferdinand Hayden led a team of scientists through a narrow canyon into Yellowstone Basin, entering one of the last unmapped places in the country. The survey’s discoveries led to the passage of the Yellowstone Act in 1872, which created the first national park in the world.