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Petroturfing: Refining Canadian Oil through Social Media
by Jordan B. KinderHow social media has become a critical tool for advancing the interests of the Canadian oil industry Petroturfing presents an incisive look into how Canada&’s pro-oil movement has leveraged social media to rebrand the extractive economy as a positive force. Adapting its title from the concept of astroturfing, which refers to the practice of disguising political and corporate media campaigns as grassroots movements, the book exposes the consequences of this mutually informed relationship between social media and environmental politics. Since the early 2010s, an increasingly influential network of pro-oil groups, organizations, and campaigns has harnessed social media strategies originally developed by independent environmental organizations in order to undermine resistance to the fossil fuel industry. Situating these actions within the broader oil culture wars that have developed as an outgrowth of contemporary right-wing media, Petroturfing details how this coalition of groups is working to reform the public view of oil extraction as something socially, economically, and ecologically beneficial. By uncovering these concerted efforts to influence the &“energy consciousness,&” Jordan B. Kinder reveals the deep divide between Canada&’s environmentally progressive reputation and the economic interests of its layers of government and private companies operating within its borders. Drawing attention to the structures underlying online political expression, Petroturfing highlights the limitations of social media networks in the work of promoting environmental justice and contributing to a more equitable future.
Unsettled (Updated and Expanded Edition): What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters
by Steven E. KooninIn this updated and expanded edition of climate scientist Steven Koonin&’s groundbreaking book, go behind the headlines to discover the latest eye-opening data about climate change—with unbiased facts and realistic steps for the future."Greenland&’s ice loss is accelerating.""Extreme temperatures are causing more fatalities.""Rapid 'climate action' is essential to avoid a future climate disaster."You've heard all this presented as fact. But according to science, all of these statements are profoundly misleading.With the new edition of Unsettled, Steven Koonin draws on decades of experience—including as a top science advisor to the Obama administration—to clear away the fog and explain what science really says (and doesn't say). With a new introduction, this edition now features reflections on an additional three years of eye-opening data, alternatives to unrealistic &“net zero&” solutions, global energy inequalities, and the energy crisis arising from the war in Ukraine. When it comes to climate change, the media, politicians, and other prominent voices have declared that &“the science is settled.&” In reality, the climate is changing, but the why and how aren&’t as clear as you&’ve probably been led to believe. Koonin takes readers behind the headlines, dispels popular myths, and unveils little-known truths: Despite rising greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures decreased from 1940 to 1970Models currently used to predict the future do not accurately describe the climate of the past, and modelers themselves strongly doubt their regional predictionsThere is no compelling evidence that hurricanes are becoming more frequent—or that predictions of rapid sea level rise have any validity Unsettled is a reality check buoyed by hope, offering the truth about climate science—what we know, what we don&’t, and what it all means for our future.
Thermal Safety Margins in Nuclear Reactors
by Henryk AnglartThis book presents an overview of state-of-the art approaches to determine thermal safety margins in nuclear reactors. It presents both the deterministic and probabilistic aspects of thermal safety margins of nuclear reactors to facilitate the understanding of these two difficult topics at various academic levels, from undergraduates to researchers in nuclear engineering.It first sets out the theoretical background before exploring how to determine thermal safety margins in nuclear reactors, through examples, problems and advanced state-of-the-art approaches. This will help undergraduate students better understand the most fundamental aspects of nuclear reactor safety. For researchers and practitioners, this book provides a comprehensive overview of most recent achievements in the field, offering an excellent starting point to develop new methods for the assessment of the thermal safety margins.This book is written to bridge the gap between deterministic and appropriate treatment of uncertainties to assess safety margins in nuclear reactors, presenting these approaches as complementary to each other. Even though these two approaches are frequently used in parallel in real-world applications, there has been a lack of a consistent teaching approach in this area.This book is suitable for readers with a background in calculus, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer. It is assumed that readers have previous exposure to such concepts as laws of thermodynamics, enthalpy, entropy, and conservation equations used in fluid mechanics and heat transfer.Key Features: Covers the theory, principles, and assessment methods of thermal safety margins in nuclear reactors whilst presenting the state-of-the-art technology in the field Combines the deterministic thermal safety considerations with a comprehensive treatment of uncertainties, offering a framework that is applicable to all current and future commercial nuclear reactor types Provides numerous examples and problems to be solved
Modern River Science for Watershed Management: GIS and Hydrogeological Application (Water Science and Technology Library #128)
by S. Satheeshkumar V. Thirukumaran D. KarunanidhiThis book covers the various ways in which rivers discharge water and sediment load, which is characteristic of the current situation caused by both human activity and the natural riverine environment. The knowledge of river inclinations and flow patterns points to more river ecosystem management and current multifaceted conditions. Technology advancements in river watershed studies have demonstrated the difference between natural river systems and human-influenced hydrological environments and surface processes. Lastly, the relationship between river systems and modern activity is impacted by climate change which is also discussed in this volume. This edited book is organized into four parts, each discussing a different aspect of modern river science for watershed management, including GIS and hydrogeological applications, rainfall-runoff modeling that is up to date, hydrological processes, artificial intelligence, and GIS. Moreover, it provides a wealth of information about watershed management, particularly for researchers and experts in the hydrogeological field. It covers advanced applications of river morphometric dynamics conditions, flood risk assessment, sediment load discharge, and their flux measurements, as well as field-oriented aspects of the river environment and GIS. The book can be used to update current river science studies and to expand scientific understanding for projects related to studies. The edited book is primarily intended for postgraduate students, researchers, and experts and practitioners in the fields of hydrology, field hydrogeology (water resource exploration), dam studies, and groundwater potential investigation. It is also intended for young researchers, scholars, and practitioners working in the field of water resource exploration.
Toxic: A Tour of the Ecuadorian Amazon (ethnoGRAPHIC)
by Amelia Fiske Jonas FischerOver the past decade, people have learned about oil contamination in the Ecuadorian Amazon through toxic tours in which a guide brings participants – students, lawyers, environmental activists, journalists, and foreign tourists – to visit contaminated sites. These toxic tours combine personal experience and local knowledge to convince visitors of the immediacy of environmental issues. Drawing on extensive research and fieldwork, Toxic takes the reader on a visual toxic tour through the Amazon. Following the story of three fictional participants, this graphic novel paints a visceral picture of the waste pits, gas flares, and precarious lives of people in this region. The book challenges the reader to consider what it means to live in a place and historical moment where victims of industrial toxicants are continually required to prove that harm has occurred. Toxic is a vivid reflection on the role of pollutants in our everyday lives, ultimately asking readers to reflect on how we are each implicated in the production, consumption, and exposure of pollution both in the Amazon and at home.
Bernissart Dinosaurs and Early Cretaceous Terrestrial Ecosystems (Life of the Past)
by Pascal GodefroitIn 1878, the first complete dinosaur skeleton was discovered in a coal mine in Bernissart, Belgium. Iguanodon, first described by Gideon Mantell on the basis of fragments discovered in England in 1824, was initially reconstructed as an iguana-like reptile or a heavily built, horned quadruped. However, the Bernissart skeleton changed all that. The animal was displayed in an upright posture similar to a kangaroo, and later with its tail off the ground like the dinosaur we know of today. Focusing on the Bernissant discoveries, this book presents the latest research on Iguanodon and other denizens of the Cretaceous ecosystems of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Pascal Godefroit and contributors consider the Bernissart locality itself and the new research programs that are underway there. The book also presents a systematic revision of Iguanodon; new material from Spain, Romania, China, and Kazakhstan; studies of other Early Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystems; and examinations of Cretaceous vertebrate faunas.
Understanding Climate Change through Religious Lifeworlds
by David L. HabermanHow can religion help to understand and contend with the challenges of climate change?Understanding Climate Change through Religious Lifeworld,edited by David Haberman, presents a unique collection of essays that detail how the effects of human-related climate change are actively reshaping religious ideas and practices, even as religious groups and communities endeavor to bring their traditions to bear on mounting climate challenges.People of faith from the low-lying islands of the South Pacific to the glacial regions of the Himalayas are influencing how their communities understand earthly problems and develop meaningful responses to them. This collection focuses on a variety of different aspects of this critical interaction, including the role of religion in ongoing debates about climate change, religious sources of environmental knowledge and how this knowledge informs community responses to climate change, and the ways that climate change is in turn driving religious change.Understanding Climate Change through Religious Lifeworlds offers a transnational view of how religion reconciles the concepts of the global and the local and influences the challenges of climate change.
The National Environmental Policy Act: An Agenda for the Future
by Lynton Keith Caldwell"The National Environmental Policy Act has grown more, not less, important in the decades since its enactment. No one knows more about NEPA than Lynton Caldwell. And no one has a clearer vision of its relevance to our future. Highly recommended." —David W. Orr, Oberlin CollegeWhat has been achieved since the National Environmental Policy Act was passed in 1969? This book points out where and how NEPA has affected national environmental policy and where and why its intent has been frustrated. The roles of Congress, the President, and the courts in the implementation of NEPA are analyzed. Professor Caldwell also looks at the conflicted state of public opinion regarding the environment and conjectures as to what must be done in order to develop a coherent and sustained policy.
Material Ecocriticism
by Serenella Iovino Serpil OppermannMaterial Ecocriticism offers new ways to analyze language and reality, human and nonhuman life, mind and matter, without falling into well-worn paths of thinking. Bringing ecocriticism closer to the material turn, the contributions to this landmark volume focus on material forces and substances, the agency of things, processes, narratives and stories, and making meaning out of the world. This broad-ranging reflection on contemporary human experience and expression provokes new understandings of the planet to which we are intimately connected.
Collector's Guide to Fort Payne Crinoids and Blastoids (Life of the Past)
by William MorganCollector's Guide to Fort Payne Crinoids and Blastoids is the first comprehensive guide for identifying the fossils of echinoderms from hundreds of millions of years ago, when North America was covered by a warm, equatorial sea.Crinoids and blastoids, echinoderms (the same family of marine animals to include starfish, sea urchins, and sand dollars) from the Fort Payne Formation in Kentucky, are rarely seen at gem, mineral, and fossil shows, nor are they regularly displayed at major museums. By combining high-quality color photographs and an accompanying descriptive text, William W. Morgan provides the first comprehensive identification guide to these fascinating fossils. Collector's Guide to Fort Payne Crinoids and Blastoids features photographs, often offering more than one view, of the best-quality specimens curated in the Smithsonian and other prominent invertebrate fossil museums. Morgan includes photographs that are unlabeled so that readers can test themselves to see whether they can differentiate some of the more subtle features that may be necessary for accurate identification.
Popularizing Science: The Complex Terminological Interactions between Scientific and Press Discourses within the Field of Agroecology
by Hélène LedoubleMedia coverage of scientific issues is a highly complex process. It involves making a specialized field accessible to the general public, without necessarily disseminating the associated scientific terms or knowledge. The terminological interactions between press discourses and scientific knowledge are presented within the field of agroecology. The analysis of textual data focuses on articles in the general press in French and English, devoted to plant protection practices using natural mechanisms (biological control). This book provides a terminological and cognitive overview of the issues involved in popularizing science in a rapidly expanding field, and of the challenges to be met in the constantly evolving environmental communication sector.
Group Theory in the Bedroom, and Other Mathematical Diversions
by Brian HayesAn Award-Winning Essayist Plies His CraftBrian Hayes is one of the most accomplished essayists active today—a claim supported not only by his prolific and continuing high-quality output but also by such honors as the National Magazine Award for his commemorative Y2K essay titled "Clock of Ages," published in the November/December 1999 issue of The Sciences magazine. (The also-rans that year included Tom Wolfe, Verlyn Klinkenborg, and Oliver Sacks.) Hayes's work in this genre has also appeared in such anthologies as The BestAmerican Magazine Writing, The Best American Science and NatureWriting, and The Norton Reader. Here he offers us a selection of his most memorable and accessible pieces—including "Clock of Ages"—embellishing them with an overall, scene-setting preface, reconfigured illustrations, and a refreshingly self-critical "Afterthoughts" section appended to each essay.
Fighting Fire!: Ten of the Deadliest Fires in American History and How We Fought Them
by Michael L. CooperFrom colonial times to the modern day, two things have remained constant in American history: the destructive power of fires and the bravery of those who fight them.Fighting Fire! brings to life ten of the deadliest infernos this nation has ever endured: the great fires of Boston, New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and San Francisco, the disasters of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the General Slocum, and the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, the wildfire of Witch Creek in San Diego County, and the catastrophe of 9/11. Each blaze led to new firefighting techniques and technologies, yet the struggle against fires continues to this day. With historical images and a fast-paced text, this is both an exciting look at firefighting history and a celebration of the human spirit.
We Are All Survivors: Verbal, Ritual, and Material Ways of Narrating Disaster and Recovery
by Carl Lindahl, Michael Dylan Foster and Kate Parker HoriganWhat is the role of folklore in the discussion of catastrophe and trauma? How do disaster survivors use language, ritual, and the material world to articulate their experiences? What insights and tools can the field of folkloristics offer survivors for navigating and narrating disaster and its aftermath? Can folklorists contribute to broader understandings of empathy and the roles of listening in ethnographic work?We Are All Survivors is a collection of essays exploring the role of folklore in the wake of disaster. Contributors include scholars from the United States and Japan who have long worked with disaster-stricken communities or are disaster survivors themselves; individual chapters address Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Maria, and two earthquakes in Japan, including the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster of 2011. Adapted from a 2017 special issue of Fabula (from the International Society for Folk Narrative Research), the book includes a revised introduction, an additional chapter with original illustrations, and a new conclusion considering how folklorists are documenting the COVID-19 pandemic.We Are All Survivors bears witness to survivors' expressions of remembrance, grieving, and healing.
Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth
by Curt StagerA Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of 2011 title A bold, far-reaching look at how our actions will decide the planet's future for millennia to come.Imagine a planet where North American and Eurasian navies are squaring off over shipping lanes through an acidified, ice-free Arctic. Centuries later, their northern descendants retreat southward as the recovering sea freezes over again. And later still, future nations plan how to avert an approaching Ice Age... by burning what remains of our fossil fuels.These are just a few of the events that are likely to befall Earth and human civilization in the next 100,000 years. And it will be the choices we make in this century that will affect that future more than those of any previous generation. We are living at the dawn of the Age of Humans; the only question is how long that age will last.Few of us have yet asked, "What happens after global warming?" Drawing upon the latest, groundbreaking works of a handful of climate visionaries, Curt Stager's Deep Future helps us look beyond 2100 a.d. to the next hundred millennia of life on Earth.
More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War (Chicka Chicka Book)
by Kenneth C. DavisA Washington Post Best Children’s Book of the Month, More Deadly Than War from New York Times bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis explores the hidden history of the Spanish influenza pandemic during World War I.2018 marked the 100th anniversary of the worst disease outbreak in modern times: the Spanish flu, a story even more relevant today. This dramatic narrative, told through the stories and voices of the people caught in the deadly maelstrom, explores how this vast, global epidemic was intertwined with the horrors of World War I—and how it could happen again. Complete with photographs, period documents, modern research, and firsthand reports by medical professionals and survivors, More Deadly Than War provides captivating insight into a catastrophe that transformed America in the early twentieth century.A Junior Library Guild Selection!“An important history—and an important reminder that we could very well face such a threat again.”—Deborah Blum, New York Times bestselling author of The Poison Guide: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century“In an age of Ebola and Zika, this vivid account is a cautionary tale that will have you rushing to wash your hands for protection.”—Karen Blumenthal, award-winning author of Jane Against the World: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Reproductive Rights
The Appalachian Trail: A Biography
by Philip D'AnieriThe Appalachian Trail is America&’s most beloved trek, with millions of hikers setting foot on it every year. Yet few are aware of the fascinating backstory of the dreamers and builders who helped bring it to life over the past century. The conception and building of the Appalachian Trail is a story of unforgettable characters who explored it, defined it, and captured national attention by hiking it. From Grandma Gatewood—a mother of eleven who thru-hiked in canvas sneakers and a drawstring duffle—to Bill Bryson, author of the best-selling A Walk in the Woods, the AT has seized the American imagination like no other hiking path. The 2,000-mile-long hike from Georgia to Maine is not just a trail through the woods, but a set of ideas about nature etched in the forest floor. This character-driven biography of the trail is a must-read not just for ambitious hikers, but for anyone who wonders about our relationship with the great outdoors and dreams of getting away from urban life for a pilgrimage in the wild.
Abiogenesis: The Physical Basis for Living Systems
by Laurel O. SillerudThis textbook serves to teach readers about the origins of life, the probabilistic process of self-assembly underpinning all living systems, from a biophysics perspective. The author cohesively summarizes the various organizing principles that led to the development of an ordered physical basis on which the evolution of life operates. This book answers critical questions, such as why life depends on the properties of inanimate objects and how the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology convolved to spontaneously produce the periodic table and, of course, life itself. Readers are provided with an introduction to probability distributions as well as detailed descriptions of important concepts in thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and quantum mechanics. As the book progresses, an understanding for the inevitability of life is developed through topics such as stellar nucleosynthesis and prebiotic evolution. Each chapter also includes problems for readers to gain a better understanding of the material. This textbook is accessible to students and researchers of all levels and serves as a comprehensive guide on the physics behind abiogenesis.
The Ultimate Shark Field Guide: The Ocean Explorer's Handbook (Sharks, Observations, Science, Nature, Field Guide, Marine Biology for Kids)
by Thomas NelsonSwim alongside your favorite underwater creatures with The Ultimate Shark Field Guide--created as if a marine biologist painted these illustrations and made these notes while out collecting research.Pick up the journal of a marine biologist and discover underwater mysteries with The Ultimate Shark Field Guide. Encounter sharks of all shapes and sizes and note observations on each species' appearance, size, diet, and more. Detailed watercolor illustrations will captivate young readers. This spectacular visual guide gets you up close and personal with some of the fiercest creatures on Earth, including the bull shark, the great white, the Ganges river shark, the whale shark, and the great hammerhead. Explore underwater landscapes with these incredible animals in The Ultimate Shark Field Guide!
The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate And The Science Of Denial
by David LipskyA New York Times Editors’ Choice Named a Best Book of the Year in The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, Chicago Tribune, and EcoLit Books A USA Today Must-Read Summer Book "David Lipsky spins top-flight climate literature into cliffhanger entertainment." —Zoë Schlanger, New York Times Book Review The New York Times best-selling author explores how “anti-science” became so virulent in American life—through a history of climate denial and its consequences. In 1956, the New York Times prophesied that once global warming really kicked in, we could see parrots in the Antarctic. In 2010, when science deniers had control of the climate story, Senator James Inhofe and his family built an igloo on the Washington Mall and plunked a sign on top: AL GORE'S NEW HOME: HONK IF YOU LOVE CLIMATE CHANGE. In The Parrot and the Igloo, best-selling author David Lipsky tells the astonishing story of how we moved from one extreme (the correct one) to the other. With narrative sweep and a superb eye for character, Lipsky unfolds the dramatic narrative of the long, strange march of climate science. The story begins with a tale of three inventors—Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla—who made our technological world, not knowing what they had set into motion. Then there are the scientists who sounded the alarm once they identified carbon dioxide as the culprit of our warming planet. And we meet the hucksters, zealots, and crackpots who lied about that science and misled the public in ever more outrageous ways. Lipsky masterfully traces the evolution of climate denial, exposing how it grew out of early efforts to build a network of untruth about products like aspirin and cigarettes. Featuring an indelible cast of heroes and villains, mavericks and swindlers, The Parrot and the Igloo delivers a real-life tragicomedy—one that captures the extraordinary dance of science, money, and the American character.
Frontier Thinking and Human-Nature Relations: We Were Never Western (Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies)
by E. C. KeskitaloCombining historical, social and regulative analysis, this book builds a compelling critique of ‘frontier thinking’ as it continues to form our assumptions about social and environmental organisation – in ways that impact not least the present environmental crisis.This book systematically identifies the ways in which images of nature and society are formed by the historically developed frontier-oriented narratives which have underpinned much Anglo-American and Anglocentric thought. The book confronts these conceptions at large, showing that they never held empirically, and contrasts them with the situation in northern Europe, where diverging assumptions are integral to this day. Through this juxtaposition, this book illustrates not only the pervasiveness of structures of understanding in steering policy but also the varying traditions regarding how understandings of the environment can be formed.This study highlights how historical thought patterns, formed for very different reasons than exist today, continue to shape our assumptions about nature, the relation between urban and rural areas and our understanding of ourselves in relation to the environment. This book will be of wide interest to a range of academics and students in the fields of geography, anthropology, environmental studies, sociology, political science and development studies, amongst others.
The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
by Jeff GoodellNew York Times best-selling journalist Jeff Goodell presents a "masterful, bracing" (David Wallace-Wells) examination of the impact that temperature rise will have on our lives and on our planet, offering a vital new perspective on where we are headed, how we can prepare, and what is at stake if we fail to act. &“When heat comes, it&’s invisible. It doesn&’t bend tree branches or blow hair across your face to let you know it&’s arrived…. The sun feels like the barrel of a gun pointed at you.&” The world is waking up to a new reality: wildfires are now seasonal in California, the Northeast is getting less and less snow each winter, and the ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica are melting fast. Heat is the first order threat that drives all other impacts of the climate crisis. And as the temperature rises, it is revealing fault lines in our governments, our politics, our economy, and our values. The basic science is not complicated: Stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, and the global temperature will stop rising tomorrow. Stop burning fossil fuels in 50 years, and the temperature will keep rising for 50 years, making parts of our planet virtually uninhabitable. It&’s up to us. The hotter it gets, the deeper and wider our fault lines will open. The Heat Will Kill You First is about the extreme ways in which our planet is already changing. It is about why spring is coming a few weeks earlier and fall is coming a few weeks later and the impact that will have on everything from our food supply to disease outbreaks. It is about what will happen to our lives and our communities when typical summer days in Chicago or Boston go from 90° F to 110°F. A heatwave, Goodell explains, is a predatory event— one that culls out the most vulnerable people. But that is changing. As heatwaves become more intense and more common, they will become more democratic. As an award-winning journalist who has been at the forefront of environmental journalism for decades, Goodell&’s new book may be his most provocative yet, explaining how extreme heat will dramatically change the world as we know it. Masterfully reported, mixing the latest scientific insight with on-the-ground storytelling, Jeff Goodell tackles the big questions and uncovers how extreme heat is a force beyond anything we have reckoned with before.
Love, Life, and Elephants: An African Love Story
by Daphne SheldrickDaphne Sheldrick, whose family arrived in Africa from Scotland in the 1820s, is the first person ever to have successfully hand-reared newborn elephants. Her deep empathy and understanding, her years of observing Kenya's rich variety of wildlife, and her pioneering work in perfecting the right husbandry and milk formula have saved countless elephants, rhinos, and other baby animals from certain death. In this heartwarming and poignant memoir, Daphne shares her amazing relationships with a host of orphans, including her first love, Bushy, a liquid-eyed antelope; Rickey-Tickey-Tavey, the little dwarf mongoose; Gregory Peck, the busy buffalo weaver bird; Huppety, the mischievous zebra; and the majestic elephant Eleanor, with whom Daphne has shared more than forty years of great friendship. But this is also a magical and heartbreaking human love story between Daphne and David Sheldrick, the famous Tsavo Park warden. It was their deep and passionate love, David's extraordinary insight into all aspects of nature, and the tragedy of his early death that inspired Daphne's vast array of achievements, most notably the founding of the world-renowned David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and the Orphans' Nursery in Nairobi National Park, where Daphne continues to live and work to this day. Encompassing not only David and Daphne's tireless campaign for an end to poaching and for conserving Kenya's wildlife, but also their ability to engage with the human side of animals and their rearing of the orphans expressly so they can return to the wild, Love, Life, and Elephants is alive with compassion and humor, providing a rare insight into the life of one of the world's most remarkable women.
Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land
by Amy IrvineTrespass is the story of one woman's struggle to gain footing in inhospitable territory. A wilderness activist and apostate Mormon, Amy Irvine sought respite in the desert outback of southern Utah's red-rock country after her father's suicide, only to find out just how much of an interloper she was among her own people. But more than simply an exploration of personal loss, Trespass is an elegy for a dying world, for the ruin of one of our most beloved and unique desert landscapes and for our vanishing connection to it. Fearing what her father's fate might somehow portend for her, Irvine retreated into the remote recesses of the Colorado Plateau—home not only to the world's most renowned national parks but also to a rugged brand of cowboy Mormonism that stands in defiant contrast to the world at large. Her story is one of ruin and restoration, of learning to live among people who fear the wilderness the way they fear the devil and how that fear fuels an antagonism toward environmental concerns that pervades the region. At the same time, Irvine mourns her own loss of wildness and disconnection from spirituality, while ultimately discovering that the provinces of nature and faith are not as distinct as she once might have believed.
The Lagoon: Encounters with the Whales of San Ignacio
by James Michael DorseyA voyage to a magical marine haven, the San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja, Mexico, where the connection between man and beast is like no other on Earth. Once a killing ground for whalers hunting a leviathan they called the “devilfish,” the San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja, Mexico, is now an environmental and spiritual sanctuary—the only place in the world where animals in their natural aquatic environment routinely seek out human contact. A nursery for the gray whale since before recorded history, the lagoon and its stories, told here by resident naturalist James Michael Dorsey, illuminate the magic of human connection to animals, and what those bonds teach us about ourselves and our purpose on this shared planet. Weaving two decades of San Ignacio adventures in the company of his wife Irene with the fascinating history of the lagoon, Dorsey vividly captures the lively people of Baja, like the mystical godfather of whale-watching, Pachico Mayoral, as well as the whales he’s bonded with over the years, like Slackjaw, Patch, and Dervish—their individual personalities, their epic migration to and from the Pacific Northwest, and the science behind their behavior. Looming over his journeys are the many dangers to the area, from the Mitsubishi Corporation’s attempts to build salt works to plans for resort development on the Baja coast, to pollution and climate change, and even to the orcas who hunt the gray whales. The future of this refuge has never looked more threatened. A tale of wondrous bonds between the intelligent, spirited gray whales and the men, women, and children from around the world who come to this place to touch, kiss, and play with them—The Lagoon is a testament to the importance of preserving these animals and their natural habitats.