Showing titles in Natural Resources

Brought to you by Penguin. In this paradigm-shifting global history of how humanity has reshaped the planet, and the planet has shaped human history, Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, of genocide and eco-cide, of the expansion of human freedom and its costs. Drawing on an...

Climate Change and the Road to Net-Zero is a story of how humanity has broken free from the shackles of poverty, suffering, and war and for the first time in human history, grown both population and prosperity. It’s also a story of how a single species has reconfigured the natural world, repurposed the Earth’s resources, and begun to reengineer the climate. The book uses these conflicting narratives to explore the science, economics, technology, and politics of climate change.

‘One of the most important books of the decade’ Country Life Finally, a practical, realistic plan to rescue, preserve and enhance nature. News about Britain’s wildlife and ecosystems tends to be grim. In Green and Prosperous Land, Oxford economist and Natural Capital Committee chair Dieter...

We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life, supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and the humble peppercorn drove the Age of Discovery, so did coffee beans help fuel the Enlightenment and cottonseed help spark the Industrial Revolution. And from the fall of Rome to the Arab Spring, the fate of nations continues to hinge on the seeds of a Middle Eastern grass known as wheat.

The universal appeal of Laura Ingalls Wilder springs from a life lived in partnership with the land, on farms she and her family settled across the Northeast and Midwest. In this revealing exploration of Wilder's deep connection with the natural world, Marta McDowell follows the wagon trail of the beloved Little House series. You'll learn details about Wilder's life and inspirations, pinpoint the Ingalls and Wilder homestead claims on authentic archival maps, and learn to grow the plants and vegetables featured in the series. Excerpts from Wilder's books, letters, and diaries bring to light her profound appreciation for the landscapes at the heart of her world.

A collection of transdisciplinary essays by scholars and designers which explore humanity’s relationship with the planet, its ecosystems and inhabitants, now and in the future. Global challenges like climate change and ecosystem degradation are proving that a singular disciplinary approach is inadequate to respond to issues where societal behaviours, individual choices, political decisions, economic, technological and scientific developments are so densely entangled - not least in design. But what happens when we turn things around and decentre “the human” to look at our relationship with...

Fascinated by the Earth's Natural Treasures? Dive into the vivid and diverse universe of rocks, crystals, and minerals. Whether you're a budding enthusiast or an aspiring expert, this comprehensive guide is your key to unlocking the secrets of the Earth's most captivating creations.

A Foundational Conservation Story Revived. Ancient writers observed that forests always recede as civilizations develop and grow. The great Roman poet Ovid wrote that before civilization began, “even the pine tree stood on its own very hills” but when civilization took over, “the mountain...

Bees are small, yet their impact on the world is enormous. They may weigh less than a paperclip and live only a matter of weeks, but they hold the power to shape ecosystems, economies, and even the food on our plates. Without them, fields would fall silent, harvests would collapse, and the dazzling diversity of life we so often take for granted would fade into memory. This book is a journey into the remarkable world of bees, exploring their hidden importance and why our future is so closely tied to theirs.

How Real Estate Developers Think considers developers from three different perspectives. Brown profiles the careers of individual developers to illustrate the character of the entrepreneur; considers the roles played by innovation, design, marketing, and sales in the production of real estate; and examines the risks and rewards that motivate developers as people.

Cacti are some of the most remarkable plants on Earth—masters of survival, architects of adaptation, and quiet heroes of some of the harshest environments imaginable. Yet for many people, the word “cactus” evokes only a single image: a tall, green, spiky shape standing alone in a blazing desert. Secrets of the Cactus reveals just how incomplete that picture truly is. Behind every spine, rib, and bloom lies a story of resilience, evolution, beauty, and surprising complexity.

Primed for a life of ambition and achievement, Paul Richardson fled the conventions of his middle-class upbringing to learn to live on the land in a rough-and-tumble village on the edge of Europe. Immersing himself in the rural culture of his remote Spanish community, he learned the traditional arts of animal husbandry and vegetable growing, wine-making and home distilling, and made bread from the rye he sowed on the stone-walled terraces of his twelve-acre farm.

The most recent research tells us that seaweed is one possible solution for our future on the planet. It could feed human beings, reduce plastic pollution, absorb enough carbon to cool the atmosphere, reconstruct generative ecosystems, treat certain illnesses that are incurable today, replace land livestock farming that exhausts the environment, and give jobs to coastal populations. The seaweed revolution is a hope for tomorrow!

From world-renowned scientist Jane Goodall, as seen in the National Geographic documentary Jane, comes a fascinating examination of the critical role that trees and plants play in our world. Seeds of Hope takes us from Goodall's home in England to her home-away-from-home in Africa, deep inside...

Natural resources empower the world's most coercive men. Autocrats like Putin and the Saudis spend oil money on weapons and repression. ISIS and Congo's militias spend resource money on atrocities and ammunition. For decades resource-fueled authoritarians and extremists have forced endless crises on the West - and the ultimate source of their resource money is us, paying at the gas station and the mall.

Water scarcity is on everyone's mind. Long taken for granted, water availability has entered the realm of economics, politics, and people's food and lifestyle choices. But as anxiety mounts - even as a swath of California farmland has been left fallow and extremist groups worldwide exploit the desperation of people losing livelihoods to desertification - many are finding new routes to water security with key implications for food access, economic resilience, and climate change.

What makes the modern world work? The answer to this deceptively simple question lies in four "grand transitions" of civilization - in populations, agriculture, energy, and economics - that have transformed the way we live. 

In the tradition of William Warner's Beautiful Swimmers, veteran journalist Colin Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) traces the history of the rugged fishing communities that dot the coast of Maine and the prized crustacean that has long provided their livelihood.

In Radically Reframing Climate Change: A Guide to Saving Ourselves, Will Hackman identifies three main obstacles to solving climate change: polarization, paralysis, and stale, ineffective messaging. He empowers people to turn their anxiety or apathy into passion, and anger into action at the personal, community, and government levels. The climate rallying cries to “Save the Planet” no longer work in our hyper-partisan world, nor do images of polar bears on melting glaciers. The problem isn’t scientific, fact-based, or even technological. It’s political, emotional, and ideological.

Bees are like oxygen: ubiquitous, essential, and, for the most part, unseen. While we might overlook them, they lie at the heart of relationships that bind the human and natural worlds. In Buzz, the beloved Thor Hanson takes us on a journey that begins 125 million years ago, when a wasp first dared to feed pollen to its young. From honeybees and bumbles to lesser-known diggers, miners, leafcutters, and masons, bees have long been central to our harvests, our mythologies, and our very existence. They've given us sweetness and light, the beauty of flowers, and as much as a third of the foodstuffs we eat. And, alarmingly, they are at risk of disappearing.