Greening the North: A Post-Industial Blueprint for Ecology and Equity

Book Description

While sustainability is in danger of being reduced to a meaningless platitude, the brutal fact remains that industrial countries make a disproportionately large and negative impact on the environment. A serious transition to sustainability will require changing people's mindsets and social institutions, in addition to public policies, technologies and business practices.

This book presents a path-breaking analysis as well as highly innovative proposals for managing this transition. Emanating from Europe's foremost environmental policy think-tank, it has already stirred up a major new debate in Germany on radical, but feasible, directions in which the governments of industrial societies ought to be moving. The concept of 'environmental space' and its ingenious development of indicators for measuring an economy's national and global impact combine with its delineation of concrete policies to give this book its intellectual power and potential political impact.

Customer Reviews:

The "Bible" of the German Environmental Movement.......1999-09-20

This is definitely the book that has had the most important impact on the German debate on sustainable development in the 1990s. It starts with a quantitative analysis of the disproportionate share that Germany uses of the global environmental space. It furtheron envisions in a realistic manner how Germany could reduce its global impact, and how this could be accomplished while maintaining or even improving the quality of life for its citizens. It shows a wealth of creative new approaches for the transition towards a sustainable society, with an excellent mix of realism and the necessary long-term vision. This book was debated in hundreds of events all over Germany, sparked off an enormous public debate and a series of follow-up publications. It was definitely the most successful publication of the renowned Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy. One of its main authors, Reinhard Loske, is now the spokesperson on Environment of the German Greens in the national parliament. This book was called the "Bible" of the German environmental movement by the newspaper Spiegel. It is definitely essential reading for everyone interested in the crucial issue how industrial societies could make the transition towards sustainability.

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Another look at farming life in New Zealand

Station Country. Back-country Life in New Zealand
Philip Holden
Manufacturer: Hachette Livre NZ Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OV4YJS

Customer Reviews:

Another look at farming life in New Zealand.......2007-07-12

During the 1990's, Philip Holden wrote and published his best-selling 'Station Country' trilogy. In "Station Life", he travels through New Zealand visiting sheep and cattle stations (farms). Among the many stations he visits was Mataka, in the Bay of Islands. It was here, in 1814, that the Reverend Samuel Marsden was responsible for liberating cattle, horses and, significantly, Merino sheep. Philip Holden also links up with the colourful Molesworth stockmen as they muster cattle on the biggest station in New Zealand. Further south, he delves into the legend of the sheepstealer, James MacKenzie.

It's well written, interesting and well-illustrated profusely with a good collection of stunning colour photographs. Another fascinating insight into the New Zealand farming lifestyle of decades passed.

Book Description

In the aftermath of September 11 and the delivery of anthrax through the mail, bioterrorism has been a subject of great concern and some misunderstanding. With these fears and uncertainties in mind, the authors of Agents of Bioterrorism offer a clear, balanced, and thorough account of the threats posed by bioterrorism and how to prepare for and respond to an attack. This volume explores a range of topics and provides considerable information and insight for scientists, public safety officials, policymakers, and concerned citizens.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has classified various pathogens as Category A, B, or C, depending on their prevalence, ease of access and use, and potential effects if and when used in a bioterrorist attack. Examining pathogens from all three categories, the contributors consider thirteen disease-causing agents, including those responsible for anthrax, encephalitis, botulism, ebola, tularemia, salmonella, the plague, smallpox, influenza, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Each chapter considers a particular pathogen from the standpoint of its history, molecular biology, pathology, clinical presentation, diagnosis, weaponization, and defenses. The book contains four appendices covering rapid drug discovery, different strategies for making vaccines, protection of the population in a bioterror attack, and sources of information on bioterrorism. A glossary is also included.

Although bioterrorism is not new to human society, scientific advances have resulted in a greater understanding of how pathogens produce their toxins and how they can be used to produce a wide range of new bioweapons. These advances have also led to new defenses against disease-causing agents. The contributors demonstrate that by understanding the pathogens used in bioterrorism, scientists can help to minimize fear and encourage constructive responses to this threat.

Customer Reviews:

A post-modernist deconstruction of the cytoplasmic matrix of bioterrorism........2006-02-21

To put it another way, it's a bit of a mess. The origins of the book are in seminars prepared by graduate students as part of a course in bioterrorism, and it shows.

The book is supposed to be a contribution to bioterrorism, so one would expect the book would consider topics of interest or relevance to those concerned with bioterrorism. The agents are all considered dangerous and are only available to recognized laboratories, so how does the bioterrorist get hold of them? What resources are needed to propagate the agent and how to obtain them? How is the bioterrorist to to protect himself? How are the agents to be collected, processed, and made ready for an attack (weaponized?) How are they to be used? Are these questions recognized and answered? Not entirely, and these are serious omissions for a book with a fly leaf saying the book is also useful for safety officials, policy makers and concerned citizens.

After an introductory chapter, each of the next 12 chapters deals with a specific pathogen or group of pathogens. Ten are from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) list of possible biological agents, and two additional ones: influenza virus and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus. Approximately half of the agents are viruses, and the others are bacteria. There is no mention of Rickettsia or fungi and no discussion of anti-crop or anti-livestock agents.

The chapters have a unifying structure: some discussion and history of the disease, a section labeled "molecular biology" (apparently all biology is molecular biology to the authors), diagnosis and treatment, weaponization, and defenses.

The opening sections suffer from the enthusiasm of the young writers coupled with a shaky grasp of history. For example, the chapter on flaviviruses fails to mention Yellow Fever (after which the genus is named), and its role in confounding human activities in the tropics, including handing Napoleon a major defeat. Some of the discussion is a little too a posteriori. There is also little in the way of concession to the non-scientific reader. Many terms go undefined in the text and the glossary is quite inadequate. For example, the chapter on Hantaviruses could explain that Clethrionomys glareolus is a bank vole and the chapter on anthrax could mention how the R400 bombs loaded with the agent were to deliver it. On the other hand, there is also a lack of critical thought. For example, the old chestnut about plague infected corpses being catapulted into the fort of Caffa when it was under siege is repeated. The flea vectors would have left the body as soon as it died. Those that infected the fort were most likely brought in by rats. I'm also waiting for someone to explain to me how two such different viruses as smallpox and Venezuelan equine encephalitis could be combined into a chimeric virus that would retain the pathogenic traits of both viruses.

The sections on the molecular biology are extensive reviews of the most recent developments in the molecular biology of these organisms. These sections drown us in information, but starve of us of knowledge as they are essentially irrelevant to the concept of the biological weapon. The most important information needed on the offensive and defensive sides of bioterrorism is not at the cutting edge. It is rather old-fashioned information on nutritional requirements, growth conditions and preservation, and approved treatments for infections and their complications. This is the meat and bread of textbooks of medical microbiology and infectious disease. Descriptions of the replicative cycles of viruses, or the organization of the pathogenicity islands of Yersinia pestis do not help the terrorist grow and use the agent, nor do they really help those involved in the response decide upon courses of action. There is a lot of interesting information, but it needed to be edited with a strong hand to focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the agents in the context of their use as weapons.

Sections on diagnosis and treatment are informative and useful, but again could have benefitted from better editing and there could be more emphasis on public health responses. Sections on weaponization are repetitive and could have been omitted from the chapters and replaced with an appendix. The chapter on anthrax omits the very important case of Larry Wayne Harris and how he obtained a pathogenic isolate of Bacillus anthracis.

There are four appendices dealing with drug and vaccine development, personal preparedness and information resources. The appendix on drug development is confused and spends a lot of time talking about unproven approaches or the technologies associated with them. It avoids the serious problem of nobody willing to put the time, money, and effort into developing treatments for agents that are unlikely to be used, even with offers of government funding such as the US Project BioShield. The appendix on vaccines is a useful overview and that on personal preparedness is a rehash of information available elsewhere. The appendix on information resources is more entertaining than I think the authors meant it to be. PubMed is not exactly the premier resource on bioterrorism. That honor goes, in my opinion, to ProMed: a moderated mailing list monitoring outbreaks of disease worldwide that is overseen by some of the most significant figures in medical microbiology and infectious disease.

The glossary is incomplete and even some of the definitions are inadequate and the index is a little brief. It would be nice if terms in the glossary showed some correspondence with the index.

Overall, this book has little to recommend it to anyone concerned about bioterrorism as something that could have a concrete impact on a society. It could have benefitted from a more focussed philosophy, firmer editing, and a focus on science rather than molecular biology. Someone looking for a review of the molecular biology of these organisms will find a set of reasonable reviews. Safety officials, policy makers and concerned citizens looking for guidance will do better with "Chemical and Biological Warfare: A Comprehensive Survey for the Concerned Citizen" by Eric Croddy.

Title of Book is Agents of Bioterrorism.......2005-11-06

The mailing of the envelopes with the anthrax spores just after the 9/11 World Trade Center the United States woke up to an understanding that biological warfare, in this instance bioterrorism was more than just a possibility.

Needless to say, the research community has spent a lot of time investigating the possible pathogens from the standpoints of its history, molecular biology, pathology, clinical presentation, diagnosis, weaponization and defenses. This book is basically a report on a dozen of these agents: anthrax, encephalitis, botulism, ebola, tularemia, salmonella, the plague, smallpox, influenza, SARS, hantavirus, cholera.

This material was originally orginazed for a college sminar course on microbiology and bioterrorism. In addition there are chapters of a more general nature on the philosophy, impact, biodefense, vaccines and even personal biodefenses. The chapter on each agent is written by a different specialist, but written to a common standard.

This is the most detailed look at these agents available to the general public.

Agents of Bioterrorism: Pathogens & Their Weaponization

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Agents of Bioterrorism: Pathogens & Their Weaponization
Geoffrey Zubay
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OPIHOC

Average customer rating:

Good, but very specific

Invaluable Planning Resource

Expedition Canoeing, 20th Anniversary Edition: A Guide to Canoeing Wild Rivers in North America (Falcon Guides Canoeing)
Cliff Jacobson
Manufacturer: Falcon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Water Sports | Sports | Subjects | Books
Whitewater Kayaking | Kayaking | Water Sports | Sports | Subjects | Books
General | Sports | Subjects | Books
Look Inside Outdoors & Nature Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
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Canoeing & Camping Beyond the Basics, 2nd (Canoeing how-to)

Basic Essentials Solo Canoeing, 2nd (Basic Essentials Series)

Basic Essentials Cooking in the Outdoors, 2nd (Basic Essentials Series)

Song of the Paddle: An Illustrated Guide to Wilderness Camping

Canoeing & Camping Beyond the Basics, 3rd: 30th Anniversary Edition (How to Paddle Series)

ASIN: 076273809X

Book Description

Expedition Canoeing is the premier guide to canoeing and exploring North America's wilderness rivers. This updated 20th anniversary edition covers route and trip planning, paddling and camping gear, dealing with bears, canoe hazards and rescue, barren-land travel, and much more.

Customer Reviews:

Good, but very specific.......2006-02-22

This book was interesting to read and very informative. Do be aware that it is very specific for canoeing on Arctic rivers, and is much less applicable to warmer climes.

Invaluable Planning Resource.......2005-11-17

Anyone planning a canoe trip of a few days or a few weeks will benefit from studying the advice given in this book. As a person who has spent some time in the wilderness I appreciate Jacobson's careful treatment of the subject: he offers solid, tested techniques and then points out the many ways things could go wrong. He uses stories form his considerable experience to illustrate how important it is to plan carefully, not to compound mistakes and thereby opens up the possibilities of canoeing in some incredibly wonderful places.

There is a section devoted to accounts of expeditions by different authors that serve to inspire and inform planning. A very engaging and thorough book, the premier one on the subject.

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Unpredictable stories; mind-boggling variety of subjects; great writing throughout

Riveting boook!

A recommendation for any fiction lending library strong in modern literary achievement.

Familiar Turf with Some Sparkling Moments

"All I'm saying is, I'm no monster, okay?"

Rust and Bone: Stories
Craig Davidson
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Criticism & Theory | History & Criticism | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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The Fighter

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

Demon Theory

Controlled Burn: Stories of Prison, Crime, and Men

All The Beautiful Sinners

ASIN: 0393061299

Book Description

A brilliant and urgent debut collection by a young writer exploring the darkest corners of human experience.

In steel-tipped prose, Craig Davidson conjures a savage world populated by fighting dogs, prizefighters, sex addicts, and gamblers. In his title story, Davidson introduces an afflicted boxer whose hand never properly heals after a bone is broken. The fighter's career descends to bouts that have less to do with sport than with survival: no referee, no rules, not even gloves. In "A Mean Utility" we enter an even more desperate arena: dogfights where Rottweilers, pit bulls, and Dobermans fight each other to the death.

Davidson's stories are small monuments to the telling detail. The hostility of his fictional universe is tempered by the humanity he invests in his characters and by his subtle and very moving observations of their motivations. He shares with Chuck Palahniuk the uncanny ability to compel our attention, time and time again, to the most difficult subject matter.

Customer Reviews:

Unpredictable stories; mind-boggling variety of subjects; great writing throughout.......2007-09-05

This is an occasionally stomach-churning, laughter-inducing collection of stories that is all over the road. Here a brutal boxing story that opens your eyes like a smelling salt; there an offbeat, touching saga of a repo man with a crippled wife; then a visceral sex-addict misadventure. Not everything works flawlessly, but it's all interesting. And when Davidson is firing on all cylinders -- duck! Highly recommended.

Riveting boook!.......2007-04-08

Craig Davidson keeps us on our toes as we read about a world dominated by fighting and lifes hard lessons. This is a compelling book that you won't be able to put down. This is a great read that is very "real".

A recommendation for any fiction lending library strong in modern literary achievement........2007-02-08

Fighting is a major theme in Craig Davidson's short stories, which pack the punch of underworld fiction writing at its best. Here are visions of broken beings who struggling for meaning in life - shocking, eye-opening stories which aren't for the meek or leisure reader seeking light-hearted plots. Davidson's settings are fictional and his characters are searching out humanity in the midst of violence: perhaps this is what makes RUST AND BONE a compelling mirror image of modern times - and a recommendation for any fiction lending library strong in modern literary achievement.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Familiar Turf with Some Sparkling Moments.......2007-01-16

Canadian writer Davidson kicks the literary door down with this debut short story collection, which features tough-guy topics as boxing, dog fighting, mangled bodies, sexual addiction, and repo men. The results are rather hit or miss, with some of the stories grittily effective and others wandering their way to weak endings. Five of these previous appeared in Canadian lit journals "The Fiddlehead", "Event", and "Prairie Fire", and the stories are mostly set in Ontario, a locale fairly interchangeable with the upper midwestern U.S.

In general, the best bits of writing occur in those stories in which Davidson is able to show off his skills at writing combat. The title story has some particularly vivid parts, depicting a bare-knuckles fighter who earns his living on an illegal underground circuit. I don't find boxing particularly interesting, but Davidson's blow by blow account of a fight is riveting. In "Life in the Flesh," a boxer who once killed a man in a fight now lives in Thailand where he trains promising boxers sent to him from the States. When a cocky kid shows up in Bangkok, the trainer tries to keep him focused but can't keep him from taking on a local Muay Thai champ. Again, the setup isn't the greatest material, Davidson veers awfully close to the stereotype of Bangkok, but the fight itself is great stuff. "A Mean Utility" delves into the underworld of dog fighting via two unexpected protagonists -- a middle-class white advertising executive and his wife. Experiencing fertility problems, they pour all their attention into their dogs, and the man pushes a young dog into a fight, only to see every father's nightmare unfold before his eyes.

Other stories are rather less compelling. "The Rifleman" is a riff on the typical fanatical father who pushes his son to become a basketball star. The alcoholic father is utterly pathetic, and his son's disdain oozes from the page. "Rocket Ride" is about a young man bitter about losing his leg while working at a marine park, but just peters out. "Friction" is thirty aimless pages about a man whose sexual addiction cost him his family and job, and has drifted into the porn industry and therapy groups. The longest story is "The Apprentice's Guide to Modern Magic," which examines a pair of siblings whose magician father abandoned them as children. And of course, when they track him down years later, as adults, satisfaction and closure prove difficult to come by.

The best complete story is "On Sleepless Roads," in which a sad man leaves his disabled wife at home to work his repo man gig. When he shows up to take an RV one night, he encounters the ad executive from "A Mean Utility", now fallen on tough times. Rather bizarrely, the ad exec is trying to film a children's TV show in his garage, using live animals. The odd couple bond over a night of beers and filming, and the story ends with the kind of beautiful and darkly comic moment that one wishes were more present in the rest of the stories. On the whole, while there are sparkling moments here and there, much of the collection feels like warmed over Chuck Palahniuk -- and indeed, Palahniuk provides a suitable cover blurb, with Thom Jones, Bret Easton Ellis, and Peter Straub weighing in on the back. And in fact, that provides a pretty good indication of the intended audience for this collection.

"All I'm saying is, I'm no monster, okay?".......2006-11-17

The title story sets the tone for the collection, a brilliant juxtaposition of nature's raw beauty with the harsh reality of the cost of living in the real world. In "Rust and Bone", a young prize fighter takes the punches, throwing himself into the ring, learning over the years the lure and occasional rewards of the fighter's life, disciplined and self-aware. It is unexpected loss that knocks him to his knees, his tough spirit brought low from that which he cannot control, a permanent scar that sears his soul.

A father's lifelong obsession with his talented son's basketball skills defines their relationship in "The Rifleman", the father relentless as he pushes his son toward greatness. Unfortunately, the father's drunkenness overrides everything, turning the relationship into a parody, the son angling away from his father's boozy interference, the man left babbling in a haze of memories and rationalization. The reader cannot help but squirm with discomfort, the sour breath of the father an ill wind of failure.

"A Mean Utility" is arguably one of the tougher stories, providing some harsh details of dog fighting as one man's means of comprehending fatherhood. Filled with a particular brutality, the man's comprehension is bathed in the blood of violence, an arena inhabited by a breed of humanity that is disturbing. The stories don't get any easier, Davidson taking bites out of life, spitting them back with impunity, in prose that is both difficult to read and masterfully written, a Bosch painting in language, challenging the reader not to look away. Very few writers have the skill to blend ugliness with everyday events, lifting his protagonists out of their comfort zones toward personal revelation. This collection certainly isn't for the faint of heart, but for anyone tough enough to persevere, Rust and Bone is quite an accomplishment. Luan Gaines/2006.

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Rust and Bone: Stories
Craig Davidson
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Canada
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0670064424

Book Description

Early Celtic illuminated manuscripts continue to intrigue us with their intricacy and craftsmanship. Contemporary artist Courtney Davis recreates portraits of the saints, border designs, Celtic symbols, and elaborate initials from all the Irish School manuscripts, spanning the period from the beginning of the seventh century until the twelfth century. His text vividly describes the historical background--the Christianization of Ireland, the Viking raids, and the monks who fled with their precious books to libraries abroad. From the Book of Durrow to the Corpus Missal, the origin of each manuscript is given, with an account of where and by whom it was made, its purpose, and the symbolism of its designs. The result is an inspiration for designers everywhere, and an essential resource for anyone interested in the Celts.

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