Film / Book Review Project
1. First, choose a film/book to review from the lists, below.
2. Please watch the film and/or read the book and write a thorough review. This should be filled with facts from the film and/or book as well as your opinions.
3. Choose a work that evokes emotion and opinion and is of interest, to you!
4. Consider these questions when writing your film and/or book review:
-
What is the main issue being addressed?
-
Was the format effective?
-
Are there other films, clips, or books that discuss this topic that would further your understanding?
-
Are you in agreement with the narrator of the film or author of the book - why or why not?
-
Will you change anything in your life after viewing this film or reading this book? If so, what would you change and how?
The following FILMS and BOOKS listed in the boxes below are located at Biology Reserves at the Library's Circulation/Reserves counter, for in-library use, for a 7-day checkout period. (Please bring your student id card for borrowing privileges!)
Also, if you can not go to the library please choose a streaming video or an ebook from one of the boxes below. Please use your MEID and password to access ebooks & streamed videos from your home remotely!
Recommended VIDEOS - Click "watch here" to access videostream!
Please use your MEID and password to access any streamed videos from your home or remotely:
- A River of Waste: The Hazardous Truth About Factory Farms or watch here
- A Sea Change: Imagine a World Without Fish or watch here
- Addicted To Plastic or watch here
- American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau - watch this
- An Inconvenient Truth or watch clips here or here
- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life and watch this
- Bad Seed: The Truth About Our Food or watch here
- Broken Limbs: Apples, Agriculture, and the New American Farmer or watch here
- Build Green or watch here
- Dive: Living Off America's Waste or watch here.
- Fast Food Nation
- Fed Up
- Flow: How Did a Handful of Corporations Steal Our Water? and watch this
- Foodmatters
- Fuel or watch this
- Gas Hole or watch this
- Genetic Roulette and watch this
- Killer at Large or watch this
- King Corn or watch here
- Planet in Peril and watch this
- Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days and watch this
- Super Size Me or watch it
- The 11th Hour and watch this
- The Ecological Footprint: Accounting for a Small Planet or watch it here
- The End of Suburbia or watch it here
- The Future of Food and watch this
- The Scientists Warning
- The Secret and watch this
- The Story of Stuff or watch it here
- Vegucated or watch it here
- Who Killed the Electric Car or watch it here
- Why Animals Live Where They Do
- World in the Balance or watch it here
Films on Demand - Environmental Science (1,904 titles)
Recommended PRINT Books @ LIBRARY RESERVES - Call 602-787-7200 or email: library@paradisevalley.edu to request!!
Albatross: Their World, Their Ways by
One of the world's great wildlife photographer and a writer set out in a sailboat to document the lives of albatrosses.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 1554074150Publication Date: 2008-09-12
American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau by
As America and the world grapple with the consequences of global environmental change, writer and activist Bill McKibben offers this unprecedented, provocative, and timely anthology, gathering the best and most significant American environmental writing from the last two centuries.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 1598530208Publication Date: 2008-04-17
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by
Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life vowing that, for one year, they only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 0060852569Publication Date: 2008-04-29
Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics by
In the tradition of M. F. K. Fisher and Henry David Thoreau, Gary Paul Nabhan relates how his experience with food permeates his life as an avid gardener and forager, as an ethnobotanist and farmland conservation advocate, and as an activist devoted to recovering place-based heritage foods.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 9780393335057Publication Date: 2009-07-06
Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation by
In this book, one of America's leading ethnobotanists warns about our loss of natural vegetation and plant diversity while providing insights into traditional Native agricultural practices in the Americas.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 9780816522590Publication Date: 2002-10-01
Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning by
"A dazzling command of science and a relentless faith in people."--Naomi Klein "The most powerful treatise yet on the gravity of global warming. . . . I defy you to read this book and not feel motivated to change."--The Times (London) "If you care about the future of the planet, you should read Heat, and then give a copy to a friend."--Elizabeth Kolbert Today virtually none of us ask, "Is climate change actually happening?" Only one question is worth asking, "Can it be stopped?" George Monbiot thinks it can. And with Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning, he offers us a book that just might save our world. For the first time, Heat demonstrates that we can achieve the necessary cut--a 90 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030--without bringing civilization to an end. Though writing with a "spirit of optimism," Monbiot does not pretend it will be easy. Our response will have to be immediate, and it will have to be decisive. With dazzling intellect and ample wit, Monbiot supports his proposals with a rigorous investigation into what works, what doesn't, how much it costs, and what the problems might be. And he is not afraid to attack anyone--friend or foe--whose claims are false or whose figures have been fudged. There is no time to waste, Monbiot observes, "We are the last generation that can make this happen, and this is the last possible moment at which we can make it happen." George Monbiot is one of the world's most influential thinkers. Nelson Mandela presented Monbiot with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. He is a weekly columnist for the Guardian.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 9780896087873Publication Date: 2009-03-01
Hot, Flat, and Crowded by
ANew York Times Book ReviewNotable Book of the Year AWashington PostBest Book of the Year ABusinessweekBest Business Book of the Year AChicago TribuneBest Book of the Year In this brilliant, essential book, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas L. Friedman speaks to America's urgent need for national renewal and explains how a green revolution can bring about both a sustainable environment and a sustainable America. Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the expansion of the world's middle class through globalization have produced a dangerously unstable planet--one that is "hot, flat, and crowded." In thisRelease 2.0edition, he also shows how the very habits that led us to ravage the natural world led to the meltdown of the financial markets and the Great Recession. The challenge of a sustainable way of life presents the United States with an opportunity not only to rebuild its economy, but to lead the world in radically innovating toward cleaner energy. And it could inspire Americans to something we haven't seen in a long time--nation-building in America--by summoning the intelligence, creativity, and concern for the common good that are our greatest national resources. Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman: fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the challenge--and the promise--of the future.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 9780312428921Publication Date: 2009-11-24
Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade by
When you drop your Diet Coke can or yesterday's newspaper in the recycling bin, where does it go? Probably halfway around the world, to people and places that clean up what you don't want and turn it into something you can't wait to buy. In Junkyard Planet, Adam Minter--veteran journalist and son of an American junkyard owner--travels deeply into a vast, often hidden, multibillion-dollar industry that's transforming our economy and environment. Minter takes us from back-alley Chinese computer recycling operations to high-tech facilities capable of processing a jumbo jet's worth of recyclable trash every day. Along the way, we meet an unforgettable cast of characters who've figured out how to build fortunes from what we throw away: Leonard Fritz, a young boy "grubbing" in Detroit's city dumps in the 1930s; Johnson Zeng, a former plastics engineer roaming America in search of scrap; and Homer Lai, an unassuming barber turned scrap titan in Qingyuan, China. Junkyard Planet reveals how "going green" usually means making money--and why that's often the most sustainable choice, even when the recycling methods aren't pretty. With unmatched access to and insight on the junk trade, and the explanatory gifts and an eye for detail worthy of a John McPhee or William Langewiesche, Minter traces the export of America's recyclables and the massive profits that China and other rising nations earn from it. What emerges is an engaging, colorful, and sometimes troubling tale of consumption, innovation, and the ascent of a developing world that recognizes value where Americans don't. Junkyard Planet reveals that we might need to learn a smarter way to take out the trash.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 9781608197910Publication Date: 2014-01-16
Lobster by
Other than that it tastes delicious with butter, what do you know about the knobbily-armoured, scarlet creature staring back at you from your fancy dinner plate? From ocean to stock pot, there are two sides to every animal story. For instance, since there are species of lobsters without claws, how exactly do you define a lobster? And how did a pauper's food transform into a meal synonymous with a luxurious splurge? To answer these questions on behalf of lobster the animal is Richard J. King, a former fishmonger and commercial lobsterman, who has chronicled the creature's long natural history. Part of the Animal series, King's Lobster takes us on a journey through the history, biology, and culture of lobsters, including the creature's economic and environmental status worldwide. He describes the evolution of technologies to capture these creatures and addresses the ethics of boiling them alive. Along the way, King also explores the salacious lobster palaces of the 1920s, the animal's thousand-year status as an aphrodisiac, and how the lobster has inspired numerous artists, writers, and thinkers including Aristotle, Dickens, Thoreau, Dalí, and Woody Allen. Whether you want to liberate lobsters from their supermarket tanks or crack open their claws, this book is an essential read, describing the human connection to the lobster from his ocean home to the dinner table.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 9781861897954Publication Date: 2011-05-15
Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-mile Diet by
The remarkable, amusing and inspiring adventures of a Canadian couple who make a year-long attempt to eat foods grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their apartment. When Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon learned that the average ingredient in a North American meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate, they decided to launch a simple experiment to reconnect with the people and places that produced what they ate. For one year, they would only consume food that came from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver apartment. The 100-Mile Diet was born. The couple's discoveries sometimes shook their resolve. It would be a year without sugar, Cheerios, olive oil, rice, Pizza Pops, beer, and much, much more. Yet local eating has turned out to be a life lesson in pleasures that are always close at hand. They met the revolutionary farmers and modern-day hunter-gatherers who are changing the way we think about food. They got personal with issues ranging from global economics to biodiversity. They called on the wisdom of grandmothers, and immersed themselves in the seasons. They discovered a host of new flavours, from gooseberry wine to sunchokes to turnip sandwiches, foods that they never would have guessed were on their doorstep. The 100-Mile Diet struck a deeper chord than anyone could have predicted, attracting media and grassroots interest that spanned the globe. The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating tells the full story, from the insights to the kitchen disasters, as the authors transform from megamart shoppers to self-sufficient urban pioneers. The 100-Mile Diet is a pathway home for anybody, anywhere. Call me naive, but I never knew that flour would be struck from our 100-Mile Diet. Wheat products are just so ubiquitous, "the staff of life," that I had hazily imagined the stuff must be grown everywhere. But of course: I had never seen a field of wheat anywhere close to Vancouver, and my mental images of late-afternoon light falling on golden fields of grain were all from my childhood on the Canadian prairies. What I was able to find was Anita's Organic Grain & Flour Mill, about 60 miles up the Fraser River valley. I called, and learned that Anita's nearest grain suppliers were at least 800 miles away by road. She sounded sorry for me. Would it be a year until I tasted a pie? --From The 100-Mile Diet From the Hardcover edition.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 9780307347336Publication Date: 2008-04-22
Sex in the Sea : Our intimate connection with sex-changing fish, romantic lobsters, kinky squid, and other salty erotica of the deep by
An Oprah.com "Best Book for National Reading Month" Forget the Kama Sutra. When it comes to inventive sex acts, just look to the sea. There we find the elaborate mating rituals of armored lobsters; giant right whales engaging in a lively threesome whilst holding their breath; full moon sex parties of groupers and daily mating blitzes by blueheaded wrasse. Deep-sea squid perform inverted 69s, while hermaphrodite sea slugs link up in giant sex loops. From doubly endowed sharks to the maze-like vaginas of some whales,Sex in the Sea is a journey unlike any other to explore the staggering ways life begets life beneath the waves. Beyond a deliciously voyeuristic excursion,Sex in the Sea uniquely connects the timeless topic of sex with the timely issue of sustainable oceans. Through overfishing, climate change, and ocean pollution we are disrupting the creative procreation that drives the wild abundance of life in the ocean. With wit and scientific rigor, Hardt introduces us to the researchers and innovators who study the wet and wild sex lives of ocean life and offer solutions that promote rather than prevent, successful sex in the sea. Part science, part erotica,Sex in the Seadiscusses how we can shift from a prophylactic to a more propagative force for life in the ocean.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 9781137279972Publication Date: 2016-02-09
Stuffed and Starved: The hidden battle for the world food systems by
Revised and Expanded Edition "For anyone attempting to make sense of the world food crisis, or understand the links between U.S. farm policy and the ability of the world's poor to feed themselves, Stuffed and Starved is indispensable." --Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma It's a perverse fact of modern life: There are more starving people in the world than ever before, while there are also more people who are overweight. To find out how we got to this point and what we can do about it, Raj Patel launched a comprehensive investigation into the global food network. It took him from the colossal supermarkets of California to India's wrecked paddy-fields and Africa's bankrupt coffee farms, while along the way he ate genetically engineered soy beans and dodged flying objects in the protestor-packed streets of South Korea. What he found was shocking, from the false choices given us by supermarkets to a global epidemic of farmer suicides, and real reasons for famine in Asia and Africa. Yet he also found great cause for hope--in international resistance movements working to create a more democratic, sustainable and joyful food system. Going beyond ethical consumerism, Patel explains, from seed to store to plate, the steps to regain control of the global food economy, stop the exploitation of both farmers and consumers, and rebalance global sustenance.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 9781612191270Publication Date: 2012-06-05
This Is Your Brain on Parasites : How tiny creatures manipulate our behavior and shape society by
A riveting investigation of the myriad ways that parasites control how other creatures--including humans--think, feel, and act. These tiny organisms can only live inside another animal, and as McAuliffe reveals, they have many evolutionary motives for manipulating their host's behavior. Far more often than appreciated, these puppeteers orchestrate the interplay between predator and prey. With astonishing precision, parasites can coax rats to approach cats, spiders to transform the patterns of their webs, and fish to draw the attention of birds that then swoop down to feast on them. We humans are hardly immune to the profound influence of parasites. Organisms we pick up from our own pets are strongly suspected of changing our personality traits and contributing to recklessness, impulsivity--even suicide. Microbes in our gut affect our emotions and the very wiring of our brains. Germs that cause colds and flu may alter our behavior even before symptoms become apparent. Parasites influence our species on the cultural level too. As McAuliffe documents, a subconscious fear of contagion impacts virtually every aspect of our lives, from our sexual attractions and social circles to our morals and political views. Drawing on a huge body of research, she argues that our dread of contamination is an evolved defense against parasites--and a double-edged sword. The horror and revulsion we feel when we come in contact with people who appear diseased or dirty helped pave the way for civilization, but may also be the basis for major divisions in societies that persist to this day. In the tradition of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel and Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish, This Is Your Brain on Parasites is both a journey into cutting-edge science and a revelatory examination of what it means to be human.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 9780544192225Publication Date: 2016-06-07
Venomous: How Earth's Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry by
A thrilling tale of encounters with nature's masters of biochemistry "A fitting tribute to one of nature's most sinister creations of all." --Carl Zimmer, author ofParasite Rex InVenomous, the molecular biologist Christie Wilcox investigates venoms and the animals that use them, revealing how they work, what they do to the human body, and how they can revolutionize biochemistry and medicine today. Wilcox takes us from the coast of Indonesia to the rain forests of Peru in search of the secrets of these mysterious animals. We encounter jellyfish that release microscopic venom-packed darts known to kill humans in just two minutes, a two-inch caterpillar with toxic bristles that trigger hemorrhaging throughout the body, and a stunning blue-ringed octopus with saliva capable of inducing total paralysis. How could an animal as simple as a jellyfish evolve such an intricate, deadly poison? And how can a snake possess enzymes that tear through tissue yet leave its own body unscathed? Wilcox meets the fearless scientists who often risk their lives studying these lethal beasts to find out, and puts her life on the line to examine these species up close. Drawing on her own research on venom chemistry and evolution, she also shows how venom is helping us untangle the complex mechanisms of some of our most devastating diseases. Venomous reveals that the animals we fear the most actually hold the keys to a deeper understanding of evolution, adaptation, and immunity. Thrilling and surprising at every turn,Venomouswill change the way you think about our natural world.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 9780374537104Publication Date: 2017-08-15
Water: The fate of our most precious resource by
In his award-winning book WATER, Marq de Villiers provides an eye-opening account of how we are using, misusing, and abusing our planet's most vital resource. Encompassing ecological, historical, and cultural perspectives, de Villiers reports from hot spots as diverse as China, Las Vegas, and the Middle East, where swelling populations and unchecked development have stressed fresh water supplies nearly beyond remedy. Political struggles for control of water rage around the globe, and rampant pollution daily poses dire ecological theats. With one eye on these looming crises and the other on the history of our dependence on our planet's most precious commodity, de Villiers has crafted a powerful narrative about the lifeblood of civilizations that will be "a wake-up call for concerned citizens, environmentalists, policymakers, and water drinkers everywhere" (Publishers Weekly).
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 9780618127443Publication Date: 2001-07-12
Water Wars: Privatization, pollution and profit by
"The world's most prominent radical scientist."The GuardianVandana Shiva, a world-renowned environmentalist and campaigner, examines the 'water wars' of the twenty-first century: the aggressive privatization by the multinationals of communal water rights.While drought and desertification are intensifying around the world, corporations are aggressively converting free-flowing water into bottled profits. The water wars of the twenty-first century may match -- or even surpass -- the oil wars of the twentieth. In Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit, acclaimed author Vandana Shiva sheds light on the activists who are fighting corporate manoeuvres to convert this life-sustaining resource into more gold for the elites. In Water Wars, Shiva uses her remarkable knowledge of science and society to outline the emergence of corporate culture and the historical erosion of communal water rights. Using the international water trade and industrial activities such as damming, mining, and aquafarming as her lens, Shiva exposes the destruction of the earth and the disenfranchisement of the world's poor as they are stripped of rights to a precious common good.Shiva calls for a movement to preserve water access for all, and offers a blueprint for global resistance based on examples of successful campaigns.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 0745318371Publication Date: 2002-05-20
Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design by
Exploring a variety of topics ranging from coummunities to buildings to product design, the book explains for the first time, how the sustainable design field is influenced by women and women's ways of working.Women in Green explains the often overlooked roles women have played as key catalysts in sustainability. The book will help women and men understand the limitations of business as usual and suggest different approaches to solving today's complex problems.
Call Number: BIO/CORBET RESERVEISBN: 9780974903378Publication Date: 2007-04-01
Recommended E-BOOKS - Access 24/7 - Click on title!
Albatrosses by
* Illustrated and accessible guide to this unique aviator Despite their iconic cultural status, real albatrosses are largely confined to the region referred to by early mariners as the "Roaring Forties" and the "Furious Fifties", otherwise known as the Southern Ocean. The single most distinctive characteristic of these birds is that they ride storms. Aside from a few close relatives among the petrels and shearwaters, they are the only animals (of any kind) that do this. They don't evade storms, or flee them, they climb aboard and ride them. The meteorology of the Southern Ocean is so extreme that the region might reasonably be viewed as essentially one enormous, endless storm. For any non-aquatic animal, this characteristic makes the Southern Ocean nearly as inhospitable as the polar wastes or the most extreme of deserts. To all but the albatross, that is. This work outlines the life histories of these spectacular birds, and explores some of the main strategies and tactics that have evolved to enable them to achieve mastery of one of the most hostile regions on the planet.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9780643094215Publication Date: 2008-09-10
Bringing It to the Table by
Only a farmer could delve so deeply into the origins of food, and only a writer of Wendell Berry's caliber could convey it with such conviction and eloquence. A progenitor of the slow food movement, Wendell Berry reminds us all to take the time to understand the basics of what we ingest. "Eating is an agriculture act," he writes. Indeed, we are all players in the food economy. For the last five decades, Berry has embodied mindful eating through his land practices and his writing. In recognition of that influence, Michael Pollan here offers an introduction to this wonderful collection that is essential reading for anyone who cares about what they eat. Drawn from over thirty years of work, this collection joins bestsellersThe Omnivore's Dilemma, by Pollan, andAnimal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, as essential reading for anyone who cares about what they eat. The essays address such concerns as: How does organic measure up against locally grown? What are the differences between small and large farms, and how does that affect what you put on your dinner table? What can you do to support sustainable agriculture?
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9781582435435Publication Date: 2009-08-18
Design with the Desert by
Typical development in the American Southwest often resulted in scraping the desert lands of the ancient living landscape, to be replaced with one that is human-made and dependent on a large consumption of energy and natural resources. This transdisciplinary book explores the natural and built environment of this desert region and introduces development tools for shaping its future in a more sustainable way. It offers valuable insights to help promote ecological balance between nature and the built environment in the American Southwest-and in other ecologically fragile regions around the world.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9781439881385Publication Date: 2016-04-19
Diet for a New America by
From John Robbins, a new edition of the classic that awakened the conscience of a nation. Since the 1987 publication of Diet for a New America, beef consumption in the United States has fallen a remarkable 19%. While many forces are contributing to this dramatic shift in our habits, Diet for a New America is considered to be one of the most important. Diet for a New America is a startling examination of the food we currently buy and eat in the United States, and the astounding moral, economic, and emotional price we pay for it. In Section I, John Robbins takes an extraordinary look at our dependence on animals for food and the inhumane conditions under which these animals are raised. It becomes clear that the price we pay for our eating habits is measured in the suffering of animals, a suffering so extreme and needless that it disrupts our very place in the web of life. Section II challenges the belief that consuming meat is a requirement for health by pointing our the vastly increased rate of disease caused by pesticides, hormones, additives, and other chemicals now a routine part of our food production. The author shows us that the high health risk is unnecessary, and that the production, preparation, and consumption of food can once again be a healthy process. In Section III, Robbins looks at the global implications of a meat-based diet and concludes that the consumption of the resources necessary to produce meat is a major factor in our ecological crisis. Diet for a New America is the single most eloquent argument for a vegetarian lifestyle ever published. Eloquently, evocatively, and entertainingly written, it is a cant put down book guaranteed to amaze, infuriate, but ultimately educate and empower the reader. A pivotal book nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction in 1987.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 193207354xPublication Date: 2012-12-11
Eat Local, Taste Global by
Eat Local, Taste Global: How Ethnocultural Food Reaches Our Tables shows how the demand for ethnocultural vegetables on the part of Toronto's South Asian, Chinese, and Afro-Caribbean Canadians is at odds with the corporate food regime. How does that regime affect the local food movement and ethnic groups' access to their preferred foods? This book addresses that question and suggests that the protection of ethnic and national food security and sovereignty strengthens immigrant integration while producing healthy crossover effects for other Canadians. The authors show how culture, food, and migration are intertwined and how access to ethnocultural vegetables is affected by ethnicity, social class, shopping venues, and food prices. Most ethnic vegetables are imported by corporations and ethnic intermediaries and pass through Toronto's Food Terminal; however, local farmers are now producing some of these vegetables, and alternative forms of agriculture and markets play a significant role in bringing ethnocultural vegetables to our tables. Social justice requires that people have both food security and food sovereignty. Eat Local, Taste Global offers solutions to identified contradictions that include making farmers' markets more inclusive, improving conditions for migrant farm workers, and making alternative forms of agriculture more feasible. This book will be of interest to rural sociologists and political scientists as well as policy-makers, food activists, farmers, and food security organizations.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9781771123136Publication Date: 2017-10-26
Forests and People by
A human rights-based agenda has received significant attention in writings on general development policy, but less so in forestry. Forests and People presents a comprehensive analysis of the rights-based agenda in forestry, connecting it with existing work on tenure reform, governance rights and cultural rights. As the editors note in their introduction, the attention to rights in forestry differs from 'rights-based approaches' in international development and other natural resource fields in three critical ways. First, redistribution is a central demand of activists in forestry but not in other fields. Many forest rights activists call for not only the redirection of forest benefits but also the redistribution of forest tenure to redress historical inequalities. Second, the rights agenda in forestry emerges from numerous grassroots initiatives, setting forest-related human rights apart from approaches that derive legitimacy from transnational human rights norms and are driven by international and national organizations. Third, forest rights activists attend to individual as well as peoples' collective rights whereas approaches in other fields tend to emphasize one or the other set of rights. Forests and People is a timely response to the challenges that remain for advocates as new trends and initiatives, such as market-based governance, REDD, and a rush to biofuels, can sometimes seem at odds with the gains from what has been a two decade expansion of forest peoples' rights. It explores the implications of these forces, and generates new insights on forest governance for scholars and provides strategic guidance for activists.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9780203124000Publication Date: 2012-05-23
Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis by
One-third of American food crops are pollinated by honey bees- apples, almonds, cherries, peaches, and plums, to name a few. We are wholly dependent on our partnership with bees, but most people know very little about how they contribute to the larger world of commercial agriculture. In 2007, however, the honey bee made national headlines- nearly one-third of the population, 30 billion bees, mysteriously died from what they're calling 'colony collapse disorder.' In Fruitless Fall, Rowan Jacobsen chronicles the developing crisis that began in 2006 as beekeepers, scientists, and government officials discovered they had an emergency on their hands. He explores the mystery of CCD and follows researchers as they race to find a solution before winter when the rest of the northern hemisphere's honeybees risk dying. Fruitless Fall further examines our dependence on honey bees and how our exploitation of this work force may lead not only to their ruin but may have already irrevocably damaged our relationship with the environment.
Call Number: eBook - PROQUESTISBN: 9781596916395Publication Date: 2009-08-18- Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis by Call Number: eBook - EBSCOISBN: 9781596916395Publication Date: 2009-08-18
Garbology by
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist takes readers on a surprising tour of the world of garbage. Take a journey inside the secret world of our biggest export, our most prodigious product, and our greatest legacy: our trash. It's the biggest thing we make: The average American is on track to produce a whopping 102 tons of garbage across a lifetime, $50 billion in squandered riches rolled to the curb each year, more than that produced by any other people in the world. But that trash doesn't just magically disappear; our bins are merely the starting point for a strange, impressive, mysterious, and costly journey that may also represent the greatest untapped opportunity of the century. In Garbology, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward Humes investigates the trail of that 102 tons of trash--what's in it; how much we pay for it; how we manage to create so much of it; and how some families, communities, and even nations are finding a way back from waste to discover a new kind of prosperity. Along the way , he introduces a collection of garbage denizens unlike anyone you've ever met: the trash-tracking detectives of MIT, the bulldozer-driving sanitation workers building Los Angeles' immense Garbage Mountain landfill, the artists in residence at San Francisco's dump, and the family whose annual trash output fills not a dumpster or a trash can, but a single mason jar. Garbology digs through our epic piles of trash to reveal not just what we throw away, but who we are and where our society is headed. Are we destined to remain the country whose number-one export is scrap--America as China's trash compactor--or will the country that invented the disposable economy pioneer a new and less wasteful path? The real secret at the heart of Garbology may well be the potential for a happy ending buried in our landfill. Waste, Humes writes, is the one environmental and economic harm that ordinary working Americans have the power to change--and prosper in the process.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9781583334348Publication Date: 2012-04-19
Greasy Rider by
Is it possible to drive coast-to-coast without stopping at a single gas pump? Journalist Greg Melville is determined to try. With his college buddy Iggy riding shotgun, this green-thinking guy--who's in love with the idea of free fuel--sets out on an enlightening road trip. The quest: to be the first people to drive cross-country in a french-fry car. Will they make it from Vermont to California in a beat-up 1985 Mercedes diesel station wagon powered on vegetable oil collected from restaurant grease Dumpsters along the way? More important, can two guys survive 192 consecutive hours together? Their expedition on and off the road includes visits to the solar-powered Google headquarters; the National Ethanol Council; the wind turbines of southwestern Minnesota; the National Renewable Energy Lab; a visit to one of the first houses to receive platinum certification for leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED); an "eco-friendly" Wal-Mart; and the world's largest geothermal heating system. Part adventure and part investigation of what we're doing (or not doing) to preserve the planet, Greasy Rider is upbeat, funny, and full of surprising information about sustainable measures that are within our reach.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9781565125957Publication Date: 2008-10-21
Grocery Story by
Hungry for change? Put the power of food co-ops on your plate and grow your local food economy. Food has become ground-zero in our efforts to increase awareness of how our choices impact the world. Yet while we have begun to transform our communities and dinner plates, the most authoritative strand of the food web has received surprisingly little attention: the grocery store--the epicenter of our food-gathering ritual. Through penetrating analysis and inspiring stories and examples of American and Canadian food co-ops, Grocery Story makes a compelling case for the transformation of the grocery store aisles as the emerging frontier in the local and good food movements. Author Jon Steinman: Deconstructs the food retail sector and the shadows cast by corporate giants Makes the case for food co-ops as an alternative Shows how co-ops spur the creation of local food-based economies and enhance low-income food access. Grocery Story is for everyone who eats. Whether you strive to eat more local and sustainable food, or are in support of community economic development, Grocery Story will leave you hungry to join the food co-op movement in your own community.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9780865719071Publication Date: 2019-05-07
Monteverde by
The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve has captured the worldwide attention of biologists, conservationists, and ecologists and has been the setting for extensive investigation over the past 30 years. Roughly 40,000 ecotourists visit the Cloud Forest each year, and it is often considered thearchetypal high-altitude rain forest.This volume brings together some of the most prominent researchers of the region to provide a broad introduction to the biology of the Monteverde, and cloud forests in general. Collecting and synthesizing vital information about the ecosystem and its biota, the book also examines the positive andnegative effects of human activity on both the forest and the surrounding communities. Ecologists, tropical biologists, and natural historians will find this volume an indispensable resource, as will all those who are fascinated by the magnificent wonders of the tropical forests.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9780195133103Publication Date: 2000-03-09
The Party's Over by
The world is about to run out of cheap oil and change dramatically. Within the next few years, global production will peak. Thereafter, even if industrial societies begin to switch to alternative energy sources, they will have less net energy each year to do all the work essential to the survival of complex societies. We are entering a new era, as different from the industrial era as the latter was from medieval times. In The Party's Over, Richard Heinberg places this momentous transition in historical context, showing how industrialism arose from the harnessing of fossil fuels, how competition to control access to oil shaped the geopolitics of the twentieth century and how contention for dwindling energy resources in the twenty-first century will lead to resource wars in the Middle East, Central Asia and South America. He describes the likely impacts of oil depletion and all of the energy alternatives. Predicting chaos unless the United States--the world's foremost oil consumer--is willing to join with other countries to implement a global program of resource conservation and sharing, he also recommends a "managed collapse" that might make way for a slower-paced, low-energy, sustainable society in the future. More readable than other accounts of this issue, with fuller discussion of the context, social implications and recommendations for personal, community, national and global action, Heinberg's updated book is a riveting wake-up call for human-kind as the oil era winds down, and a critical tool for understanding and influencing current US foreign policy. Richard Heinberg, from Santa Rosa, California, has been writing about energy resources issues and the dynamics of cultural change for many years. A member of the core faculty at New College of California, he is an award-winning author of three previous books. His Museletter was nominated for the Best Alternative Newsletter award by Utne in 1993.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 0865715297Publication Date: 2005-06-01
The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved by
An instant classic for a new generation of monkey-wrenching food activists. Food in America is cheap and abundant, yet the vast majority of it is diminished in terms of flavor and nutrition, anonymous and mysterious after being shipped thousands of miles and passing through inscrutable supply chains, and controlled by multinational corporations. In our system of globalized food commodities, convenience replaces quality and a connection to the source of our food. Most of us know almost nothing about how our food is grown or produced, where it comes from, and what health value it really has. It is food as pure corporate commodity. We all deserve much better than that. In The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, author Sandor Ellix Katz (Wild Fermentation, Chelsea Green 2003) profiles grassroots activists who are taking on Big Food, creating meaningful alternatives, and challenging the way many Americans think about food. From community-supported local farmers, community gardeners, and seed saving activists, to underground distribution networks of contraband foods and food resources rescued from the waste stream, this book shows how ordinary people can resist the dominant system, revive community-based food production, and take direct responsibility for their own health and nutrition.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9781933392110Publication Date: 2006-11-15
Saving Farmland: The Fight for Real Food by Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9781771600736Publication Date: 2015
Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope by
Food is more than simple sustenance. It feeds our minds as well as our bodies. It nurtures us emotionally as well as physically. It holds memories. In fact, one of the surprising consequences of globalization and urbanization is the expanding web of emotional attachments to farmland, to food growers, and to place. And there is growing affection, too, for home gardening and its “grow your own food” ethos. Without denying the gravity of the problems of feeding the earth’s population while conserving its natural resources, Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope reminds us that there are many positive movements and developments that demonstrate the power of opposition and optimism. nbsp; This broad collection brings to the table a bag full of tools from anthropology, sociology, genetics, plant breeding, education, advocacy, and social activism. By design, multiple voices are included. They cross or straddle disciplinary, generational, national, and political borders. Contributors demonstrate the importance of cultural memory in the persistence of traditional or heirloom crops, as well as the agency exhibited by displaced and persecuted peoples in place-making and reconstructing nostalgic landscapes (including gardens from their homelands). Contributions explore local initiatives to save native and older seeds, the use of modern technologies to conserve heirloom plants, the bioconservation efforts of indigenous people, and how genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been successfully combated. Together they explore the conservation of biodiversity at different scales, from different perspectives, and with different theoretical and methodological approaches. Collectively, they demonstrate that there is reason for hope.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9780816599073Publication Date: 2013-12-01
Slow Death by Rubber Duck by
A look at the chemicals surrounding us that's "hard-hitting . . . yet also instills hope for a future in which consumers make safer, more informed choices" (The Washington Post). Pollution is no longer just about belching smokestacks and ugly sewer pipes--now, it's personal. The most dangerous pollution, it turns out, comes from commonplace items in our homes and workplaces. To prove this point, for one week Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie ingested and inhaled a host of things that surround all of us. Using their own bodies as the reference point to tell the story of pollution in our modern world, they expose the corporate giants who manufacture the toxins, the government officials who let it happen, and the effects on people and families across the globe. This book--the testimony of their experience--also exposes the extent to which we are poisoned every day of our lives, from the simple household dust that is polluting our blood to the toxins in our urine that are created by run-of-the-mill shampoos and toothpaste. Ultimately hopeful, the book empowers readers with some simple ideas for protecting themselves and their families, and changing things for the better. "Undertaking a cheeky experiment in self-contamination, professional Canadian environmentalists Smith and Lourie expose themselves to hazardous everyday substances, then measure the consequences . . . Throughout, the duo weave scientific data and recent political history into an amusing but unnerving narrative, refusing to sugarcoat any of the data while maintaining a welcome sense of humor." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9781582435671Publication Date: 2010-01-05
Stolen Harvest by
For the farmer, the seed is not merely the source of future plants and food; it is a vehicle through which culture and history can be preserved and spread to future generations. For centuries, farmers have evolved crops and produced an incredible diversity of plants that provide life-sustaining nutrition. In India alone, the ingenuity of farmers has produced over 200,000 varieties of rice, many of which now line store shelves around the world. This productive tradition, however, is under attack as globalized, corporate regimes increasingly exploit intellectual property laws to annex these sustaining seeds and remove them from the public sphere. In Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, Shiva explores the devastating effects of commercial agriculture and genetic engineering on the food we eat, the farmers who grow it, and the soil that sustains it. This prescient critique and call to action covers some of the most pressing topics of this ongoing dialogue, from the destruction of local food cultures and the privatization of plant life, to unsustainable industrial fish farming and safety concerns about corporately engineered foods. The preeminent agricultural activist and scientist of a generation, Shiva implores the farmers and consumers of the world to make a united stand against the genetically modified crops and untenable farming practices that endanger the seeds and plants that give us life.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9780813166551Publication Date: 2016-01-14
Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources by
John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold today--that much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. But as this groundbreaking book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning, and burning. Marvelously detailed and beautifully written, Tending the Wild is an unparalleled examination of Native American knowledge and uses of California's natural resources that reshapes our understanding of native cultures and shows how we might begin to use their knowledge in our own conservation efforts. M. Kat Anderson presents a wealth of information on native land management practices gleaned in part from interviews and correspondence with Native Americans who recall what their grandparents told them about how and when areas were burned, which plants were eaten and which were used for basketry, and how plants were tended. The complex picture that emerges from this and other historical source material dispels the hunter-gatherer stereotype long perpetuated in anthropological and historical literature. We come to see California's indigenous people as active agents of environmental change and stewardship. Tending the Wild persuasively argues that this traditional ecological knowledge is essential if we are to successfully meet the challenge of living sustainably.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9780520238565Publication Date: 2005-06-14
Trashing the Planet : Examining Our Global Garbage Glut by
On a global scale, humans create around 2.6 trillion pounds of waste every year. None of this trash is harmless--landfills and dumps leak toxic chemicals into soil and groundwater, while incinerators release toxic gases and particles into the air. What can we do to keep garbage from swallowing up Earth? Reducing, reusing, recycling, and upcycling are some of the answers. Learn more about the work of the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Ocean Cleanup Array, the zero waste movement, and the many other government, business, research, and youth efforts working to solve our planet's garbage crisis.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9781512448665Publication Date: 2017-08-01
Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity by
Do your ears burn whenever you eat hot chile peppers? Does your face immediately flush when you drink alcohol? Does your stomach groan if you are exposed to raw milk or green fava beans? If so, you are probably among the one-third of the world's human population that is sensitive to certain foods due to your genes' interactions with them. Formerly misunderstood as "genetic disorders," many of these sensitivities are now considered to be adaptations that our ancestors evolved in response to the dietary choices and diseases they faced over millennia in particular landscapes. They are liabilities only when we are "out of place," on globalized diets depleted of certain chemicals that triggered adaptive responses in our ancestors. In Why Some Like It Hot, an award-winning natural historian takes us on a culinary odyssey to solve the puzzles posed by "the ghosts of evolution" hidden within every culture and its traditional cuisine. As we travel with Nabhan from Java and Bali to Crete and Sardinia, to Hawaii and Mexico, we learn how various ethnic cuisines formerly protected their traditional consumers from both infectious and nutrition-related diseases. We also bear witness to the tragic consequences of the loss of traditional foods, from adult-onset diabetes running rampant among 100 million indigenous peoples to the historic rise in heart disease among individuals of northern European descent. In this, the most insightful and far-reaching book of his career, Nabhan offers us a view of genes, diets, ethnicity, and place that will forever change the way we understand human health and cultural diversity. This book marks the dawning of evolutionary gastronomy in a way that may save and enrich millions of lives.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9781559634663Publication Date: 2004-08-10
Wounded Planet by
We all depend on environmental biodiversity for clean air, safe water, adequate nutrition, effective drugs, and protection from infectious diseases. Today's healthcare experts and policymakers are keenly aware that biodiversity is one of the crucial determinants of health--not only for individuals but also for the human population of the planet. Unfortunately, rapid globalization and ongoing environmental degradation mean that biodiversity is rapidly deteriorating, threatening planetary health on a mass scale. In Wounded Planet, Henk A.M.J. ten Have argues that the ethical debate about healthcare has become too narrow and individualized. We must, he writes, adopt a new bioethical discourse--one that deals with issues of justice, equality, vulnerability, human rights, and solidarity--in order to adequately reflect the serious threat that current loss of biodiversity poses to planetary health. Exploring modern environmental challenges in depth, ten Have persuasively demonstrates that environmental concerns can no longer be separated from healthcare challenges, and thus should be included in global bioethics. Going beyond an individualized perspective, he poses audacious questions: What does it mean that patients are poor or uninsured and cannot afford suggested medicines? How can we deal with the air and water pollution that are producing a patient's illness? How do we respond to patients complaining about the safety and quality of drinking water in their neighborhood? Touching on infectious and noncommunicable diseases, as well as food, medicine, and water, Wounded Planet transcends the limited vision of mainstream bioethics to compassionately reveal how healthcare and medicine must take a broad perspective that includes the social and environmental conditions in which individuals live.
Call Number: EBOOK - Click on title!ISBN: 9781421427454Publication Date: 2019-05-14
Book Review Databases / Sources
- Academic OneFile (Gale) This link opens in a new windowProvides peer-reviewed, full-text, scholarly content across all academic disciplines.
- Academic Search Premier (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowA broad, interdisciplinary database that covers a wide range of subjects. It includes a mix of scholarly articles, popular publications, and newspaper coverage. It’s an excellent starting point for the kind of research you will need to do in college courses.
- Book Review Index (Gale Literature) This link opens in a new windowBook Review Index provides quick access to more than 5 million book reviews representing a wide range of popular, academic and professional interests.
- New York Times Book Review (Jan 3, 1988 - present) (ProQuest) This link opens in a new windowFind book reviews, essays, best-seller lists and news from The New York Times Book Review.
- Science (AAAS) - (1997-Current Issue) This link opens in a new windowArticles from the weekly magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
- Science Advances (AAAS) This link opens in a new windowScience Advances is the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) open access multidisciplinary journal, publishing impactful research papers and reviews in any area of science, in both disciplinary-specific and broad, interdisciplinary areas.
- ScienceDirect This link opens in a new windowScienceDirect is the world's leading source for scientific, technical, and medical research. Explore journals, books and articles. NOTE: The Library does not subscribe to all ScienceDirect journals or books. Choose articles with a Download PDF icon.
- Scientific American (1993-current) This link opens in a new windowScientific American is the world's premier magazine of scientific discovery and technological innovation for the general public. (1992-current)
- Scientific American Mind This link opens in a new windowScientific American Mind is a bimonthly American popular science magazine concentrating on psychology, neuroscience, and related fields.