The Biology of Mutualism: Ecology and Evolution

Book Description

The view of nature as `red in tooth and claw', as a jungle in which competition and predation are the predominant themes, has long been important in both the scientific and popular literature. However, in the past decade another view has become widespread among ecologists: the idea that mutualisms--mutually beneficial interactions between species--are just as important as competition and predation. This book is one of the first to explore this theme. Ideas and theories applicable to all sorts of mutualisms are presented and, where appropriate, examined in the light of concrete data. Themes explored include: the organisms involved, both animal and plant; how specializations evolved once mutualisms formed; how mutualisms affect population dynamics and community structure; and the role of mutualisms in different environments. The book will be of special interest to ecologists and a wide range of biologists.

The Crucial Role of the Environment in the Writings of George Stewart (1895-1980): A Life of America's Chief Literary Ecologist

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The Crucial Role of the Environment in the Writings of George Stewart (1895-1980): A Life of America's Chief Literary Ecologist
Fred Wagge
Manufacturer: Edwin Mellen Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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Environmental Science | Earth Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

This Compost: Ecological Imperatives in American Poetry

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This Compost: Ecological Imperatives in American Poetry
Jed Rasula
Manufacturer: University of Georgia Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Criticism | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China

ASIN: 0820323667

Book Description

Poetry, for Jed Rasula, bears traces of our entanglement with our surroundings, and these traces define a collective voice in modern poetry independent of the more specific influences and backgrounds of the poets themselves. In This Compost Rasula surveys both the convictions asserted by American poets and the poetics they develop in their craft, all with an eye toward an emerging ecological worldview. Rasula begins by examining poets associated with Black Mountain College in the 1950s--Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan--and their successors. But This Compost extends to include earlier poets like Robinson Jeffers, Ezra Pound, Louis Zukofsky, Kenneth Rexroth, and Muriel Rukeyser, as well as Clayton Eshleman, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, and other contemporary poets. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson also make appearances. Rasula draws this diverse group of poets together, uncovering how the past is a "compost" fertilizing the present. He looks at the heritage of ancient lore and the legacy of modern history and colonial violence as factors contributing to ecological imperatives in modern poetry. This Compost restores the dialogue between poetic language and the geophysical, biological realm of nature that so much postmodern discourse has sought to silence. It is a fully developed, carefully argued book that deals with an underrepresented element in modern American culture, where the natural world and those who write about it have been greatly neglected in contemporary literary history and theory.

The Future of the Environment: Ecological Economics and Technological Change

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The Future of the Environment: Ecological Economics and Technological Change
Faye Duchin , and Glenn-Marie Lange
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Policy & Current Events | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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Development & Growth | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Economic Policy & Development | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Sustainable Development | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Natural Resources | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0195085744

Book Description

One of the most important and complex problems facing both developing and industrialized nations is how to sustain economic growth without harming the environment. Faye Duchin and Glenn-Marie Lange address this issue in a practical and realistic way: through a detailed evaluation of the well-known approach to sustainable development outlined in the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future. Taking issue with the Brundtland Report's optimistic and widely accepted assumptions, the authors show that the positive effects of recycling, increased fuel-efficiency, and other technological adjustments will not go far enough to provide for truly sustainable development in the long term. Through a new, broad-based empirical analysis, they argue that unless there are significant changes in lifestyles and the use of technologies, continued environmental degradation cannot be avoided. They warn that the trend of making only slight adjustments in the use of technologies, while feasible from an economic point of view for industrialized nations, will undoubtedly lead to further environmental damage. In addition to offering a clear and unflinching look at what development is really doing to the global environment, the unique conceptual framework developed for this analysis provides an invaluable basis for analysis for the new, multidisciplinary field of ecological economics. Duchin and Lange describe how this new methodology will enable economists and policy-makers to evaluate our options for the future, and choose those that most effectively reduce environmental degradation and achieve sustainable development. The book will appeal to economists, environmental scientists and activists, policy analysts, and ecologists, as well as the general reader with an interest in the sustainable development of our environment.

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Ecological Literary Criticism
DORIS RADIN
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Reference | Books & Reading | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America

ASIN: 0231100299

Book Description

-- Choice

Kroeber argues that literary criticism needs to reestablish connections to a wide range of social activities, especially the thinking of contemporary scientists.

This new kind of criticism, "ecological literary criticism," sets out to correct the abstractions of current theorizing about literature, and to make humanistic studies more socially responsible. Though applicable to any writer of any period, Kroeber points out that the proto-ecological tendencies of the English Romantic poets make them especially useful as a starting point for this approach. Since the Romantics believed that people were, and should be, at home in the natural world.

Ecological Literary Criticism asks that we examine poetry from a perspective that assumes that the imaginative acts of cultural beings offer valuable insights into how and why cultural and natural phenomena have interrelated in the past and how they could more advantageously interrelate in the future. Kroeber argues that this approach to criticism will help us to develop mutually enriching links between humanistic and scientific modes of understanding humankind and the earth we inhabit.

Callejon Sin Salida?/ Alley With no Exit?: La Crisis Ecologica En La Poesia Hispanoamericana/ The ecological Crisis In The Hispanic American Poetry

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Callejon Sin Salida?/ Alley With no Exit?: La Crisis Ecologica En La Poesia Hispanoamericana/ The ecological Crisis In The Hispanic American Poetry
Niall Binns
Manufacturer: Prensas Universitarias Universidad de Zaragoz
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Spanish | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Criticism | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Spanish | Foreign Language Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Cather Studies, Volume 5: Willa Cather's Ecological Imagination (Cather Studies)

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Cather Studies, Volume 5: Willa Cather's Ecological Imagination (Cather Studies)
Cather Studies
Manufacturer: University of Nebraska Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Essays | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Cather Studies, Volume 6: History, Memory, and War (Cather Studies)

ASIN: 0803264356

Book Description

The wide-ranging essays collected in this volume of Cather Studies examine Willa Cather’s unique artistic relationship to the environment. Under the theoretical rubric of ecocriticism, these essays focus on Cather’s close observations of the natural world and how the environment proves, for most of these contributors, to be more than simply a setting for her characters. While it is certain that Cather’s novels and short stories are deeply grounded in place, literary critics are only now considering how place functions within her narratives and addressing environmental issues through her writing.

These essays reintroduce us to a Cather who is profoundly identified with the places that shaped her and that she wrote about: Glen A. Love offers an interdisciplinary reading of The Professor’s House that is scientifically oriented; Joseph Urgo argues that My Ántonia models a preservationist aesthetic in which landscape and memory are inextricably entangled; Thomas J. Lyon posits that Cather had a living sense of the biotic community and used nature as the standard of excellence for human endeavors; and Jan Goggans considers the ways that My Ántonia shifts from nativism toward a “flexible notion of place-based community.”

The Comedy of the Fantastic: Ecological Perspectives on the Fantasy Novel (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy)

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Interesting, but not wholly successful

The Comedy of the Fantastic: Ecological Perspectives on the Fantasy Novel (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy)
Don D. Elgin
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0313232830

Customer Reviews:

Interesting, but not wholly successful.......2001-09-22

Don Elgin's goal is to write about what he calls the "ecological perspective" found in modern fantasy novels. The opening chapter is devoted to explaining what he means by "ecological perspective". As Elgin uses it, "ecological perspective" refers to a broad philosophical viewpoint wherein humanity is conceived of as *part* of an organic natural world that has its complex needs and requirements of which our own are but a part. This viewpoint is antithetical, he claims, to the dominant western viewpoint that nature is an inert and mechanical 'thing' that we can, and should, master, subdue, and rework in our own image. (It should be noted that Elgin traces this western viewpoint back not merely to the Enlightenment or the Scientific Revolution, but back to the Judeo-Christian myth of the Garden of Eden, where God says to man, "Go forth and subdue the earth".) Elgin also identifies the use of this 'ecological perspective' in novels as taking two forms: 1) the tragic form, where disaster ensues from the characters' separation fromand hostility towards nature, and 2) the comic, where characters who have become alienated or separated from nature are reunited or reconciled to it.

The remaining chapters are devoted to exploring how this ecological perspective can be found in the fantasy novels of five different authors: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Frank Herbert, and Joy Chant. This is a rather odd combination of figures to write about. For obvious reasons, Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams (who were friends, colleagues, and members of the same literary 'club', the Inklings) are usually grouped together, but the inclusion of Frank Herbert and Joy Chant (who?!?) who wrote a few decades later and who had little in common seems a bit odd. This combination seems all the more odd given the fact that the overwhelmingly allegorical nature Lewis's work really seems a bit problematic here (and Elgin freely admits this), while Frank Herbert's works are more conventionally considered as science fiction (although the books certainly fit in well with the 'ecological perspective'). The inclusion of Joy Chant, a rather minor and obscure author especially in comparison with the other four, also seems puzzling, although Elgin is able to make good use of her fiction to make his point.

All in all, Elgin's main argument that the fantasy novel is an 'ecological comedy', or that, at the very least, it can be understood as such, is interesting, original, and offers an interesting and new perspective on the genre. It is also fairly compelling-- at least in regard to Tolkien and Herbert -- although it is a bit more strained with Lewis and Williams. Elgin's secondary goal, of showing that the fantasy novel seems to be predicated upon a kind of neo-Romantic literary theory (e.g. Coleridge as reinterpreted by Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams) and the Romantic novel also seems quite sound.... although I feel that he takes this neo-Romantic viewpoint a little too much at face value, considering it as 'the truth' rather than subjecting it to critical or historical analysis. This is particularly evident when he starts identifying some books as successful and others as unsuccessful and uses their adherence to a Tolkienien view of authorship as the subcreation of a coherent secondary world as the measure of their success. (The moments where Elgin starts going into this litmus-test evaluative mode are the weakest in the book).

Book Description

The Earth’s land and its inhabitants are in jeopardy. Ecosystems are threatened in every corner of the world. Neocolonial forces define human relations increasingly in fundamentalist terms. Land settlement patterns formulated during the colonial era have left more and more people on today’s planet without property, without the resources needed to sustain a livable existence, and with only a combative understanding of identity. This book argues that humanity’s relationship to the land has undergone a fundamental change, and reveals how the historical phenomenon known as the “enclosure movement” has come to have a profound effect on how we relate to the earth, and on how we conceive of ourselves as human beings. Analyzing narratives by Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, Salman Rushdie, and others, Marzec reveals the extent to which the legacy of enclosures continues to dictate the geopolitical reality of the present.

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Environmental Futures

Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

History & Theory | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Human Geography | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Environmental Science | Earth Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

History of Technology | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books

Risks | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books

Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

The thirteen essays that comprise this book on environmental issues, by contributors ranging from philosophers to human geographers, pay particular attention to future developments, new technologies, paths in social and political theory and methodologies. The book moves from social constructions of "the environment" to questions of green political theory and practice and concludes with issues of environmental risk and future technologies.

Book Description

Covering all kinds of sports and featuring suggestions for people of all skill levels, Frommer's Great Outdoor Guides describe the best adventures and activities in some of America's most spectacular regions. You get:

Evocative descriptions of hundreds of outings -- with estimated tiems, difficulty ratings, and detailed directions
The best outfitters, from major adventure-tour operators to local backcountry guides
Tips on where to find gear, services, and topo maps
Advice on where to pitch a tent, from car-accessible campsites to backcountry spots -- plus wilderness lodges, B&Bs, and inns
Detailed regional maps that direct you to the trailheads

Frommer's Great Outdoor Guide to Arizona & New Mexico describes hundreds of outings for all ages. From skiing, to bird watching, here are the best outdoor adventures in Arizona and New Mexico.

Book Description

"Do you think that room service will deliver chocolate?" asked Izzie, who was on her knees on the floor with her face in the minibar. "We're all out here."
"Yeah," said T. J. "Who needs boys when you can have chocolate?"
"Ah, but they come in handy when we haven't any," said Nesta. "Let's call the boys in their rooms. Maybe they haven't eaten their supplies."

A school trip to Florence seems like the perfect escape for Lucy. She wants time away from Tony, who is pressuring her to take their relationship further. In Italy she meets an American boy and thinks he might be the ideal way to get over Tony.

He seems to be the perfect gentleman, and Italy introduces Lucy to a world of culture and sophistication. Will she be able to move on from Tony? Or is it a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire?

Customer Reviews:

Mates, Dates, And Great Escapes Review.......2006-02-14

A KID'S REVIEW
What would you do on your summer class trip to Europe? Would you meet a cute guy? Well in Mates, Dates, And Great Escapes by Cathy Hopkins you can find out what lucy and her friends will do. My favorite character is Nesta. Lucy exotic and beautiful friend.
This was one of the Great books in the series. I personaly thought it was the best. I love to read realistic fiction like this. It is romantic, funny, and had great ideas for things to do in a fashion crisues. As you can probably see this book is recommended to teen age girls that love fashion and cute guys.
Cathy Hopkins, the writer of this book lives in England with her 2 cats and her husband. She gets all of her ideas from teen age girls that live in her neighborhood. She even got an idea from me. How cool is that?
If you like this book by Cathy Hokins than you would really like the book Bra's and Broomsticks by Sarah Mlynowski.
Be sure to check out the rest of the her series.

Mates, Dates, And Great Escapes Review.......2006-02-14

Hot Girl's Review.......2005-07-15

I love all of these books!!!!!! Anyway, its about a school trip to Italy and Lucy meets this hot American dude and so they like hang out and crap.

The Summer (or School Trip) of Love.......2005-06-25

It is Lucy's turn again and she has decided to lose her virginity to Tony. Her friends try to talk her out of it. Then she learns of a classmate who has gotten pregnant while being careful. Lucy decides to wait but Tony puts on the pressure and the result is a break-up. To make matters worse, the rest of the mates are of to Florence on a school trip but Lucy's family's finances won't let her go.

Well, things happen and Lucy manages to go on the school trip after all. There, while trying to avoid thinking about Tony, she winds up meeting and falling for a rich American boy. Romance blossoms and Lucy manages to overcome some insecurities. But all good things must come to an end and the vacation is over and its time for a new book.

This was one of the better entries in this series. I have always liked Lucy. This book manages to deal with some strong issues in a good way and still maintain a lightness one associates with these books. Well done.

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Mates, Dates and Great Escapes
Cathy Hopkins
Manufacturer: piccadilly press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000K750GM

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