Average customer rating:
- Will we ever see an end to Septic Tank Suburbia?
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The Bulldozer In The Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Studies in Environment and History)
Adam Rome
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States
ASIN: 0521804906 |
Amazon.com
Modern American environmentalism owes much to such predecessors as Henry Thoreau, John Muir, and Theodore Roosevelt. But it owes much more, suggests historian Adam Rome, to the sprawling suburbs of the postwar era, when great sections of the country fell under the bulldozer to make way for the vaunted American Dream.
Homebuilders of the immediate postwar era did not, as a rule, take into account the environmental costs of their work--nor did they have to. "To take advantage of the cheap, unsewered land at the fringes of cities," writes Rome,
they could install septic tanks on tiny lots, in unsuitable soils, or near streams and wells. To reduce land-acquisition costs, builders also could level hills, fill wetlands, and build in floodplains. To maximize the number of lots in a tract, they could design subdivisions with no open space.
Such actions improved a builder's chances of making a profit, to be sure, but in the coming years they yielded significant opposition--and not just from the occasional birdwatcher or hiker. Activist citizen groups and government agencies began demanding responsible building and zoning practices. In the end, non-urban America's onetime habit of letting landowners do what they would on their land gave way to "an explosion of codes, regulations, and guidelines," the product of a growing awareness of environmental problems and the need to solve them--and an extraordinarily far-reaching shift in public policy.
Rome's well-written book makes a welcome addition to the history of environmental thought, one to shelve alongside the best of Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
The Bulldozer in the Countryside is the first scholarly history of efforts to reduce the environmental costs of suburban development in the United States. The book offers a new account of two of the most important historical events in the period since World War II--the mass migration to the suburbs and the rise of the environmental movement. This work offers a valuable historical perspective for scholars, professionals, and citizens interested in the issue of suburban sprawl.
Customer Reviews:
Will we ever see an end to Septic Tank Suburbia?.......2006-09-20
Not many Environmenal Health Specialists like myself will probably ever read this book (or even the chapter 'Septic Tank Suburbia'), but they should. Sanitarians, the old term for health inspectors, have approved a crap-load of septic systems serving sprawl development in this nation, and in reading it, the old timers would quickly recognize their place in the undoing of the American environment. Regardless of their 'professional' title.
I was so impressed with the author's history of septic tank sprawl that I emailed him with thanks. I'm actually surprised no one else has reviewed this title on Amazon.
For recent American environmental history, this is one of the best.
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Countryside Conservation: Land Fcology, Planning and Management
Bryn Green
Manufacturer: Taylor & Francis
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ASIN: 0419218807 |
Book Description
This third edition of the standard text Countryside Conservation charts and evaluates those changes which represent a fundamental revolution in the ways in which the countryside is planned and managed. It sets out the principles, policies and practice which underlie the ecology, planning and management of the new countryside, discussing ways in which countryside conservation objectives are evolving and how they can best be achieved.
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- A love affair with rivers
- Brilliant Set of Photographs
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Rivers of America
Tim Palmer
Manufacturer: "Harry N. Abrams, Inc."
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America's Parks
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White Paradise: Journeys to the North Pole
ASIN: 0810954850 |
Book Description
“This book is a remarkable celebration of America. In photographs and in words, Tim Palmer has captured the magic and value of rivers as nobody has ever done, and as nobody is ever likely to do again.” —Don Elder, president, River Network
Anyone who has ever paddled down, fished in, or relaxed along one of AmericaÂ's rivers understands their power to nourish, inspire, and enchant—but until now, no book has truly captured the riversÂ' majesty. Award-winning author, conservationist, and photographer Tim Palmer has spent his life exploring and learning about these sometimes peaceful, sometimes turbulent waterways, and in the pages of Rivers of America he shares his amazing images. An incomparable collection of nearly 200 stunning photographs from all across the United States, Rivers of America celebrates the essence of flowing water like no other book before it. Accompanying the dazzling images are PalmerÂ's eloquent essays, in which he describes the magic of rivers and their vital ecological role in our lives.
Customer Reviews:
A love affair with rivers.......2007-01-03
A prolific author, gifted outdoor photographer and a nationally-renowned river conservationist, this is Tim Palmer's ode to America's bountiful and beautiful rivers. No one writes about rivers -- or captures their magical essence in photos -- like Tim, because no one knows and cares as much about them as he clearly does. If you love rivers, then you will love this book! Learn more about Tim's love affair with rivers by visiting: www.americanrivers.org/palmerprofile.
Brilliant Set of Photographs.......2006-09-25
A photographer with the eye of an artist, Tim Palmer has spent a lifetime photographing rivers. He has gone to extremes to get just the right view, at the right time of day, the right time of the year. He has combines these photographs with prose that is almost poetic to add in our understanding of what he sees, what he feels.
I don't know just how many states he covers in these photographs, but perhaps the most dramatic pictures are those taken in Alaska. From the bears fishing for salmon, to the young wolf who has found a drowned sheep, the broad expanse of the mountains the pictures show nature at its most attractive.
Surprisingly though his pictures show the beauty that remains in the rivers of the lower 48. In spite of what has happened in terms of polution, concrete channalizing by the Corp of Engineers, there is beauty to be found. And Mr. Palmer has the eye to find that beauty.
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- A lyrical book about a fragile habitat
- Sandhills Classic
- A lovesong to an alluring, little-known place
- When a book makes you dream about a place you've never been.
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The Last Prairie: A Sandhills Journal
Stephen R. Jones
Manufacturer: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
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ASIN: 007135347X |
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Running 100 miles from north to south and 200 miles from east to west, the Sandhills make up about a quarter of the state of Nebraska and constitute the largest grass-stabilized dune field in the Western Hemisphere. Sparsely settled, the region has inspired a fine literature, numbering books by Jim Harrison, Mari Sandoz, and Merrill Gilfillan, among other writers.
Stephen Jones's The Last Prairie is a welcome, elegant addition to that library. An inspired blend of science, natural history, ethnography, and memoir, it recounts Jones's travels along the Niobrara River and deep into the heart of dune country--once the province of buffalo, cranes, and scattered bands of Pawnee and Cheyenne Native Americans, now the site of huge ranches and, as Jones notes, an army of white-tailed deer and other former denizens of wetland forests that edged out onto the plains with the disappearance of large predators. "When it comes to ecosystem disturbances," Jones notes, "the white-tailed deer are just the tip of the iceberg," and indeed the Sandhills are threatened at every turn by industrial agriculture and other manifestations of putative progress. Jones considers some of the programs that have been advanced to save the area, including the apparently ill-advised "Buffalo Commons" preserve that residents fear would make the region an unnatural zoo; he suggests instead a more modest prairie preserve that would attract tourists and provide new revenue for the region's residents, now dependent on ecologically destructive ranching.
But Jones's book is less a program for action than a literate, attractive celebration of a place unlike any other--a book that will inspire readers to go and have a look for themselves. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
It is an area that has captivated and inspired travelers, philosophers, and artists for centuries. Long celebrated as one of the most visually stunning regions of the American landscape, it is also one of the most historically significant. And now, this vast, 25,000-square-mile expanse known as the Nebraska Sandhills is brought to life with passion, perspective, and ecological timeliness in an unforgettable collection by Stephen Jones.
The Last Prairie is an extraordinary triumph of the essayist's art. By turns graceful and penetrating, introspective and universal, ruminative and prescient, the 20 essays in The Last Prairie embodies the essence of Sandhills life. Jones delivers a series of riveting accounts of the Sandhills, flora and fauna, wildlife, and rich cultural history. Fascinating descriptions of bald eagles, trumpeter swans, and the annual migratory flight of a half-million sandhill cranes stand alongside equally vivid accounts of trailblazing homesteaders, range wars, and devastating prairie fires. Jones speaks eloquently to such timeless themes as humanity's search for community and the ties that bind man and nature.
Customer Reviews:
A lyrical book about a fragile habitat.......2001-06-26
Mr. Jone's admiration, appreciation and concern for this very special ecosystem shines through this lovely book. In it, he intertwines Native American myth, Plains history and well researched scientific data into a cohesive and readable overview of the Sandhills of Nebraska.
Through his eyes, we visit and experience a landscape of beauty, solitute, history and rich wildlife. It is, in turns, thought provoking, humourous, enlightening, yet never preachy. Steve is most respectful of the current private owners of these lands, and integrates their ongoing stewardship into well reasoned suggestions to insure the long-term integrity of this fecund habitat for posterity.
Sandhills Classic.......2000-07-13
The Last Prairie: A Sandhills Journal is an astonishing blend of nature, myth, and love of the land--richly textured with wry wit and something very close to wisdom. It's so deeply rooted in love and its own particular landscape that it transcends locality and becomes universal. In other words, it's a classic, akin to Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Writing, details, and a sensibility to treasure.
A lovesong to an alluring, little-known place.......2000-06-17
Stephen Jones notes in the book that the Sand Hills of Nebraska make up one of the few "dark spots" on those wall posters featuring a satellite view of the United States at night. It is, truly, a wide open space, and he does the landscape great justice with his evident love for the land, its wildlife, its people and history.
For those who think Nebraska is simply home to a football team and endless acres of corn, "The Last Prairie" should open some eyes.
Jones is a prose poet. He makes the Sand Hills live and breathe right there on the page. An excellent, deeply-felt homage to one of America's little-known (thankfully?)great natural treasures.
When a book makes you dream about a place you've never been........2000-05-31
As often happens in Washington, DC, I got inside information. The author (my eighth grade history teacher) tipped me off about his book, before it was available. I got to read a "galley" I think it is called, and felt even more like an insider. It's exciting when a friend publishes a book, and when that friend telegraphs, with the sound in his voice, that this one might be something special. Steve knows. I read the hardback copy as soon as I got it. Growing up in Colorado gave me some appreciation of this majestic place to the East, which I now plan to visit for the first time. Stephen Jones has woven history, geography several sciences into a literary work of art, that can provide great inspiration, even to the uninitiated. His images are vivid, whether he is describing the hard-scrabble personalities that live there or the spirit-ghosts of Native Americans that have long since perished. His treatments of the landforms and myriad species of animals that dwell in the Nebraska Sandhills, are characteristically perfect. He has written a couple of other nature books, including one with his photos, called the Shortgrass Prairie.What many do not know about Steve is that he was diagnosed with a back problem before he undertook his arduous weeks long trips, the several hundred miles East. He would not want me to mention this, Steve is a low key guy. But his courage is, well, another story. I hope everyone who loves nature, and our vanishing wild places will read this book and be inspired and dream and go there.
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Kids' Easy-to-Create Wildlife Habitats: For Small Spaces in City-Suburbs-Countryside (Quick Starts for Kids!)
Emily Stetson
Manufacturer: Williamson Books
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ASIN: 0824986652 |
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Reshaping the Countryside: Perceptions and Processes of Rural Change
Manufacturer: CABI
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ASIN: 0851993435 |
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During the past few decades, characteristics of the countryside traditionally regarded as immutable have begun to change substantially. This book collects a variety of impressions of these changes in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. It explores the issues of continuity and change associated with the operation of demographic, socio-economic and political processes as they reshape the countryside. An valuable survey for students and researchers in rural studies and geography, the book is also an indispensable guide for policy makers and professionals concerned with the management and planning of rural resources and the countryside.
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Saving America's Countryside: A Guide to Rural Conservation (National Trust for Historic Preservation)
Samuel N. Stokes ,
A. Elizabeth Watson , and
Shelley S. Mastran
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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ASIN: 0801855489 |
Book Description
A new edition of the book that received the Historic Preservation Book Prize and the American Society for Landscape Architects' Honor Award
Since publication of the first edition of Saving America's Countryside in 1989, the fight to save America's rural resources has met with much success. Approaches considered experimental just a decade ago--greenways and heritage areas, for example--are now widespread. Yet at the same time, such disquieting developments as continuing suburban sprawl, the weakening of federal laws, and the so-called property rights movement all suggest that work remains to be done.
Saving America's Countryside was the first and is still the only comprehensive, step-by-step guide to protecting the natural, historic, scenic, and agricultural resources of a rural community. The authors show how to organize a conservation effort, inventory available resources, pass effective new laws, set up land trusts, take advantage of federal programs, and change public attitudes.
The thoroughly revised and updated second edition reports on changes in conservation over the past eight years and adds a chapter on making economic development compatible with rural conservation. It includes new case studies, more than fifty new illustrations, and a section on heritage tourism. As in the previous edition, the detailed case studies document a variety of successful--and often surprisingly innovative--conservation efforts by residents of rural communities throughout the United States.
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- Hope for Co-existence
- An outstanding book
- Smart and moving and insightful.
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Reading the Mountains of Home
John Elder
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
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ASIN: 0674748891 |
Amazon.com
Late in life, the American novelist and conservationist Wallace Stegner left California, where he had lived for half a century, to move to Vermont. The reason, he said, was simple: there is more wilderness to be found in the pine forests of western New England than in the Far West. John Elder supports Stegner's claim, writing in Reading the Mountains of Home that the abandoned farmsteads of so many of Robert Frost's Vermont poems have now reverted to wild lands, dense with fallen logs and snags, full of bird and animal life.
A longtime resident of the state, Elder uses Frost's great but little-known poem "Directive" as a touchstone by which to guide his discussion of how modern humans can truly inhabit a landscape--in this case, a landscape that had been developed for generations and then all but forgotten. In such places, Elder writes, the issue is not one of wilderness versus civilization, that old trope, but the wildness that endures at the edges of settled places, wildness that is accessible to people all around the world. His celebration of returning greenness, of the forest's seasons, and of his own life in the woods makes for engaging reading indeed. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
Small farms once occupied the heights that John Elder calls home, but now only a few cellar holes and tumbled stone walls remain among the dense stands of maple, beech, and hemlocks on these Vermont hills. Reading the Mountains of Homeis a journey into these verdant reaches where in the last century humans tried their hand and where bear and moose now find shelter. As John Elder is our guide, so Robert Frost is Elder's companion, his great poem "Directive" seeing us through a landscape in which nature and literature, loss and recovery, are inextricably joined.
Over the course of a year, Elder takes us on his hikes through the forested uplands between South Mountain and North Mountain, reflecting on the forces of nature, from the descent of the glaciers to the rush of the New Haven River, that shaped a plateau for his village of Bristol; and on the human will that denuded and farmed and abandoned the mountains so many years ago. His forays wind through the flinty relics of nineteenth-century homesteads and Abenaki settlements, leading to meditations on both human failure and the possibility for deeper communion with the land and others.
An exploration of the body and soul of a place, an interpretive map of its natural and literary life, Reading the Mountains of Home strikes a moving balance between the pressures of civilization and the attraction of wilderness. It is a beautiful work of nature writing in which human nature finds its place, where the reader is invited to follow the last line of Frost's "Directive," to "Drink and be whole again beyond confusion."
Customer Reviews:
Hope for Co-existence.......2002-09-27
This is an unusual book. John Elder has written a book that blends the rhythms of life with the rhythms of nature.
Using Robert Frost's poem "Directive" as a springboard, Elder guides the reader through a series of year-long hikes that provide a rare glimpse into the writer soul, family and surroundings. His musings transport the reader from the glaciers that shaped his the plateau for the Village of Bristol, VT., the farmers who struggled and more often than not, failed to scratch a living from the rocky soil that surrounds his adopted home.
He carries us from broken china to Abenaki settlements, meditating on family relationships and deeper relationships with the land.
This is a beautiful example of nature writing, a work that draws a balance between the machinations of civilization and the beauties of wilderness. By inviting the reader to follow the last line of Frost's "Directive," to "Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.", Elder creates a sense of hope that Vermont's balance between nature and culture can speak to the rest of the nation.
An outstanding book.......1998-10-31
I have read many of the reviews of Reading the Mountains of Home--both before and after I studied the book itself--in various magazines and newspapers, and, while many of them summarize accurately and manage to convey fairly clearly its complex and compelling structures, the musical grace of the sentences, the unique of John Elder's vision about the interlinking of language and place and time and family, of Robert Frost's "Directive" and of the concept of wilderness in America. There is a sense also in which he has taken nature writing--a broad genre forever in evolution--and brought it to new heights through this creative interweaving.
But what I notice most is the book's quiet heroism. By this I mean simply that the author exhibits the courage to put all of his deepest convictions, his most strongly held beliefs, the raw stuff of his very life in a place for all to see. One does not see this very often in books. We need more writers like John Elder. We need people like John Elder, people who have the courage to write from the deepest parts of themselves for the greater good of all of us and the larger home we call earth. If there were six stars I would give it six stars.
Smart and moving and insightful........1998-07-25
I learned much about New England from this fine book -- and about Robert Frost.
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|
Countryside
Joe Cornish ,
David Noton , and
Paul Wakefield
Manufacturer: National Trust Bks
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Binding: Paperback
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Working the Light: A Landscape Photography Masterclass (Landscape Photography Mastercl)
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ASIN: 190540039X |
Book Description
A photographic excursion through some of the most beautiful National Trust properties in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, with 100 color photos.
Over a hundred years ago, the National Trust was founded to preserve places of historic interest or natural beauty in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Today it protects more than 600,000 acres of land. The variety is unparalleled—from the fells and lakes of Cumbria to the wilderness wetlands of Wicken Fen in East Anglia. This collection of photographs reveals not only the natural beauty, but how the human hand has shaped the landscape over the centuries.
Customer Reviews:
Very good book of photos.......2007-09-13
I had heard that this book was not highly recommended, but what the heck, it was $14.00 and free shipping from Amazon.
The cover photo, also displayed inside, is beautiful, as are all the other photos in the book. Some are not my cup of tea, but a lot of them are, and Joe Cornish has proven his mastery of light and the landscape photograph.
I found the book somewhat instructional because the images gave me ideas for my own work, and the text isn't preachy or anything. All in all, a very good buy!
Average customer rating:
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Land of the Commonwealth: A Portrait of the Conserved Landscapes of Massachusetts
John (FWD) Updike
Manufacturer: University of Massachusetts Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1558492658 |
Book Description
When The Trustees of Reservations was founded in 1891 as America's first private, statewide conservancy, belief in the restorative powers of nature was a relatively new idea in America. Gradually, the colonial impulse to subjugate the wild was transformed into a humanistic reverence for the spiritual power of nature, and land was set aside for preservation. Thanks to the efforts of The Trustees of Reservations and many others, Massachusetts now has 1.1 million acres of land permanently protected from development-more than one-fifth of the state.
The custodians and promoters of this remarkable legacy of conservation include town and city governments, state and federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, private institutions, and generous landowners, all of whom have been influenced by the work of The Trustees of Reservations.
Land of the Commonwealth is the first photographic book devoted exclusively to the conserved landscapes of a single state. It is both a visual introduction to the diverse natural and cultural sites that have been protected and a tribute to the accomplishments of all those who have worked to safeguard Massachusetts's rich landscape heritage.
Organized geographically into five regional sections, the book uses spectacular color photographs by Richard Cheek to capture the scenic, historic, and ecological dimensions of the conserved landscapes of Massachusetts. Each chapter begins with a description of the region's defining characteristics, followed by images of exemplary natural, designed, working, historical, and literary landscapes. Some are popular and beloved, others little-known and waiting to be discovered.
Customer Reviews:
Breathtaking!.......2000-12-20
Each turn of the page reveals another exceptional view. It's easy to take gorgeous landscape photos of New England in Autumn, but Richard Creek goes far beyond that. The lighting, cloud conditions, reflections, and seasonal conditions bring out the most in each photograph. I want to frame each one and hang it on my walls, or better still, visit each place and hope to see and capture a similar moment. I hope Mr. Creek follows up with a series of other states.
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