A thoughtful exploration of how the Sahara Desert can be returned to its former glory as a green paradise while actively combating climate change.A green Sahara is something the world has not seen since 10,000 BC when the Sahara was a wet, lush region. By 3,000 BC though the climate changed, the rains stopped, and the ancient green Sahara dried into today's desert. It was the victim of a phenomenon that reminds us today of global climate warming. But what if we cou...

For our entire history, humans have always searched for new ways to share information. This innate compulsion led to the origin of writing on the rock walls of caves and coffin lids or carving on tablets. But it was with the advent of papyrus paper when the ability to record and transmit information exploded, allowing for an exchanging of ideas from the banks of the Nile throughout the Mediterranean—and the civilized world—for the first time in human history.In The Pharaoh’s Treasure, John...

From ancient Pharaohs to 21st Century water wars, papyrus is a unique plant that is now the fastest growing plant species on earth. It produces its own “soil”—a peaty, matrix that floats on water—and inspired the fluted columns of the ancient Greeks. In ancient Egypt, the papyrus bounty from the Nile delta provided not just paper for record keeping—instrumental to the development of civilization—but food, fuel and boats. Disastrous weather in the 6th Century caused famines and plagues that...

"I read this wide-ranging and thoughtful book while sitting on the banks of the Ganges near Varanasi—it's a river already badly polluted, and now threatened by the melting of the loss of the glaciers at its source to global warming. Four hundred million people depend on it, and there's no backup plan. As Steven Solomon makes clear, the same is true the world over; this volume will give you the background to understand the forces that will drive much of 21st century history." —Bill McKibben...

A fantastic voyage through 15,000 years of history that laid the foundations for civilisation as we know it by award-winning science writer Steven Mithen.Twenty thousand years ago Earth was in the midst of an ice age. Then global warming arrived, leading to massive floods, the spread of forests and the retreat of the deserts. By 5,000 BC a radically different human world had appeared. In place of hunters and gatherers there were farmers; in place of transient camps...

An objective guide to this fascinating science of history and cultureArchaeology continually makes headlines--from recent discoveries like the frozen Copper-Age man in the Italian Alps to the newest dating of the first people in America at over 14,0000 years ago. Archaeology For Dummies offers a fascinating look at this intriguing field, taking readers on-site and revealing little-known details about some of the world's greatest archaeological discoveries....

The past fifteen thousand years-the entire span of human civilization-have witnessed dramatic sea level changes, which began with rapid global warming at the end of the Ice Age, when coastlines were more than seven hundred feet below modern levels. Over the next ten millennia, the oceans climbed in fits and starts. These rapid changes had little effect on those humans who experienced them, partly because there were so few people on earth, and also because those people were able to adjust r...

Today technology has created a world of dazzling progress, growing disparities of wealth and poverty, and looming threats to the environment. Technology: A World History offers an illuminating backdrop to our present moment--a brilliant history of invention around the globe. Historian Daniel R. Headrick ranges from the Stone Age and the beginnings of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution and the electronic revolution of the recent past. In tracing the growing power of humans ov...

Shortlisted, Donner Prize and Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction AwardDroughts, floods, and contamination of fresh water in the American Southwest, in the Great Lakes region, in Australia, in northern China, in the Middle East, and in India have brought the critical issue of water supply to the forefront of public consciousness. In dozens of countries, ordinary citizens have cause to worry about what (or how much) will come out of their taps — if they even have taps — a...

"[A] tour de force examination of the history of ivory . . . and the demise of the elephant and human decency in the process of this unholy quest." — The Huffington PostPraised for the nuance and sensitivity with which it approaches one of the most fraught conservation issues we face today, John Frederick Walker's Ivory's Ghosts tells the astonishing story of the power of ivory through the ages, and its impact on elephants. Long before gold and ge...

You don't have to live in the Great Bear Rainforest to benefit from its existence, but after you read Nowhere Else on Earth you might want to visit this magnificent part of the planet. Environmental activist Caitlyn Vernon guides young readers through a forest of information, sharing her personal stories, her knowledge and her concern for this beautiful place. Full of breathtaking photographs and suggestions for ways to preserve this unique ecosystem, Nowhere Else on Earth

Journeys in the Hinterlands of AfghanistanGolden Years of Nature ConversationThis book is a narrative of our trips into the mountains and plains of the country in search of its elusive wildlife. It is a testament of our encounters with the people of the land, their culture, folklore and how they cope with the rigors of life.It describes our experiences in Afghanistan during the 1970s as we were engaged in the starting of a natural resources conservation program and t...