“This is a book about nature and culture,” Eric T. Freyfogle writes, “about our place and plight on earth, and the nagging challenges we face in living on it in ways that might endure.” Challenges, he says, we are clearly failing to meet. Harking back to a key phrase from the essays of eminent American conservationist Aldo Leopold, Our Oldest Task spins together lessons from history and philosophy, the life sciences and politics, economics and cultural studies in a personal, erudi...

In this timely work, Eric Freyfogle probes the long-simmering struggles in the American West to address water-related problem. The big challenge is to resolve water shortages and meet high-valued water needs while also improving river ecosystems. These water conflicts, he suggests, have less to do with our contentious political differences than they do with longstanding core elements of American culture—inherited, shared ways of understanding our place in nature that no longer make good se...

Wildlife is an important and cherished element of our natural heritage in the United States. But state and federal laws governing the ways we interact with wildlife can be complex to interpret and apply. Ten years ago, Wildlife Law: A Primer was the first book to lucidly explain wildlife law for readers with little or no legal training who needed to understand its intricacies. Today, navigating this legal terrain is trickier than ever as habitat for wildlife shrinks, technology gi...

Critics of environmental laws complain that such rules often burden people unequally, restrict individual liberty, and undercut private property rights. In formulating responses to these criticisms, the conservation effort has stumbled badly, says Eric T. Freyfogle in this thought-provoking book. Conservationists and environmentalists haven’t done their intellectual homework, he contends, and they have failed to offer an understandable, compelling vision of healthy lands and healthy huma...

The engaging writings gathered in this new book explore an important but little-publicized movement in American culture -- the marked resurgence of agrarian practices and values in rural areas, suburbs, and even cities. It is a movement that in widely varied ways is attempting to strengthen society's roots in the land while bringing greater health to families, neighborhoods, and communities. The New Agrarianism vividly displays the movement's breadth and vigor, with selections by ...

Good stewardship of nature and the earth--those foundations upon which life depends--is our most pressing challenge, requiring a monumental and relentlessly single-minded unity of purpose. Yet in America, the cause of conservation suffers while the political Left and Right conduct an endless tug of war. The result is stalemate and inaction. James Krueger shows how this state of affairs stems from a widespread--and unnecessary--confusion in thinking about conservation. He explores the movem...

Aldo Leopold's classic work A Sand County Almanac is widely regarded as one of the most influential conservation books of all time. In it, Leopold sets forth an eloquent plea for the development of a "land ethic" -- a belief that humans have a duty to interact with the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise "the land" in ways that ensure their well-being and survival.For the Health of the Land, a new collection of rare and previously unpubli...

American democracy is informed by the 18th century’s most cutting edge thinking on society, economics, and government. We’ve learned some things in the intervening 230 years about self interest, social behaviors, and how the world works. Now, authors Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer argue that some fundamental assumptions about citizenship, society, economics, and government need updating. For many years the dominant metaphor for understanding markets and government has been the machine. Liu and ...

In this compelling volume in the What Everyone Needs to Know® series, Paul Waldau expertly navigates the many heated debates surrounding the complex and controversial animal rights movement. Organized around a series of probing questions, this timely resource offers the most complete, even-handed survey of the animal rights movement available. The book covers the full spectrum of issues, beginning with a clear, highly instructive definition of animal rights. Waldau looks at the di...

Moral Ground brings together the testimony of over eighty visionaries-theologians and religious leaders, scientists, elected officials, business leaders, naturalists, activists, and writers-to present a diverse and compelling call to honor our individual and collective moral responsibility to our planet. In the face of environmental degradation and global climate change, scientific knowledge alone does not tell us what we ought to do. The missing premise of the ar...

Though the scientific community largely agrees that climate change is underway, debates about this issue remain fiercely polarized. These conversations have become a rhetorical contest, one where opposing sides try to achieve victory through playing on fear, distrust, and intolerance. At its heart, this split no longer concerns carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, or climate modeling; rather, it is the product of contrasting, deeply entrenched worldviews. This brief examines what causes peopl...

How to survive and thrive in the post-industrial ageIn response to the coming impact of peak oil, John Michael Greer helps us envision the transition from an industrial society to a sustainable ecotechnic world-not returning to the past, but creating a society that supports relatively advanced technology on a sustainable resource base.Fusing human ecology and history, this book challenges assumptions held by mainstream and alternative thinkers about the evo...