Folsom Library Collection Highlights

More than any other locale, the Pacific Ocean has been the meeting place between humans and whales. From Indigenous Pacific peoples who built lives and cosmologies around whales, to Euro-American whalers who descended upon the Pacific during the nineteenth century, and to the new forms of human-cetacean partnerships that have emerged from the late twentieth century, the relationship between these two species has been central to the ocean's history. Across Species and Cultures: Whales, Humans, and Pacific Worlds offers for the first time a critical, wide-ranging geographical and temporal look at the varieties of whale histories in the Pacific. The essay contributors, hailing from around the Pacific, present a wealth of fascinating stories while breaking new methodological ground in environmental history, women's history, animal studies, and Indigenous ontologies.

Reaching from interior Alaska across Canada to Labrador and Newfoundland, North America's boreal forest is the largest wilderness area left on the planet. It is critical habitat for billions of birds; more than 300 species regularly breed there. After the breeding season, many boreal birds migrate to seasonal habitats across the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. This volume brings together new research on boreal bird biology and conservation. It highlights the importance of the region to the global avifauna and to the connectivity between the boreal forest and ecoregions throughout the Americas. The contributions showcase a unique set of perspectives on the migration, wintering ecology, and conservation of bird communities that are tied to the boreal forest in ways that may not have been previously considered.

An Idaho farmer cultivates Russet Burbank potatoes so that a customer at a McDonald's half a world away can enjoy a long, golden french fry. A gardener plants tulip bulbs in the fall and, come spring, has a riotous patch of color to admire. Two straightforward examples of how humans act on nature to get what we want. Or are they? What if those potatoes and tulips have evolved to gratify certain human desires so that humans will help them multiply? What if, in other words, these plants are using us just as we use them? Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and in the process spreads the flowers' genes far and wide. What Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates in 'The Botany of Desire' is that people and domesticated plant species have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship, a relationship that is just as common and essential to the way nature works. In this utterly original narrative that blends history, memoir, and the best science writing, Pollan tells the story of four domesticated species -- the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato -- from the point of view of the plants.

Much criticised as weed-infested, badly cultivated and disfigured by the dung heap before the cottage door, eighteenth-century cottage gardens produced only the most basic food crops. But the paradox is that Scottish professional gardeners at this time were highly prized and sought after all over the world. And by the eve of the First World War Scottish cottage gardeners were raising flowers, fruit and a wide range of vegetables, and celebrating their successes at innumerable flower shows. This book delves into the lives of farm servants, labourers, weavers, miners and other workers living in the countryside, to discover not only what vegetables, fruit and flowers they grew, and how they did it, but also how poverty, insecurity and long and arduous working days shaped their gardens.

Describes and illustrates the birds of eastern and central North America, including accidentals, exotics, and escapes; and includes nearly four hundred range maps.

Book offers a condensed yet comprehensive survey of the science of weather: temperature, pressure, humidity, wind, pressure systems, fronts, storms, weather forecasts, cloud formation, weather tools, etc., with tables, a glossary, and illustrations to translate detailed technical information into terms that everyone can follow.

Impressionism is the most famous artistic movement. But what appears today as a charming and exquisite landscape painting, was actually one of the first avant-garde movements whose members had decided to fight the values of traditional art. The impressionist outdoor paintings shocked the public by the technique used, but also by their apparent banality. As Monet, Sisley, Pissarro and many others sought to capture the ephemeral nature of light, the next generation would reject naturalism. Indeed, post-impressionists such as Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cézanne and Seurat favored the subjective rather than the objective and the eternal rather than the concrete. In doing so, they laid the formal foundations of 20th-century modern art.

Over the past several decades, the field of invasion biology has rapidly expanded as global trade and the spread of human populations have increasingly carried animal and plant species across natural barriers that have kept them ecologically separated for millions of years. Because some of these nonnative species thrive in their new homes and harm environments, economies, and human health, the prevention and management of invasive species has become a major policy goal from local to international levels. Yet even though ecological research has led to public conversation and policy recommendations, those recommendations have frequently been ignored, and the efforts to counter invasive species have been largely unsuccessful. Recognizing the need to engage experts across the life, social, and legal sciences as well as the humanities, the editors of this volume have drawn together a wide variety of ecologists, historians, economists, legal scholars, policy makers, and communications scholars, to facilitate a dialogue among these disciplines and understand fully the invasive species phenomenon.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age ... Now Andrea Wulf brings the man and his achievements back into focus: his daring expeditions and investigation of wild environments around the world and his discoveries of similarities between climate and vegetation zones on different continents. She also discusses his prediction of human-induced climate change, his remarkable ability to fashion poetic narrative out of scientific observation, and his relationships with iconic figures such as Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson.

Environmentalists have always worked to protect the wildness of nature but now must find a new direction. We have so tamed, colonized, and contaminated the natural world that safeguarding it from humans is no longer an option. Humanity's imprint is now every where and all efforts to "preserve" nature require extensive human intervention. At the same time, we are repeatedly told that there is no such thing as nature itself - only our own conceptions of it. One person's endangered species is another's dinner or source of income. In Living Through the End of Nature, Paul Wapner probes the meaning of environmentalism in a postnature age." "Wapner argues that the end of nature represents not environmentalism's death knell but an opportunity to build a more effective political movement. He outlines the polarized positions of environmentalists, who strive to live in harmony with nature, and their opponents, who seek mastery over nature. Wapner argues that, without nature, neither of these two outlooks - the "dream of naturalism" or the "dream of mastery"--Can be sustained today.

English-language literature on the history of science is still stubbornly Euro-centric, and international scholarly discourse has engaged insufficiently with Chinese resources that document sophisticated premodern knowledge of the natural world. The case of botany is especially useful for investigating "traditional" systems of organization, classification, observation, and description and their transition to "modern" ones. China's vast and ancient body of documented knowledge about plants is best known but not limited to a rich corpus of Materia Medica. Written sources include horticultural manuals and monographs, comprehensive encyclopedias, geographies, and specialized anthologies of verse and prose. Their authors were keen observers of nature. Until the late nineteenth century, however, their intent was to inquire into and to verify what had been written about plants in the referential classical texts rather than to deploy a set of diagnostic tools using a common terminology and methodology to identify and explain new and unknown species or properties. Ordering the Myriad Things is the story of how traditional knowledge of plants in China gave way to scientific botany over a period of about a hundred years between 1850 and 1950.

Public Gardens and Livable Cities changes the paradigm for how we conceive of the role of urban public gardens. Donald A. Rakow, Meghan Z. Gough, and Sharon A. Lee advocate for public gardens as community outreach agents that can, and should, partner with local organizations to support positive local agendas. Safe neighborhoods, quality science education, access to fresh and healthy foods, substantial training opportunities, and environmental health are the key initiative areas the authors explore as they highlight model successes and instructive failures that can guide future practices. Public Gardens and Livable Cities uses a prescriptive approach to synthesize a range of public, private, and nonprofit initiatives from municipalities throughout the country. In doing so, the authors examine the initiatives from a practical perspective to identify how they were implemented, their sustainability, the obstacles they encountered, the impact of the initiatives on their populations, and how they dealt with the communities' underlying social problems.

In Rachel Carson and her sisters, Robert K. Musil redefines the achievements and legacy of environmental pioneer and scientist Rachel Carson, linking her work to a wide network of American women activists and writers and introducing her to a new, contemporary audience. Rachel Carson was the first American to combine two longstanding, but separate strands of American environmentalism -- the love of nature and a concern for human health. Widely known for her 1962 best-seller, Silent spring, Carson is today often perceived as a solitary "great woman," whose work single-handedly launched a modern environmental movement. But as Musil demonstrates, Carson's life's work drew upon and was supported by already existing movements, many led by women, in conservation and public health.

Part armchair travelogue, part guide book, this projected three-volume series--divided into the western, central, and eastern United States--will introduce readers to all 155 national forests across the country. This Land is the only comprehensive field guide that describes the natural features, wildernesses, scenic drives, campgrounds, and hiking trails of our national forests, many of which--while little known and sparsely visited--boast features as spectacular as those found in our national parks and monuments. Each entry includes logistical information about size and location, facilities, attractions, and associated wilderness areas.

The history of the growth and professionalization of American meteorology and its transformation into a physics- and mathematics-based scientific discipline.