Write a book review – Alternatives Journal

Alternatives Journal has received the following books for review. If you would be interested in reviewing one of these books, please send a brief email expressing your interest and indicating your areas of expertise…

Alternatives Journal has received the following books for review. If you would be interested in reviewing one of these books, please send a brief email expressing your interest and indicating your areas of expertise to reviews@alternativesjournal.ca with a cc to editor@alternativesjournal.ca.
Alternatives’ book reviews are written for a popular audience and range from 300-800 words. We ask that reviews be written within 8 weeks of receiving the book. More detailed guidelines can be found in the attached Word document. We do not guarantee publication all reviews, but all reviewers can keep the copy of the book they review.
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Tara Flynn
—
Executive Editor
Alternatives Journal
Faculty of Environmental Studies
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario
N2L 3G1
Email: editor@alternativesjournal.ca
Phone: (519) 888-4442
Fax: (519) 746-0292
www.alternativesjournal.ca
Alternatives? Books for Review ? Feb. 2006
Title: America?s Environmental Report Card: Are we making the Grade?
Author: Harvey Blatt
Publisher: MIT Press
Year Published: 2005
Summary: A review of the current North American environmental/social climate, and a primer in environmental science.
Pages: 238
Title: Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art
Curator: Stephanie Smith
Publisher: Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago and Independent Curators International
Year Published: 2005
Summary: Proposes a cross-disciplinary agenda and renewed activism to combine a fresh visual sensibility with a constructively critical approach to the production, dissemination, and display of art.
Pages: 159
Title: Biodiesel: Growing a New Energy Economy
Author: Greg Pahl
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company
Year Published: 2005
Summary: An account of the burgeoning growth of biodiesel usage, and the inevitable end of global oil production.
Pages: 241
Title: (The) Environment in Anthropology: A Reader in Ecology, Culture and Sustainable Living
Editor: Nora Haenn and Richard R. Wilk
Publisher: New York University Press
Year Published: 2006
Summary: Presents ecology and current environmental studies from an anthropological point of view. This book connects theory and practice in environment and anthropology.
Pages: 468
Title: Every Grain of Sand: Canadian Perspectives on Ecology and the Environment
Editor: J.A. Wainwright
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Year Published: 2004
Summary: A collection of essays focusing on sustainable technology, embracing nature, and resisting the influence of central-based politics on environmental/social issues.
Pages: 177
Title: Forestry & Development
Editor: Jeffrey Sayer
Publisher: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
Year Published: 2005
Summary: A collection of papers on forests, development and livelihoods brings together recent thinking on these issues.
Pages: 426
Title: Free Trade and the Environment: Mexico, NAFTA, and Beyond
Author: Kevin P. Gallagher
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Year Published: 2004
Summary: Examination of the impact of free trade and economic integration on the environment, using Mexico?s economic transformation as a case study.
Pages: 109
Title: From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security: Exploring New Limits to Growth
Editors: Dennis Pirages and Ken Cousins
Publisher: MIT Press
Year Published: 2005
Summary: Revisits the findings of The Global 2000 Report to the President and presents an up-to-date overview of such critical topics as population, water, food, energy, climate change, deforestation, and biodiversity.
Pages: 226
Title: Fueling the Future: How the Battle over Energy is Changing Everything
Editor: Andrew Heintzman
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc.
Year Published: 2003
Summary: An examination of emerging trends in energy production, and the environmental implication tied to current and future energy trends.
Pages: 370
Title: Global Energy Shifts: Fostering sustainability in a Turbulent Age
Author: Bruce Podobnik
Publisher: Temple University Press
Year Published: 2006
Summary: Aims to recover the role of geopolitical rivalry, corporate competition, and social movements in shaping patterns of energy production and consumption via a grand historical survey.
Pages: 176
Title: Green Cities: a Guide for Sustainable Community Development
Authors: Michael Bloomfield, Michael Lithgow and Mark Roseland
Publisher: Harmony Foundation of Canada
Year Published: 2005
Summary: Facts, resources, inspiring success stories and a wealth of ideas on how to promote sustainable development in your community.
Pages: 124
Title: Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers: Marginality and Memory in the Conservation of Biological Diversity
Author: Virginia D. Nazarea
Publishers: The University of Arizona Press
Year Published: 2005
Summary: A scientifically researched perspective on the contributions of seedsaving for the preservation of cultural knowledge and crop yield diversity around the world.
Pages: 168
Title: It?s the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil, and the Fight for the Planet
Author: Linda McQuaig
Publisher: Random House of Canada Limited
Year Published: 2004
Summary: This book discusses the U.S. government?s invasion of Iraq for the purpose of controlling oil, and is referenced against a backdrop of global warming and other environmental concerns associated with the use of oil.
Pages: 335
Title: Keeping it Green: A Citizen?s Guide to Urban Land Protection in Canada
Author: Lois Lindsay
Publisher: Evergreen
Year Published: 2005
Summary: A practical guide for citizens and community groups whose vision of Canada?s cities and towns includes natural areas.
Pages: 70
Title: The Logic of Sufficiency
Author: Thomas Princen
Publisher: MIT Press
Year Published: 2005
Summary: Today?s environmental challenges require new behaviors, institutions, and principles. Thomas Princen builds one such principle: sufficiency. With examples ranging from timbering and fishing to automobility and meat production, Princen shows that sufficiency is perfectly sensible and contrary to modern society?s dominant principle, efficiency.
Pages: 365
Title: Marine Protected Areas: For Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises
Author: Erich Hoyt
Publisher: Earthscan
Year Published: 2005
Summary: An indepth look at cetacean conservation strategies, and the habitat needs and protection requirements of over 84 species of whales, dolphins and porpoises.
Pages: 452
Title: Our Earth?s Changing Land: An Encyclopedia of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change. Volume 1 and 2.
Editor: Helmut Geist
Publisher: Greenwood Press
Year Published: 2006
Summary: Addresses all aspects of land-use change.
Pages: Volume 1: 331. Volume 2: 676
Title: Outgrowing the Earth
Author: Lester R. Brown
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Year Published: 2005
Summary: Documents the ways in which human demands are outstripping the earth?s natural capacities ? and how the resulting environmental damage is undermining food production.
Pages: 233
Title: (The) Party?s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies
Author: Richard Heinberg
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Year Published: 2005
Summary: Shows how oil and war have always been closely related for the past century and how competition to control oil supplies is likely to lead to new resource wars in the Middle East, Central Asia and South America.
Pages: 262
Title: Plan B 2.0
Author: Lester R. Brown
Publisher: Earth Policy Institute
Year Published: 2006
Summary: Recognizes that in ignoring nature?s deadlines for dealing with environmental issues we risk the disruption of economic progress.
Pages: 365
Title: Planetary Citizenship: Your Values, Beliefs and Actions Can Shape a Sustainable World
Author: Hazel Henderson and Daisaku Ikeda
Publisher: Middleway Press
Year Published: 2004
Summary: An introduction to some of the most important ideas and facts concerning stewardship of the planet.
Pages: 178
Title: The Politics of Bones: The Struggle for Nigeria?s Oil
Author: J. Timothy Hunt
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Year Published: 2005
Summary: Owens Wiwa has taken up his brother?s (Ken Saro-Wiwa?s) environmental crusade. His story is a ?heart-stopping saga of personal courage and official corruption, of individual selflessness and corporate greed, of a man?s abiding love for his brother and extraordinary determination to honour him.?
Pages: 376
Title: Practical Ecology: For Planners, Developers, and Citizens
Author: Dan Perlman
Publisher: Island Press
Year Published: 2005
Summary: A resource for land-use professionals and interested readers alike, of the various ecological concepts that are readily applied to planning and land-use issues.
Pages: 239
Title: Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature
Editor: Thomas Heyd
Publisher: MIT Press
Year Published: 2005
Summary: An exploration of the theoretical and practical implications of a crucial aspect of environmental philosophy and policy ? the autonomy of nature. This book provides new perspectives on human relationships to nature.
Pages: 205
Title: Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming
Author: Winona LaDuke
Publisher: South End Press
Year Published: 2005
Summary: An account of indigenous peoples struggle to reconnect with their ecological environment, while making note of the ravages of the past.
Pages: 253
Title: Rights and Liberties in the Biotech Age: Why We Need a Genetic Bill of Rights
Editor: Sheldon Krimsky and Peter Shorett
Publisher: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Year Published: 2005
Summary: The discussion of a proposed Genetic Bill of Rights, to protect citizens in the age of bio-nanotechnology and biometric identification tools.
Pages: 191
Title: Small Change: About the art of practice and the limits of planning in cities
Author: Nabeel Hamdi
Publisher: Earthscan
Year Published: 2004
Summary: A discussion of the influences that small-scale changes can have on their surrounding environment, and the importance of urban development.
Pages: 141
Title: Sprawl: A Compact history
Author: Robert Bruegmann
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Year Published: 2005
Summary: Challenges every assumption we have about sprawl.
Pages: 225
Title: Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management
Author: Bryan G. Norton
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Year Published: 2005
Summary: Bryan Norton develops a new, interdisciplinary approach to defining sustainability, using philosophical and linguistic analyses to create a nonideological vocabulary that can accommodate scientific and evaluative environmental discourse.
Pages: 578
Title: The Devil and the Disappearing Sea (or, how I tried to stop the world?s worst ecological catastrophe)
Author: Rob Ferguson
Publisher: Raincoast Books
Year Published: 2003
Summary: A true story about the Aral Sea catastrophe from the perspective of a well-meaning aid worker.
Pages: 264
Title: To Love the Wind and the Rain: African Americans and Environmental History
Editor: Dianne D. Glave and Mark Stoll
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Year Published: 2006
Summary: An analysis of the relationship between African Americans and the environment in United States history.
Pages: 260
Title: Toward Sustainable Communities: Resources for Citizens and their Governments. Revised Edition.
Author: Mark Roseland
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Year Published: 2005
Summary: Offers practical suggestions and innovative solutions to a range of community problems, including energy efficiency, transportation, land use, housing, waste reduction, recycling, air quality, and governance.
Pages: 225
Title: Urban Place: Reconnecting with the Natural World
Editor: Peggy F. Barlett
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year Published: 2005
Summary: An examination of the growing trend for sense-of-place amongst urban dwellers, documenting health and wellness needs associated with adding greenery and natural constructs to mundane urban environments.
Pages: 315
Title: The Weather Makers: the History and Future Impact of Climate Change.
Author: Tim Flannery
Publisher: Harpercollins Publishers Ltd.
Year Published: 2005
Summary: Scientist Tim Flannery argues passionately for the need to address the implications of a global change that is damaging all life on earth and threatening our very survival.
Pages: 306