From our friends at Alternatives Journal.
– BEST IN EcoBOOKS 2011 –
Query submissions due September 30, 2010
Are you reading a new environmental book that you’re itching to tell people about? Is there an upcoming green release that you simply can’t wait to get your hands on?
Here’s your chance to take that passion for cutting-edge environmental ideas and writing, and add your own perspective to the discussion. We are looking for reviews of the latest and most innovative environmental books released in 2010 for inclusion in our annual Environmental Books issue.
Alternative Journal’s BEST IN EcoBOOKS issue will include some brief reviews (100 words each), medium length reviews (600 words each) and a few in-depth analyses (1000 words each) of recently published environmental titles. We encourage you to take a look at our last EcoBooks issue (36:3, 2010) to get a feel for our requirements.
Please scroll down for our list of new and exciting books. If you would like to review a publication (or perhaps other media, such as film, video or music) that is not on our list, we would be pleased to accept these submissions as well. We are also accepting submissions for articles on topics related to the world of environmental books, as well as review essays that compare multiple books.
In your query submission, please include your preferred review length, along with a short note (100 words maximum) on why you believe the book is important. If you have not written for Alternatives in the past, please also provide us with an example of your writing and a brief bio (50 words maximum).
In return for your review you may keep the copy of the book that you reviewed.
Please send your submission to: fraser@alternativesjournal.ca by September 30, 2010*
Please note that Alternatives will also consider your review ideas for our new website greenbookreviews.ca. We are always open to new ideas to populate the site with great new environmental content.
*Before responding to this call for submissions, we also suggest you read the contributor’s guidelines, found in a bar along the bottom of our webpage.
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*List of Books for Review*
*Alternatives Journal: BEST IN EcoBOOKS 2011*
Air: Our Planet’s Ailing Atmosphere
Author: Hans Tammemegi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Summary: Hans Tammemagi argues that climate change is but one of the many problems associated with the changing character of one of the most basic components of life: the air we breathe.
Pages: 256
Am I a Monkey?
Author: Fransisco J. Ayala
Publisher: Johns Hoppkins University Press
Summary: Francisco J. Ayala cuts to the chase in a daring attempt to address, in nontechnical language, six perennial questions about evolution.
Animal Factory
Author: David Kirby
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Summary: Following crusaders against large-scale factory farms, investigative journalist David Kirby delves deep to uncover the abysmal conditions of America’s food and produce industry.
Pages: 512
Arrival City
Author: Doug Saunders
Publisher: Random House
Summary: From villages in China, India, Bangladesh and Poland to the international cities of the world, Doug Saunders portrays a diverse group of people as they struggle to migrate, and gives an often surprising sense of what factors aid in the creation of a stable, productive community.
Pages: 368
Bending Science
Author: Thomas McGarity and Wendy Wagner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Summary: This book reveals the range of sophisticated legal and financial tactics political and corporate advocates use to discredit or suppress research on potential human health hazards.
Pages: 400
Blowout in the Gulf
Author: William Freaudenberg and Robert Gramling
Publisher: MIT Press
Summary: Energy experts William Freudenburg and Robert Gramling explain both the disaster and the decisions that led up to Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
Pages: 240
Bottled & Sold: The Story Behind our Obsession With Bottled Water
Author: Peter H. Gleick
Publisher: Island Press
Summary: Gleick exposes the true reasons we’ve turned to the bottle, from fearmongering by business interests and our own vanity to the breakdown of public systems and global inequities.
Pages: 180
City Farmer
Author: Lorraine Johnson
Publisher: Greystone Books
Summary: Popular author Lorraine Johnson shares her passion and enthusiasm for urban gardening by telling humorous stories about her own experiences in downtown Toronto.
Pages: 256
Climate Refugees
Author: Collectif Argos
Publisher: MIT Press
Summary: This book surveys the damage wrought to homes and livelihoods by rapid warming: rising sea levels that threaten island nations, farmers displaced by the desert’s advance and floods, as well as possible irretrievable loss of ethnic diversity if vulnerable local cultures disperse.
Pages: 171
Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean
Author: Julia Whitty
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Summary: At the center of Deep Blue Home is Whitty’s mesmerizing description of the three-dimensional ocean river, far more powerful than the Nile or the Amazon, encircling the globe: a watery force connected to the earth’s climate control and so to the eventual fate of the human race.
Pages: 256
Dirty Gold
Author: Al Gedicks
Publisher: South End Press
Summary: Increased resource exploitation has been met with increased opposition: Indigenous peoples are fighting back, preserving their sacredrights from mining pollution.
Pages: 292
Dry Run: Preventing the Next Urban Water Crisis
Author: Jerry Yudelson
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Summary: Dry Run shows the best ways to manage scarce water resources and handle upcoming urban water crises.
Pages: 304
Dust From Our Eyes
Author: Joan Baxter
Publisher: Wolsak and Wynn Publishers
Summary: Dust from our Eyes is one Canadian’s attempt to understand why Africa continues to experience injustice and exploitation
in what some call the age of neo-colonialism.
Pages: 438
Empathic Civilization
Author: Jeremy Rifkin
Publisher: Tarcher
Summary: Humanity, Rifkin argues, finds itself on the cusp of its greatest experiment to date: refashioning human consciousness so that human beings can mutually live and flourish in the new globalizing society.
Pages: 688
Empire of Illusion
Author: Chris Hedges
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Summary: Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic.
Pages: 240
Ethical Oil
Author: Ezra Levant
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Summary: While many North Americans may be aware of the financial and environmental price we pay for a gallon of gas or a barrel of oil, Levant argues that it is time we consider ethical factors as well.
Pages: 272
Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control
Author: James Rodger Fleming
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Summary: James Rodger Fleming traces the tragicomic history of the rainmakers, rain fakers, weather warriors, and climate engineers who have been both full of ideas and full of themselves.
Pages: 344
Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin’ Mamas
Author: Mark Winne
Publisher: Beacon Press
Summary: Winne, a longtime food activist, lays out his argument declaring an urgent need for an alternative food system in the U.S.
Pages: 208
Holy Shit: Managing Manure to Save Mankind
Author: George Logsdon
Publisher: Chelsea Green
Summary: No one knows more about the backside of agriculture than Gene Logsdon, truly one of the shrewdest practitioners and wisest observers of farming and agriculture.
Pages: 272
How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate
Author: Jeff Goodale
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Summary: When Jeff Goodell first encountered the term “geoengineering,” he had a vague sense that it involved outlandish schemes to counteract global warming. But he was also intrigued.
Pages: 272
Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World
Author: Tom Rand
Publisher: Eco Ten Publishing
Summary: Tom Rand’s game-changing new book presents 10 leading clean technologies that will allow renewable energy to make our future better.
Pages: 240
Living Through the End of Nature
Author: Paul Wapner
Publisher: MIT Press
Summary: Environmentalists have always worked to protect the wildness of nature but now must find a new direction. Paul Wapner probes the meaning of environmentalism in a postnature age.
Pages: 184
Losing Our Cool
Author: Stan Cox
Publisher: The New Press
Summary: Scientist and environmental journalist Stan Cox shows that indoor climate control is colliding with an out-of-control outdoor climate.
Pages: 199
My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm
Author: Manny Howard
Publisher: Scribner
Summary: Manny Howard’s experiment takes the slow-food philosophy to an extreme. For six months, Manny Howard woke up every morning and headed to his backyard to tend to the first farm in Brooklyn in nearly 100 years.
Pages: 288
No Impact Man
Author: Colin Beavan
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Summary: The riotous story of a guilty liberal who snaps, swears off plastic, goes organic, turns off his power, and becomes a bicycle nut in an effort to make zero environmental impact.
Pages: 288
Poisoned For Profit
Author: Philip and Alice Shabecoff
Publisher: Chelsea Green
Summary: Philip and Alice Shabecoff reveal that the children of baby boomers–the first to be raised in a toxified world–are the first generation to be sicker and have shorter life expectancies than their parents.
Pages: 376
Sanctuary: The Story of Naturalist Mary Majka
Author: Deborah Carr
Publisher: Gooselane
Summary: Mary Majka, a Polish-Canadian immigrant, survived personal tragedy and incarceration at a forced labour camp during World War II to become a pioneer in Canada’s environmental movement.
Pages: 260
Serious Microhydro
Author: ed. Scott Davis
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Summary: Serious Microhydro brings you dozens of firsthand stories of energy independence covering a complete range of household systems.
Pages: 336
Story of Stuff
Author: Annie Leonard
Publisher: Free Press
Summary: Annie Leonard, creator of the internet film “The Story of Stuff,” offers a groundbreaking, fascinating book that tracks the life of the “stuff” we use every day.
Pages: 352
Straight Up
Author: Joe Romm
Publisher: Island Press
Summary: Straight Up draws on Romm’s most important blog posts to explain the dangers of and solutions to climate change that you won’t find in newspapers, in journals, or on TV.
Pages: 248
The Age of Empathy
Author: Frans de Waal
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Summary: Using research from the fields of anthropology, psychology, animal behaviour, and n
euroscience, de Waal brilliantly argues that humans are group animals — highly cooperative, sensitive to injustice, and mostly peace-loving.
Pages: 304
The Armageddon Factor
Author: Marci MacDonald
Publisher: Random House
Summary: The Canadian Christian Right — infuriated by the legalization of same-sex marriage and the increasing secularization of society — has been steadily and stealthily building organizations, alliances and contacts that have put them close to the levers of power in Canada.
Pages: 432
The Biochar Solution
Author: Albert Bates
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Summary: The Biochar Solution explores the dual function of biochar as a carbon-negative energy source and a potent soil-builder in agriculture.
Pages: 208
The Legacy: An Elder’s Vision for Our Sustainable Future
Author: David Suzuki
Publisher: Greystone Books
Summary: In this expanded version of the lecture that he delivered in 2009, Suzuki explains how we got where we are today and presents his vision for a better future.
Pages: 128
The Munk Debates
Author: ed. Rudyard Griffiths
Publisher: House of Anansi Press
Summary: A collection of five debates that brought together some of the world’s greatest thinkers to discuss the most pressing political, social, and cultural issues that are shaping the course of world events.
Pages: 400
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