Book Review
Terra Preta
From the Portuguese “black earth,” terra preta refers to a rich soil composed of humus (decomposed organic substances) and biochar (carbon derived from charcoal). “Nowadays, fertile soil disappears 10 to 100 times quicker than it...
Book Review
Birds in Trouble
For a keen birdwatcher like Lynn E. Barber, birds are a way into learning about current conservation challenges. Her "Birds in Trouble" profiles many of America’s endangered birds and gives concrete advice on how to help both...
Book Review
Ecological Governance
As director of bioethics for the Center for Humans and Nature and adjunct associate professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University, Bruce Jennings writes widely about ethical decision making. In "Ecological Governance", he asserts...
Book Review
The Once and Future Ocean
Peter Neill is a novelist, a maritime nonfiction writer, and the founder/director of the World Ocean Observatory, and he has seen local ocean problems firsthand. His goal with "The Once and Future Ocean", though, is to get the word out...
Book Review
Returning North with the Spring
In 1947, naturalist Edwin Way Teale and his wife traveled the East Coast from Florida to the Canadian border. Their journey, the subject of North with the Spring, had a dual purpose: scientific—to track the coming of spring and assess...
Book Review
The Man Who Thought He Owned Water
San Diego journalist Tershia d’Elgin became keenly aware of her family’s water footprint on her father Bill’s Colorado farm. William Eaton Phelps had to grow up quickly: his parents left him in Denver while his father was stationed...
Book Review
Walking on Water
Short chapters make this Christian meditation on life challenges an ideal bedside devotional. Rea Nolan Martin, the author of three works of visionary fiction, turns to nonfiction with Walking on Water: A Path to Empowerment. This...
Book Review
The Once Mighty Midway Revisited
Cohen is writing in the grand tradition of the ubi sunt elegy, plaintively inquiring where the values of a previous age have gone. Irvin F. Cohen styles himself as a “lifelong conservative voice crying out in the wilderness” of...