Bringing the Biosphere Home

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262264921
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (649 download)

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Book Synopsis Bringing the Biosphere Home by : Mitchell Thomashow

Download or read book Bringing the Biosphere Home written by Mitchell Thomashow and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001-10-26 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide for understanding the ecological and existential aspects of global environmental change. This book shows how to make global environmental problems more tangible, so that they become an integral part of everyday awareness. At its core is a simple assumption: that the best way to learn to perceive the biosphere is to pay close attention to our immediate surroundings. Through local natural history observations, imagination and memory, and spiritual contemplation, we develop a place-based environmental view that can be expanded to encompass the biosphere. Interweaving global change science, personal narrative, and commentary on a wide range of scientific and literary works, the book explores both the ecological and existential aspects of urgent issues such as the loss of biodiversity and global climate change. Written in a warm, engaging style, Bringing the Biosphere Home considers the perceptual connections between the local and global, how the ecological news of the community is of interest to the world, and how the global movement of people, species, and weather systems affects the local community. It shows how global environmental change can become the province of numerous educational initiatives—from the classroom to the Internet, from community forums to international conferences, from the backyard to the biosphere. It explains important scientific concepts in clear, nontechnical language and provides dozens of ideas for learning how to practice biospheric perception.

To Know the World

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262361051
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis To Know the World by : Mitchell Thomashow

Download or read book To Know the World written by Mitchell Thomashow and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why we must rethink our residency on the planet to understand the connected challenges of tribalism, inequity, climate justice, and democracy. How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time--migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy--connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that.

Dreaming the Biosphere

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Publisher : University of New Mexico Press
ISBN 13 : 082634674X
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (263 download)

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Book Synopsis Dreaming the Biosphere by : Rebecca Reider

Download or read book Dreaming the Biosphere written by Rebecca Reider and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reider tells the tangled tale of the creation, and eventual disintegration, of the experimental eco-utopia known as Biosphere 2.

Ecological Identity

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262700638
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (627 download)

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Book Synopsis Ecological Identity by : Mitchell Thomashow

Download or read book Ecological Identity written by Mitchell Thomashow and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1996-07-25 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through theoretical discussion as well as hands-on participatory learning approaches, Thomashow provides concerned citizens, teachers, and students with the tools needed to become reflective environmentalists. Mitchell Thomashow, a preeminent educator, shows how environmental studies can be taught from different perspective, one that is deeply informed by personal reflection. Through theoretical discussion as well as hands-on participatory learning approaches, Thomashow provides concerned citizens, teachers, and students with the tools needed to become reflective environmentalists. What do I know about the place where I live? Where do things come from? How do I connect to the earth? What is my purpose as a human being? These are the questions that Thomashow identifies as being at the heart of environmental education. Developing a profound sense of oneself in relationship to natural and social ecosystems is necessary grounding for the difficult work of environmental advocacy. In this book he provides a clear and accessible guide to the learning experiences that accompany the construction of an "ecological identity": using the direct experience of nature as a framework for personal decisions, professional choices, political action, and spiritual inquiry. Ecological Identity covers the different types of environmental thought and activism (using John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and Rachel Carson as environmental archetypes, but branching out into ecofeminism and bioregionalism), issues of personal property and consumption, political identity and citizenship, and integrating ecological identity work into environmental studies programs. Each chapter has accompanying learning activities such as the Sense of Place Map, a Community Network Map, and the Political Genogram, most of which can be carried out on an individual basis. Although people from diverse backgrounds become environmental activists and enroll in environmental studies programs, they are rarely encouraged to examine their own history, motivations, and aspirations. Thomashow's approach is to reveal the depth of personal experience that underlies contemporary environmentalism and to explore, interpret, and nurture the learning spaces made possible when people are moved to contemplate their experience of nature.

The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262529009
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus by : Mitchell Thomashow

Download or read book The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus written by Mitchell Thomashow and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A former college president offers a framework for sustainability on campus, describing initiatives that range from renewable energy to a revamped curriculum to sustainable investment. Colleges and universities offer our best hope for raising awareness about the climate crisis and the other environmental threats. But most college and university administrations need guidance on the path to sustainability. In The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus, Mitchell Thomashow, a former college president, provides just that. Drawing on his experiences at Unity College in Maine, he identifies nine elements for a sustainability agenda: energy, food, and materials (aspects of infrastructure); governance, investment, and wellness (aspects of community); and curriculum, interpretation, and aesthetics (aspects of learning). He then describes how Unity put these elements into practice. Connecting his experiences to broader concerns, Thomashow links the campus to the planet, reminding us that local efforts, taken together, can have a global impact.

Decolonising Governance

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351213016
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (512 download)

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Book Synopsis Decolonising Governance by : Paul Carter

Download or read book Decolonising Governance written by Paul Carter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-28 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Power may be globalized, but Westphalian notions of sovereignty continue to determine political and legal arrangements domestically and internationally: global issues - the legacy of colonialism expressed in continuing human displacement and environmental destruction - are thus treated ‘parochially’ and ineffectually. Not designed for dealing with situations of interdependence, democratic institutions find themselves in crisis. Reform in this case is not simply operational but conceptual: political relationships need to be drawn differently; the cultural illiteracy that prevents the local knowledge invested in places made after their stories needs to be recognised as a major obstacle to decolonising governance. Archipelagic thinking refers to neglected dimensions of the earth’s human geography but also to a geo-politics of relationality, where governance is understood performatively as the continuous establishment of exchange rates. Insisting on the poetic literacy that must inform a decolonising politics, Carter suggests a way out of the incommensurability impasse that dogs assertions of indigenous sovereignty. Discussing bicultural areal management strategies located in south-west Victoria, Maluco (Indonesia) and inter-regionally across the Arafura and Timor Seas, Carter argues for the existence of creative regions constituted archipelagically that can intervene to rewrite the theory and practice of decolonisation. A book of great stylistic elegance and deftness of analysis, Decolonising Governance is an important intervention in the related fields of ecological, ecocritical and environmental humanities. Methodologically innovative in its foregrounding of relationality as the nexus between poetics and politics, it will also be of great interest to scholars in a range of areas, including communicational praxis, land/sea biodiversity design, bicultural resource management, and the constitution of post-Westphalian regional jurisdictions.

Earth’s Biosphere

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Author :
Publisher : The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN 13 : 1538329832
Total Pages : 34 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (383 download)

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Book Synopsis Earth’s Biosphere by : Charles Hofer

Download or read book Earth’s Biosphere written by Charles Hofer and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2018-07-15 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The biosphere refers to the parts of Earth where life exists or where known life has existed in the past. The biosphere is comprised of the atmosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere because life exists in each of those three spheres, from birds in the sky to fish in the water to worms in the dirt. Food chains represent interconnected life cycles in the biosphere. Energy is transferred from one organism to the next and, as apex predators die, nutrients are returned to the soil. Readers will learn how people affect the biosphere and how life and energy are maintained in the biosphere.

The Biosphere and the Bioregion

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134504098
Total Pages : 326 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (345 download)

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Book Synopsis The Biosphere and the Bioregion by : Cheryll Glotfelty

Download or read book The Biosphere and the Bioregion written by Cheryll Glotfelty and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-17 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bioregionalism asks us to reimagine ourselves and the places where we live in ecological terms and to harmonize human activities with the natural systems that sustain life. As one of the originators of the concept of bioregionalism, Peter Berg (1937-2011) is a founding figure of contemporary environmental thought. The Biosphere and the Bioregion: Essential Writings of Peter Berg introduces readers to the biospheric vision and post-environmental genius of Berg. From books and essays to published interviews, this selection of writings represents Berg's bioregional vision and its global, local, urban, and rural applications. The Biosphere and the Bioregion provides a highly accessible introduction to bioregional philosophy, making Berg's paradigm available as a guiding vision and practical "greenprint" for the twenty-first century. This valuable compilation lays the groundwork for future research by offering the first-ever comprehensive bibliography of Berg's publications and should be of interest to students and scholars in the interdisciplinary fields of environmental humanities, environment and sustainability studies, as well as political ecology, environmental sociology and anthropology.

Playing Nature

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Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 145296226X
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

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Book Synopsis Playing Nature by : Alenda Y. Chang

Download or read book Playing Nature written by Alenda Y. Chang and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2019-12-31 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A potent new book examines the overlap between our ecological crisis and video games Video games may be fun and immersive diversions from daily life, but can they go beyond the realm of entertainment to do something serious—like help us save the planet? As one of the signature issues of the twenty-first century, ecological deterioration is seemingly everywhere, but it is rarely considered via the realm of interactive digital play. In Playing Nature, Alenda Y. Chang offers groundbreaking methods for exploring this vital overlap. Arguing that games need to be understood as part of a cultural response to the growing ecological crisis, Playing Nature seeds conversations around key environmental science concepts and terms. Chang suggests several ways to rethink existing game taxonomies and theories of agency while revealing surprising fundamental similarities between game play and scientific work. Gracefully reconciling new media theory with environmental criticism, Playing Nature examines an exciting range of games and related art forms, including historical and contemporary analog and digital games, alternate- and augmented-reality games, museum exhibitions, film, and science fiction. Chang puts her surprising ideas into conversation with leading media studies and environmental humanities scholars like Alexander Galloway, Donna Haraway, and Ursula Heise, ultimately exploring manifold ecological futures—not all of them dystopian.

Unsettling Nature

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Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813946859
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

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Book Synopsis Unsettling Nature by : Taylor Eggan

Download or read book Unsettling Nature written by Taylor Eggan and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2022-03-24 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The German poet and mystic Novalis once identified philosophy as a form of homesickness. More than two centuries later, as modernity’s displacements continue to intensify, we feel Novalis’s homesickness more than ever. Yet nowhere has a longing for home flourished more than in contemporary environmental thinking, and particularly in eco-phenomenology. If only we can reestablish our sense of material enmeshment in nature, so the logic goes, we might reverse the degradation we humans have wrought—and in saving the earth we can once again dwell in the nearness of our own being. Unsettling Nature opens with a meditation on the trouble with such ecological homecoming narratives, which bear a close resemblance to narratives of settler colonial homemaking. Taylor Eggan demonstrates that the Heideggerian strain of eco-phenomenology—along with its well-trod categories of home, dwelling, and world—produces uncanny effects in settler colonial contexts. He reads instances of nature’s defamiliarization not merely as psychological phenomena but also as symptoms of the repressed consciousness of coloniality. The book at once critiques Heidegger’s phenomenology and brings it forward through chapters on Willa Cather, D. H. Lawrence, Olive Schreiner, Doris Lessing, and J. M. Coetzee. Suggesting that alienation may in fact be "natural" to the human condition and hence something worth embracing instead of repressing, Unsettling Nature concludes with a speculative proposal to transform eco-phenomenology into "exo-phenomenology"—an experiential mode that engages deeply with the alterity of others and with the self as its own Other.

How To Grow Fresh Air

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Publisher : Orion Spring
ISBN 13 : 1398701173
Total Pages : 199 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (987 download)

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Book Synopsis How To Grow Fresh Air by : B.C. Wolverton

Download or read book How To Grow Fresh Air written by B.C. Wolverton and published by Orion Spring. This book was released on 2020-04-20 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated guide to the houseplants you need for clean and fresh air when you're stuck at home How clean is the air you breathe? Plants are the lungs of the earth: they produce the oxygen that makes life possible, add precious moisture and filter toxins. Houseplants can perform these essential functions in your home or office with the same efficiency as a rainforest in our biosphere. In this beautifully illustrated guide, noted scientist Dr Bill Wolverton shows you how to grow 50 plants that filter the most common pollutants, making it easy for you to purify the environments that impact you the most.

Harvesting the Biosphere

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 026201856X
Total Pages : 317 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Harvesting the Biosphere by : Vaclav Smil

Download or read book Harvesting the Biosphere written by Vaclav Smil and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-12-21 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interdisciplinary and quantitative account of human claims on the biosphere's stores of living matter, from prehistoric hunting to modern energy production. The biosphere—the Earth's thin layer of life—dates from nearly four billion years ago, when the first simple organisms appeared. Many species have exerted enormous influence on the biosphere's character and productivity, but none has transformed the Earth in so many ways and on such a scale as Homo sapiens. In Harvesting the Biosphere, Vaclav Smil offers an interdisciplinary and quantitative account of human claims on the biosphere's stores of living matter, from prehistory to the present day. Smil examines all harvests—from prehistoric man's hunting of megafauna to modern crop production—and all uses of harvested biomass, including energy, food, and raw materials. Without harvesting of the biomass, Smil points out, there would be no story of human evolution and advancing civilization; but at the same time, the increasing extent and intensity of present-day biomass harvests are changing the very foundations of civilization's well-being. In his detailed and comprehensive account, Smil presents the best possible quantifications of past and current global losses in order to assess the evolution and extent of biomass harvests. Drawing on the latest work in disciplines ranging from anthropology to environmental science, Smil offers a valuable long-term, planet-wide perspective on human-caused environmental change.

Contested Waters

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Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 1607322110
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Contested Waters by : April R. Summitt

Download or read book Contested Waters written by April R. Summitt and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "To fully understand this river and its past, one must examine many separate pieces of history scattered throughout two nations--seven states within the United States and two within Mexico--and sort through a large amount of scientific data. One needs to be part hydrologist, geologist, economist, sociologist, anthropologist, and historian to fully understand the entire story. Despite this river's narrow size and meager flow, its tale is very large indeed." -From the conclusion The Colorado River is a vital resource to urban and agricultural communities across the Southwest, providing water to 30 million people. Contested Waters tells the river's story-a story of conquest, control, division, and depletion. Beginning in prehistory and continuing into the present day, Contested Waters focuses on three important and often overlooked aspects of the river's use: the role of western water law in its over-allocation, the complexity of power relationships surrounding the river, and the concept of sustainable use and how it has been either ignored or applied in recent times. It is organized in two parts, the first addresses the chronological history of the river and long-term issues, while the second examines in more detail four specific topics: metropolitan perceptions, American Indian water rights, US-Mexico relations over the river, and water marketing issues. Creating a complete picture of the evolution of this crucial yet over-utilized resource, this comprehensive summary will fascinate anyone interested in the Colorado River or the environmental history of the Southwest.

An Introduction to Sustainability

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134548826
Total Pages : 491 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (345 download)

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Book Synopsis An Introduction to Sustainability by : Martin Mulligan

Download or read book An Introduction to Sustainability written by Martin Mulligan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Introduction to Sustainability provides students with a comprehensive overview of the key concepts and ideas which are encompassed within the growing field of sustainability. The book teases out the diverse but intersecting domains of sustainability and emphasises strategies for action. Aimed at those studying the subject for the first time, it is unique in giving students from different disciplinary backgrounds a coherent framework and set of core principles for applying broad sustainability principles within their personal and professional lives. These include: working to improve equality within and across generations, moving from consumerism to quality of life goals and respecting diversity in both nature and culture. Areas of emerging importance such as the economics of happiness and wellbeing stand alongside core topics including: Energy and society Consumption and consumerism Risk and resilience Waste, water and land. Key challenges and applications are explored through international case studies and each chapter includes a thematic essay drawing on diverse literature to provide an integrated introduction to fundamental issues. Launched with the brand-new Routledge Sustainability Hub, the book’s companion website contains a range of features to engage students with the interdisciplinary nature of Sustainability. Together these resources provide a wealth of material for learning, teaching and researching the topic of sustainability. This textbook is an essential companion to any sustainability course.

Postcolonial Ecologies

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Publisher : OUP USA
ISBN 13 : 0195394429
Total Pages : 361 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (953 download)

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Book Synopsis Postcolonial Ecologies by : Elizabeth DeLoughrey

Download or read book Postcolonial Ecologies written by Elizabeth DeLoughrey and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-04-20 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edited collection to bring ecocritical studies into a necessary dialogue with postcolonial literature, this volume offers rich and suggestive ways to explore the relationship between humans and nature around the globe, drawing from texts from Africa and the Caribbean, as well as the Pacific Islands and South Asia. Turning to contemporary works by both well- and little-known postcolonial writers, the diverse contributions highlight the literary imagination as crucial to representing what Eduoard Glissant calls the "aesthetics of the earth." The essays are organized around a group of thematic concerns that engage culture and cultivation, arboriculture and deforestation, the lives of animals, and the relationship between the military and the tourist industry. With chapters that address works by J. M. Coetzee, Kiran Desai, Derek Walcott, Alejo Carpentier, Zakes Mda, and many others, Postcolonial Ecologies makes a remarkable contribution to rethinking the role of the humanities in addressing global environmental issues.

Places Made After Their Stories

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Publisher : Apollo Books
ISBN 13 : 9781742587608
Total Pages : 476 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (876 download)

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Book Synopsis Places Made After Their Stories by : Paul Carter

Download or read book Places Made After Their Stories written by Paul Carter and published by Apollo Books. This book was released on 2015 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Places Made After Their Stories shows how the emotional geographies we carry inside us and the ecstatic desire at the heart of democratic community-making can come together to inform contemporary landscape and urban design. Using Australian case studies of public space design from Alice Springs to Perth and Melbourne. Paul Carter describes a new approach to place-making in which topography and choreography fuse. He counters the symbolic neglect of functionalist design with a brilliant account of poetic and graphic techniques developed to materialize ambience. Carter describes a practice of sense-making and form-making that embodies fundamental gestures of welcome, arrangement, and exchange in the built setting.

Nature, Love, Medicine

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Publisher : Torrey House Press
ISBN 13 : 1937226786
Total Pages : 170 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (372 download)

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Book Synopsis Nature, Love, Medicine by : Thomas Lowe Fleischner

Download or read book Nature, Love, Medicine written by Thomas Lowe Fleischner and published by Torrey House Press. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A beautiful collaboration that brings together diverse perspectives…a common passion and sense of beauty unites the book and transcends any expectations." —BOOKLIST A diverse array of people—psychologists and poets, biologists and artists, a Buddhist teacher and a rock musician—share personal stories that reveal a common theme: when we pay conscious, careful attention to our wider world, we strengthen our core humanity. This practice of natural history leads to greater physical, psychological, and social health for individuals and communities. Nature, Love, Medicine features writers with varied backgrounds and talents. Notable contributors range from conservationist and author Brooke Williams and award–winning author Elisabeth Tova Bailey to Vietnamese Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh and internationally known poet Jane Hirshfield. THOMAS LOWE FLEISCHNER, editor of Nature, Love, Medicine, is a naturalist and conservation biologist, and founding director of the Natural History Institute at Prescott College, where he has taught interdisciplinary environmental studies for almost three decades. He edited The Way of Natural History and authored Singing Stone: A Natural History of the Escalante Canyons and Desert Wetlands.