Product Description: Water—or the lack of it—has shaped the contours of the American West and continues to dominate the region's development. From the incursions of the Spanish conquistadores to the dams of the New Deal era, humans have sought water in these arid lands as the key to survival and success...read more

Product Description: The Weyerhaeuser name looms large in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington, and Arkansas, attached to paper mills, cabinet factories, and vast tracts of land, both forested and cut over. Frederick Weyerhaeuser, the man who started the lumber empire, significantly shaped the American economy and landscape from Wisconsin westward in the nineteenth century...read more

Product Description: The environmental history of Israel is as intriguing and complex as the nation itself. Situated on a mere 8,630 square miles, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf, varying from desert to forest, Israel’s natural environment presents innumerable challenges to its growing population...read more

Product Description: The subject of historic struggle and contemporary dispute, public lands in the United States are treasured spaces. In Public Lands, Public Debates, environmental historian Char Miller explores the history of conservation thinking and the development of a government agency with stewardship at its mission...read more

A collection of insightful, beautifully written essays about the history and culture of San Antonio looks at urban planning, the water wars with Mexico, diversity, commercialism, and the city's recent unusual attempt to fashion itself into a health resort. Original.

The Greatest Good is a compelling photographic history of forestry in the United States. This new edition, which inaugurates the centennial year of the USDA Forest Service, celebrates 100 years of professional forestry in America. Chapter One reveals how crucial wood was to the livelihood of nineteenth-century Americans, and chronicles the advent of the belief that forestry was the key to producing timber without destroying the forests. Chapter Two explores the growth of the profession, including the creation of the Forest Service, and identifies the controversies that often erupted over new practices and controls. Chapter Three highlights the intensified demand for wood for housing after World War II and the subsequent emergence of environmental consciousness that brought new challenges to the profession. Finally, Chapter Four examines the birth of sustainable forestry and documents how the scientific and technological advances of the past 25 years have enabled foresters to extend the nation s wood supply and restore the land. Through photograph and word, The Greatest Good illustrates the many contributions that foresters and forestry have made to our society.

The authors assemble a selection of writing from the last fifty years of The Texas Observer, a renowned left-leaning newspaper in Austin Texas, showcasing the counterweight to mainstream politics in the notoriously conservative Lone Star State.

Presents a biography of Gifford Pinchot, an avid outdoorsman from his youth, who became the architect of the conservation movement of the early twentieth century. (view table of contents)

Product Description: "Water in the West" offers a lively primer on the region's most precious and scarce resource. This volume collects the best reporting on the subject, drawn from the pages of "High Country News," the newspaper that has set the standard for coverage of environmental issues in the West...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Endangered ecosystem or renewable resource? How we feel about forests has to do with more than trees.This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the history of forestry in the United States, exploring the impact of the discipline on natural and human landscapes since the mid-nineteenth century. Through important articles that have helped define the field, it assesses the development of the forestry profession and the U.S. Forest Service, analyzes the political and scientific controversies that have marked forestry's evolution, and discloses the transformations in America's commitment to its forested estate.American Forests highlights the intersection of the political, social, and environmental forces that have determined the use and abuse of American forests. It examines changes both in the assumptions that have defined forest management and in the scientific approach to—and political justification for—timber harvesting in our national forests. It sheds light on the ongoing debate between utilization and conservation, addressing arguments from environmentalists, the timber industry, sportsmen, and politicians while exploring the interaction between public opinion and public policy. It provides sharp insights into the most important players in the politics of forestry, from George Perkins Marsh and Berhard Fernow to Gifford Pinchot and Teddy Roosevelt. And it addresses issues as wide-ranging as budgeting, clearcutting, and the regulation of livestock grazing on national forest lands.This multifaceted volume draws on the insights of scholars in conservation and ecology, economics, history, law, and political science to make a definitive contribution to the study and practice of forestry. By both clarifying and extending recent debate about the political purpose, scientific character, and environmental rationales of forestry in America, it will help define the place of forests in our future. (view table of contents)

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