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“Deals masterfully with a neglected crisis, how climate change is driving migration . . . The work broaches solutions both practical . . . and political.”—Christopher E. Goldthwait, former US Ambassador With global climate change upon us, it is imperative to start thinking about the massive numbers of people who will be displaced by environmental crises. The rise in sea levels alone will account for hundreds of millions of refugees around the globe. In Rising Tides, John R. Wennersten and Denise Robbins face the difficult questions that will have to be answered: How will people be relocated and settled? Is it possible to offer environmental refugees temporary or permanent asylum? Will ...
"A hundred years ain't such a very long time on the Eastern Shore," local farmers and watermen used to say, and that is a telling refrain. Past and present mix easily on the Shore, and, in this respect, as well as in certain local customs and habits of language, the region is very much still an old-fashioned English society. Until fairly recently, the peninsula was one of the most geographically isolated regions on the Atlantic coast. In this isolated society, the most important factors have been agriculture, seafaring, and race--a blend of soil, sea, and soul. In his attempt to convey the special character of the region--before accelerating change affects its transformation--John Wennersten has used these themes as a framework for an absorbing narrative. His insights into how these elements affected the development of the area and its current character take the story of the Eastern Shore beyond mere facts and into the realm of socio-cultural history. This is a fascinating overview of an unusual--and perhaps vanishing--lifestyle.
In the decades after the Civil War, Chesapeake Bay became the scene of a life and death struggle to harvest the oyster.
Part of the problem in dealing with public perceptions about Chesapeake Bay is that people think it will last forever. This obviously is not true. As oceanographer Jerry Schubel has noted, twenty thousand years ago there was no Chesapeake Bay. Since that time, there have been other beginnings and endings of other Chesapeake Bays. As we look to the future, however, we can see that increasingly the transformation of the Chesapeake will be more a human phenomenon than a work of nature.
An Unspoiled Waterway teeming with fish, its shores a virtual paradise, the Anacostia River figured prominently in the original plans for the new nation's elegant, bustling capital. Instead it quickly became a poster child for America's tragically neglected and abused urban waterways. With a clear eye and sharp pen, accomplished environmental historian John R. Wennersten takes an unsparing look at the historic forces and misguided policies that all but ruined a beautiful river while imposing the burden of pollution unequally on Washington's poorer citizens. Anacostia offers a much needed corrective to the uncritical assumptions of growth for its own sake and the cost it imposes on our waters, our natural resources, and the health of our citizenry. It also demonstrates how thoughtless destruction can be stopped, and rivers restored. Book jacket.
In an age of misinformation and public apprehension about climate change, droughts, floods, and polluted drinking water, Global Thirst offers a critical perspective on water, its uses, and access, as a major global issue in the 21st century. Environmental historian John R. Wennersten turns an unflinching eye on today's global water problems, critically analyzing pollution, drought, dying rivers, and the privatization of water utilities. He also offers commentary on what kinds of sustainable water options we should be pursuing in the 21st century. Wennersten's analysis of water ranges from Nigeria to India and China to Australia and the United States–it goes a long way towards correcting the popular notion that "there will always be water." This is an ideal treatise for professionals working in government, the environment, international affairs, and public policy.
Today more than ever, large numbers of Americans are leaving the United States. It is estimated that by the end of the decade, some 10 million of the brightest and most talented Americans, representing an estimated $136 billion in wages, will be living and working overseas. This emigration trend contradicts the internalized myth of America as the land of affluence, opportunity, and freedom. What is behind this trend? Wennersten argues that many people these days, from college students to retirees, are uncertain or ambivalent about what it means to be an American. For example, many are uncomfortable with that they believe America has come to represent to the rest of the world. At the same tim...
An appendix documents the many small islands that have dropped entirely from view since the seventeenth century.
Long before Wikileaks and social media, the journalist Drew Pearson exposed to public view information that public officials tried not to reveal. A self-professed "keyhole peeper", Pearson devoted himself to determining what politicians were doing behind closed doors. From 1932 to 1969, his daily "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column and weekly radio and TV commentary broke secrets revealed classified information and passed along rumors based on sources high and low in the federal government. Intelligence agents searched fruitlessly for his sources, yet rarely learned them. Drawing on Pearson's extensive correspondence, diaries, and oral histories, The Columnist reveals the mystery behind Pearson's leaks and the accuracy of his most controversial revelations.
Being among bees is a full-body experience, Mark Winston writes—from the low hum of tens of thousands of insects and the pungent smell of honey and beeswax, to the sight of workers flying back and forth between flowers and the hive. The experience of an apiary slows our sense of time, heightens our awareness, and inspires awe. Bee Time presents Winston’s reflections on three decades spent studying these creatures, and on the lessons they can teach about how humans might better interact with one another and the natural world. Like us, honeybees represent a pinnacle of animal sociality. How they submerge individual needs into the colony collective provides a lens through which to ponder hu...