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What is environmental history? It is a kind of history that seeks understanding of human beings as they have lived, worked, and thought in relationship to the rest of nature through the changes brought by time. In this new edition of his seminal student textbook, J. Donald Hughes provides a masterful overview of the thinkers, topics, and perspectives that have come to constitute the exciting discipline that is environmental history. He does so on a global scale, drawing together disparate trends from a rich variety of countries into a unified whole, illuminating trends and key themes in the process. Those already familiar with the discipline will find themselves invited to think about the subject in a new way. This new edition has been updated to reflect recent developments, trends, and new work in environmental history, as well as a brand new note on its possible future. Students and scholars new to environmental history will find the book both an indispensable guide and a rich source of inspiration for future work.
An Environmental History of the World is a concise history, from Ancient to Modern times, of the interaction between human societies and the other forms of life that inhabit our planet. This original work follows a chronological path through the history of mankind, in relationship to ecosystems around the world. Each chapter concentrates on a general period in human history which has been characterised by large scale changes in the relationship of human societies to the biosphere, and gives three case-studies that illustrate the significant patterns occurring at that time. Little environmental or historical knowledge is assumed from the reader in this introduction to environmental history.
How did ancient societies change the environment and how do their actions continue to affect us today? In this dramatically revised and expanded second edition of the work entitled Pan’s Travail, J. Donald Hughes examines the environmental history of the classical period and argues that the decline of ancient civilizations resulted in part from their exploitation of the natural world. Focusing on Greece and Rome, as well as areas subject to their influences, Hughes offers a detailed look at the impact of humans and their technologies on the ecology of the Mediterranean basin. Evidence of deforestation in ancient Greece, the remains of Roman aqueducts and mines, and paintings on centuries-o...
The relationship of the Native Americans to nature is the focus of the book. Features coverage of Southwestern tribes including Papago, Navajo, Hopi, Zuñi, Apache and Havasupai.
""Many people express surprise," writes J. Donald Hughes, "when they are told that environmental problems existed in the ancient world; they are used to thinking of the environment as an exclusively modern concern. But an examination of the evidence shows that the Greeks and Romans not only suffered from some of the same predicaments that plague the present scene, but in many cases they were aware of them and commented on them."" "In Pan's Travail Hughes examines the environmental history of the classical period and argues that the decline of ancient civilizations resulted in part from exploitation of the natural world. Focusing on Greece and Rome, as well as on areas subject to their influe...
What is environmental history? It is a kind of history that seeks understanding of human beings as they have lived, worked and thought in relationship to the rest of nature through the changes brought by time. In this seminal student textbook, J. Donald Hughes provides a masterful overview of the thinkers, topics and perspectives that have come to constitute the exciting discipline that is environmental history. He does so on a global scale, drawing together disparate trends from a rich variety of countries into a unified whole, illuminating trends and key themes in the process. Those already familiar with the discipline will find themselves invited to think about the subject in a new way. Students and scholars new to environmental history will find the book both an indispensable guide and a rich source of inspiration for future work
FORM AND SOUL is a philosophical work that announces a great break with the past, the reality of which is being felt by all of us who are the esteemed netizens of the emerging digital age civilization. Leaving behind the machine age conceptions of ideas, societies and civilizations this work tries to realize the ethos of a new civilization where artificial intelligence, information technology and quantum mechanics have turned the ideas of human relations and collective existence upside down. This new world of cyber campaigns and collective intelligence is on the verge of leaving behind the odds of cultural nationalism and liberal democracy to reach a new ideological platform where mankind can base its material and moral existence. This work can be considered as a great forward movement following Francis Fukuyama's ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ and Samuel Huntington's ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order’ to interpret the world where relations between various levels of human organizations are determined by a matrix of dynamic social flows. Defining this newly emerging global social matrix is the main theme of this work.
Although the organizing principle of virtually every world history text is "development", the editor of this volume maintains that this traditional approach fails to address the issue of sustainability. By adopting the ecological process as their major theme, the authors show how the process of human interaction with the natural environment unfolded in the past, and offer perspective on the ecological crises in our world at the beginning of the 21st century. Topics range from broad regional studies that examine important aspects of the global environment that affect nations, to a study of the widespread influence of one important individual on his nation and beyond. The authors take different approaches, but all share the conviction that world history must take ecological process seriously, and they all recognize the ways in which the living and non-living systems of the earth have influenced the course of human affairs.