Browse Items (24 total)

A global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race.Until around 11,000 b.c., all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the…

Since before recorded history, people have congregated near water. But as growing populations around the globe continue to flow toward the coasts on an unprecedented scale and climate change raises water levels, our relationship to the sea has begun…

In this first full history of around-the-world travel, Joyce E. Chaplin brilliantly tells the story of circumnavigation. For almost five hundred years, human beings have been finding ways to circle the Earth—by sail, steam, or liquid fuel; by…

The rise of China and its status as a leading global factory-combined with an increasing desire worldwide for inexpensive toys, clothes, and food-are altering the way people live and consume. At the same time, the world appears wary of the real costs…

This is the first environmental history of China during the three thousand years for which there are written records. It is also a treasure trove of literary, political, aesthetic, scientific, and religious sources, which allow the reader direct…

Examining aseries of El Niño-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davisdis closes the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arroganceand natural incident that…

The first anthology of nature writing to include representative works from the worlds myriad cultures--ancient and modern-- Encompassing Nature is a landmark work that will broaden the frame of reference through which nature writing is understood..…

Ever since Darwin and The Descent of Man, the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in Catching Fire, renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is…

The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of “slow violence” to describe these threats, Rob Nixon…

Earth evolves. From first atom to molecule, mineral to magma, granite crust to single cell to verdant living landscape, ours is a planet constantly in flux. In this radical new approach to Earth’s biography, senior Carnegie Institution researcher and…