Earth Sciences, Geography & Environment Books
The University of Chicago Press How Green Became Good
Book SynopsisAs projects like Manhattan's High Line, Chicago's 606, China's eco-cities, and Ethiopia's tree-planting efforts show, cities around the world are devoting serious resources to urban greening. Formerly neglected urban spaces and new high-end developments draw huge crowds thanks to the considerable efforts of city governments. But why are greening projects so widely taken up, and what good do they do? In How Green Became Good, Hillary Angelo uncovers the origins and meanings of the enduring appeal of urban green space, showing that city planners have long thought that creating green spaces would lead to social improvement. Turning to Germany's Ruhr Valley (a region that, despite its ample open space, was greened with the addition of official parks and gardens), Angelo shows that greening is as much a social process as a physical one. She examines three moments in the Ruhr Valley's urban history that inspired the creation of new green spaces: industrialization in the late nineteenth centuTrade Review“Angelo risks sacrilege; she takes on nature as a mundane tool of politics, entertainment, and real estate. The ideology of green comes out of its black box, exposed to insightful and historically aware analysis.” -- Harvey Molotch, New York University“Written with verve and meticulous attention to historical detail, How Green Became Good illuminates the hows and whys of the contemporary phenomenon of ‘urbanized nature.’ Angelo convincingly moves from micro-level investigations of moral judgments and responses surrounding pet rabbits to macro-level examinations of top-down globalized urban greening projects. A tour de force, this book will prompt a rethinking of the green-as-good reflex." -- Robin Wagner-Pacifici, The New School for Social Research"How Green Became Good takes the conventional western urban imagination out of Chicago’s Loop and past Los Angeles’s Sixty-Mile-Circle to the expanse of the Ruhr and rewrites urban theory from there. This brilliant book on more than a century of “urbanized nature” in Germany’s former industrial heartland will forever change our views of the industrial city as preceding the green city. If you are looking for a concept of the urban beyond the Zwischenstadt, you will find it in Angelo’s magisterial contribution." -- Roger Keil, York University"How Green Became Good is an exceptionally robust work of historical sociology, shown by the fact that Angelo not only provides the reader with the historical specifics of each greening project analyzed in the book, but also uses those details to skillfully build a general theoretical explanation for how urban greening works as a social process. . . . Angelo’s work serves as a model for other scholars inclined to take a historical approach to answering question sin urban sociology and urban studies." * Urban Studies *"How Green Became Good is a powerful work of urban sociology, culture, and historical and comparative methods. In it, Hillary Angelo challenges conventional accounts of why urban greening became a public good." * Social Forces *"Interested in how planning projects, specifically those sold as 'green,' can exacerbate or ignore existing inequalities. . . Angelo’s more specific question is why have all types of cities taken up 'greening' projects rather than just large, industrial cities? . . . Taken on their own terms, these projects have been remarkable successes, ecologically and economically, but Angelo’s point is clear: the 'greening' at the core of their conceptions has blunted social criticism. . ." * Journal of Urban Affairs *"These interventions deserve wide reading by all sociologists, not just urban sociologists or environmental sociologists." * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Urban Greening beyond CitiesPart 1 Green Becomes Good 1 The Imaginative Turn to the City 2 Building an Urban Future through NaturePart 2 Contested Social Ideals 3 The Space-Time of Democracy: Parks as a Bourgeois Public Sphere 4 Proletarian Counterpublics: Reimagining the ColoniesPart 3 The Social Life of Urbanized Nature 5 Producing Nature, Projecting Urban Futures 6 Experiencing Nature as a Public Good Conclusion: Global Greening Today Acknowledgments References Index
£24.70
The University of Chicago Press The Geographical Imagination in America 18801950
Book SynopsisSusan Schulten tells a story of Americans beginning to see the world around them, tracing U.S. attitudes towards world geography from the end of 19th century exploration to the dawn of the Cold War. The work discusses the study of geography and its place in culture and politicsTrade Review"Schulten steps up to the challenge of producing a full-length work about the political economy of mapmaking.... An ambitious history of the rise of popular cartography in the United States." - Nicholas Lemann, The New Yorker "A well-documented account of how politics, history and culture influenced the study and presentation of geography.... Theory is wisely balanced by a hodgepodge of odd and interesting facts about maps, politics and American cultural trends." - Publishers Weekly "An important new work.... Schulten's original synthesis ranges widely and insightfully from the effects of war on map design to map projection as a reflection of how Americans saw themselves as an emergent world power." - Mark Monmonier, author of How to Lie with Maps and Air Apparent
£28.50
The University of Chicago Press Oceans A Scientific American Reader Scientific
Book SynopsisCovering nearly three-quarters of our planet, the world's oceans are a vast and unique ecosystem from which all life on Earth originated. This book features articles that investigate the origins of the world's oceans, the diversity of life in the water, the state of global fisheries, the dangers of natural disasters, and the perils oceans face.
£65.00
University of Chicago Press Mapping Europes Borderlands Russian Cartography
Book SynopsisMaps shape and communicate information, for the sake of improved orientation. This title states that maps exist for states as well as individuals, and they need to be interpreted as expressions of power and knowledge.Trade Review"No one has approached the history of East European cartography with greater dedication, energy, and scholarly objectivity than Steven Seegel. This imposing work will prove indispensable in years and decades to come for anyone who wishes to understand the historical relationship between constructions of place and power." (Timothy Snyder, Yale University)"
£61.52
The University of Chicago Press Evolution of Fossil Ecosystems
Book SynopsisTrade Review"This excellent book describes and illustrates fourteen sites that range over 560 million years.... It's just the job for students and teachers, and the general fossil enthusiast will get a lot from this guide to some of the world's best fossil sites." - New Scientist"
£52.62
The University of Chicago Press Fragile Web
£27.55
The University of Chicago Press Serengeti II Dynamics Management Conservation
Book SynopsisThis analysis of the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem in East Africa examines the ecosystem at every level. Drawing on data from long-term studies, it also discusses the processes that have produced the Serengeti's biological diversity, with its species-species and species-environment interactions.
£55.96
The University of Chicago Press The Plan of Chicago Daniel Burnham and the
Book SynopsisA document in the history of urban planning, Daniel Burnham's "1909 Plan of Chicago", produced in collaboration with the Commercial Club of Chicago, proposed many of the city's most distinctive features. This title reveals the Plan's central role in shaping the ways people envision the cityscape and urban life itself.Trade Review"An imaginative, beautifully produced, and visually appealing masterpiece of stirring prose and stunning illustration.... Carl Smith's book is a concise, splendidly accessible, and beautifully constructed introduction to a seminal work of American urban planning and its enduring influence on Chicago and other American cities." - William Bryk, New York Sun "A concise and reader-friendly introduction to the visionary and ambitious plan that helped shape much of the Windy City as we know it today." - Kevin Nance, Chicago Sun-Times "The story of Burnham's plan has been told many times but never in a more appealing or succinct style than in Carl Smith's modest little book.... What sets this book apart from other Burnham histories is Smith's attention to the filthy, miserable, nineteenth-century city that repelled and motivated Burnham, and the extraordinary promotional effort led by the Commercial Club of Chicago that sold his plan to the public.... A clear-eyed assessment of Burnham." - Lois Wille, Chicago Tribune"
£12.61
The University of Chicago Press The Porch
Book SynopsisSolidly grounded in ideas, ecology, and architecture, Charlie Hailey's The Porch takes us on a journey along the edges of nature where the outside comes in, hosts meet guests, and imagination runs wild.Trade Review"The weighty intimations of myth on these pages are leavened by the book's beautifully prosaic and practical accounts of porch architecture. There could hardly be a more timely book when breathing walls, like bodies, are places where experiences of necessity meet those of freedom."-- "David Leatherbarrow, University of Pennsylvania" "The Porch displays the best traits of university press books: an enormous body of research, backed by years of careful engagement with intellectual and cultural history, and a faith that the world is worth close consideration. Hailey's prose is patient and deliberate, the mood reverent and ready for wonder. He has written an extraordinary book--literary and philosophical, sensuous and wise--a book with which to confront our changing world." -- "Daegan Miller, author of 'This Radical Land'"Table of Contents1. PORCH 2. TILT 3. AIR 4. SCREEN 5. BLUE 6. ACCLIMATE Acknowledgments Notes Illustration Credits Index
£19.95
The University of Chicago Press What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Consisting of a stunning array of essays, poems, and interviews, this collection makes the case that the actions and perspectives of a single person can have a ripple effect across generations of people and nature. . . . Recommended for readers interested in environmentalism, anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy, and Indigenous peoples in the United States." * Library Journal *"A wonderfully unclassifiable book, What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be? challenges us to live not just for tomorrow, or for our children, but for many generations in the future. Featuring interviews with and essays by thinkers from across social disciplines—anthropologists, environmental activists, Indigenous leaders, sociologists, and more." * Book Culture Blog *"This compendium of poems, essays, and dialogues contains the voices of a range of writers and speakers from widely disparate cultures, traditions, and ethnicities, speaking out as they grapple with this question. The question itself causes one to pause, containing, as it does, an implicit instruction to consider one’s own ancestors and their/our relationship with the future. Who were they and what has their impact been upon ourselves and the world? How should or might we, ourselves, carry their influence into the future, while adding the work of our own lives to that stream?" * Resilience.org *"This volume edited by Hausdoerffer, Hecht, Nelson, and Cummings incorporates the work of 47 contributors addressing the urgent and central concern of establishing spiritual, social, and ecological continuity in this uncertain age. Employing diverse textual strategies and genres, including essays, ethnographic interviews, and poems, these authors are intent on communicating the understanding and reactions of indigenous people to the problem of providing guidance to future generations. Arguing that the world is currently in the throes of an ecological, economic, and political crisis, this study invites readers to seek essential new wisdom by exploring the traditional wisdom of indigenous ancestors, so as to embrace the role of "ancestor" in the present. . . .Highly recommended." * Choice *“What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be? explores the challenge of climate disruption and ecological disaster through poems, essays and interviews. By offering diverse responses from a worldly selection of multicultural voices, the book provokes examination and inspiration. At the same time, the collection delivers no easy answers. Instead, the responses are personal and detailed, thick with values and reflection." * Gunnison Country Times *“What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be? captures the deep dialogue, continuity, and resonance Indigenous peoples feel and espouse for ancestors, ourselves, our children—with a view for the now and for our very uncertain future. And yet, its audience is at once Indigenous and Universal. Weaving poetry, narrative, interview, essay, and spirit, it is a unique, landmark tapestry. Utterly timely and profoundly urgent.” -- Gregory Cajete, author of "Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence"“The questions this book raises are of such staggering importance and relevance today. I cried. I laughed. I smiled. Many reading moments, beautiful or tragic or just deeply human, are difficult to forget.” -- Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of "The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge"Table of ContentsIntroduction Poem: Unsigned Letter to a Human in the 21st Century Jamaal MayI. Embedded: Our ancestral responsibility is deeply rooted in a multigenerational relationship to place. a. Poem: Great Granddaddy Taiyon Coleman b. Essays: i. Ancestor of Fire Aaron A. Abeyta ii. Grounded Aubrey Streit Krug iii. My Home / It’s Called the Darkest Wild Sean Prentiss c. Interview: Wendell Berry Leah Bayens d. Poem: To the Children of the 21st Century Frances H. KakugawaII. Reckoning: Reckoning with ancestors causing and ancestors enduring historical trauma. a. Poem: Forgiveness? Shannon Gibney b. Essays: i. Sister’s Stories Eryn Wise ii. Of Land and Legacy Lindsay Lunsford iii. Cheddar Man Brooke Williams iv. Formidable Kathleen Dean Moore c. Interview: Caleen Sisk Brooke Parry Hecht and Toby McLeod d. Poem: Promises, Promises Frances H. KakugawaIII. Healing: Enhancing some ancestral cycles while breaking others. a. Poem: To Future Kin Brian Calvert b. Essays: i. Moving with the Rhythm of Life Katherine Kassouf Cummings ii. (A Korowai) For When You Are Lost Manea Sweeney iii. To Hope of Becoming Ancestors Princess Daazhraii Johnson and Julianne Warren c. Interview: Camille T. Dungy and Crystal Williams d. Poem: Yes I Will Frances H. KakugawaIV. Interwoven: Our descendants will know the kind of ancestor we are by reading the lands and waters where we lived. a. Poem: Alive in This Century Leora Gansworth b. Essays: i. What Is Your Rice? John Hausdoerffer ii. Restoring Indigenous Mindfulness within the Commons of Human Consciousness Jack Loeffler iii. Reading Records with Estella Leopold Curt Meine iv. How to Be Better Ancestors Winona LaDuke c. Interview: Wes Jackson John Hausdoerffer and Julianne Lutz Warren d. Poem: Omoiyare Frances H. KakugawaV. Earthly: Other-than-human beings are our ancestors, too. a. Poem: LEAF Elizabeth Herron b. Essays: i. The City Bleeds Out (Reflections on Lake Michigan) Gavin Van Horn ii. I Want the Earth to Know Me as a Friend Enrique Salmón iii. The Apple Tree Peter Forbes iv. Humus Catroina Sandilands v. Building Good Soil Robin Kimmerer c. Interview: Vandana Shiva John Hausdoerffer d. Poem: Your Inheritance Frances H. KakugawaVI. Seventh Fire a. Poem: Time Traveler Lyla June Johnston b. Essays: i. Seeds Native Youth Guardians of the Waters 2017 Participants and Nicola Wagenberg ii. Onëö’ (Word for Corn in Seneca) Kaylena Bray iii. Landing Oscar Guttierez iv. Regenerative Melissa K. Nelson v. Nourishing Rowen White vi. Light Rachel Wolfgramm and Chellie Spiller c. Interview: Ilarion Merculieff Brooke Parry Hecht d. Poem: Lost in the Milky Way Linda Hogan Acknowledgments Notes About the Contributors Index
£78.85
The University of Chicago Press Tiger Moon Tracking the Great Cats in Nepal
Book Synopsis"Tiger Moon" is the powerful, poetic story of the Sunquists' two years studying tigers in Nepal. A new afterword tells the story of promising efforts to reconnect fractured Nepalese tiger habitats.Trade Review"[F]ull of unusual anecdotes... sloth bears shuffle by, leopards prowl the campsite's perimeter, scores of brilliant birds flit overhead, and camp elephants reveal their personalities.... [T]he tiger and the environment it occupies have become... a symbol of what is at stake. Tiger Moon is a chronicle of this symbolism, told passionately and accurately." - Ronald L. Tilson, Natural History
£22.80
University of Chicago Press Ancient Perspectives
Book SynopsisIn each society, maps served as critical economic, political, and personal tools, but there was little consistency in how and why they were made. This title presents an overview of cartography and its uses.
£69.41
The University of Chicago Press Mystic Bones
Book SynopsisThe desert has long been a theme in Mark C. Taylor's work, from his inquiries into the religious significance of Las Vegas to his writings on earthworks artist Michael Heizer. At once haunted by absence and loss, the desert, for Taylor, is a place of exile and wandering, of temptation and tribulation. Bones, in turn, speak to his abiding interest in remnants, ruins, ritual, and immanence. Taylor combines his fascination in the detritus of the desert and its philosophical significance with his work in photography in Mystic Bones. A collection of remarkably elegant close-up images of weathered bonesremains of cattle, elk, and deer skeletons gathered from the desert of the American WestMystic Bones pairs each photograph with a philosophical aphorism. These images are buttressed by a major essay, Rubbings of Reality, in which Taylor explores the use of bones in the religious rituals of native inhabitants of the Western desert and, more broadly, the appearance of bones in myth and religious reality. Meditating on the way in which bones paradoxically embody both the personal and the impersonalat one time they are our very substance, but eventually they become our last remnants, anonymous, memorializing oblivionTaylor here suggests ways in which natural processes can be thought of as art, and bones as art objects. Bones, Taylor writes, draw us elsewhere. To follow their traces beyond the edge of the human is to wander into ageless times and open spaces where everything familiar becomes strange. By revealing beauty hidden in the most unexpected places, these haunting images refigure death in a way that allows life to be seen anew. A bold new work from a respected philosopher of religion, Mystic Bones is Taylor's his most personal statement of after-God theology.
£30.32
University of Chicago Press Planning as Persuasive Storytelling The
Book SynopsisThis study looks at the world of political conflict surrounding the Commonwealth Edison Company's nuclear power plant construction programme in northern Illinois during the 1980s. It examines the theory that planning can best be thought of as a form of persuasive storytelling.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Tables Preface Acknowledgments Prelude: A Strange Place, an Alien Language 1: The Irony of Modernist Planning 2: The Argumentative or Rhetorical Turn in Planning 3: The Modernist Institution and Rhetoric of Regulated Natural Monopoly 4: Commonwealth Edison's Ambitious Nuclear Power Expansion Plan, 1973- 1986 5: The Best Deal for Illinois Consumers? Assessing Commonwealth Edison's "Negotiated Settlement" 6: Edison Completes Its Nuclear Power Expansion Plan, But Who Will Pay for the Last of It? 7: Precinct Captains at the Nuclear Switch? Exploring Chicago's Electric Power Options 8: Survey Research as a Trope in Electric Power Planning Arguments 9: Precinct Captains at the Nuclear Switch? The Mayor's Hand Turns up Empty 10: Frozen in a Passionate Embrace: Allocating Pain, Allocating Blame 11: The Plateau in the Web: Planning as Persuasive Storytelling within a Web of Relationships Postlude: E-mail to a Friend Notes References Illustration Credits Index
£104.00
The University of Chicago Press Planning as Persuasive Storytelling
Book SynopsisThis study looks at the world of political conflict surrounding the Commonwealth Edison Company's nuclear power plant construction programme in northern Illinois during the 1980s. It examines the theory that planning can best be thought of as a form of persuasive storytelling.
£28.50
The University of Chicago Press We Are All Whalers
Book SynopsisRelating his experiences caring for endangered whales, a veterinarian and marine scientist shows we can all share in the salvation of these imperiled animals.Trade Review"This is a truly compelling, captivating, and in places heart-wrenching story of one scientist's journey through a career dealing with a highly endangered species whose very predicament is our fault and whose recovery is also our responsibility, as bycatch is preventable. The power lies with the reader. We are all consumers and hence all culpable in the environmental costs of fish products and goods and services transported at sea. Coexistence is possible, perhaps within our lifetime, and Moore's book lays the foundation for work yet to come on how to make that coexistence a reality."--Moira Brown, Canadian Whale InstituteTable of ContentsPreface 1 Young Man, There Are No Whales Left 2 The First Whale I Had Ever Seen 3 Whaling with Intent 4 The Bowhead Is More than Food 5 Whaling by Accident 6 Treating Whales 7 Our Skinny Friend 8 Taking the Long View: Why Can’t We Let Right Whales Die of Old Age? Postscript 1: Getting Really Cold Postscript 2: A Lonely Tunnel with No Light at the End Acknowledgments Notes Index
£22.80
The University of Chicago Press Writing Ground Zero Japanese Literature the
Book SynopsisA study of the nuclear theme in Japanese intellectual and artistic life, recounting the history of Japanese public discourse around Hiroshima and Nagasaki from August 6, 1945, to the present day. It studies works from the earliest survivor writers up to Japanese intellectuals writing today.Table of ContentsPreface A Note on the Illustrations Introduction 1: Atrocity into Words 2: Genre and Post-Hiroshima Representation 3: The Three Debates 4: Hara Tamiki and the Documentary Fallacy 5: Poetry Against Itself 6: Ota Yoko and the Place of the Narrator 7: Oe Kenzaburo: Humanism and Hiroshima 8: Ibuse Masuji: Nature, Nostalgia, Memory 9: Nagasaki and the Human Future 10: The Atomic, the Nuclear, and the Total: Oda Makoto 11: Concluding Remarks: And Then Notes References Index
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press Written on Bamboo and Silk
Book SynopsisPaleography, which often overlaps with archaeology, deciphers ancient inscriptions and modes of writing to reveal the knowledge and workings of earlier societies. In this classic paleographic study of China, T. H.
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press Dawn at Mineral King Valley The Sierra Club the
Book SynopsisTrade Review"One of the most exciting books about U.S. public lands policy ever written." * Vail Daily *"Dawn at Mineral King Valley is a marvelous book. Daniel Selmi's voice is not only that of an authoritative legal scholar, but of an articulate, and forceful, storyteller. The saga of Mineral King as he tells it is an absorbing read and is a major contribution to environmental history in the United States." * National Parks Traveler *"Selmi. . . conducted extensive research and included both the miscalculations and successes of all participants: the Sierra Club, Disney, the Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Departments of Interior and Agriculture. Because of the author’s meticulous analysis of this pivotal story, this book would be an excellent resource for students of public relations, environmental studies, political science, public administration, law, journalism, and more." * Choice *"Selmi... ably explores changing attitudes toward the environment and one of the chief means Americans now use in disputes." * Harvard Magazine *“Dawn at Mineral King is a fascinating account. . . sprinkled with historical gems and gripping storytelling.” * Sierra Magazine *"Selmi has written an important and timely book on a local environmental conflict that has inspired both theoretical debates and institutional reforms." * Metascience *“Dawn at Mineral King Valley is an entertaining and fast-moving narrative filled with a fascinating collection of environmental stewards, motion picture icons, senior civil servants, fervent lawyers and judges, and legendary politicians. With spectacular background scenery, Selmi tells the story of a single Supreme Court case that affected not just the future of the Mineral King Valley in the California Sierras, but the future of the environment of the entire country.” * Andrea Sheridan Ordin, former US Attorney, Central District of California *“Selmi tells the remarkable story of how, against all odds, one of America’s iconic natural resources was saved from destruction just as the modern-day environmental movement was emerging and entering our legal framework. Focusing on an extraordinary array of characters, he conveys the human drama behind this epic environmental struggle. Lawyers and nonlawyers alike will thoroughly enjoy every twist and turn of this fascinating story.” * former US Senator Tom Udall, US Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa *“The Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Sierra Club v. Morton is one of the seminal cases in US environmental law, but today few experts in the field know how it came to be. Selmi’s deep research and fluid writing bring to light the colorful characters, the internal battles, and the legal intricacies. We see how the decisions of businesses, politicians, and environmental groups, the strategic choices of lawyers, and the philosophies of the justices shaped the case’s outcome and still influence the law half a century later.” * Michael B. Gerrard, director, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School *“Well documented and researched, Dawn at Mineral King Valley plays out a controversy that is as relevant today as it was at the beginning of environmental consciousness. Selmi is a compelling storyteller, exploring the dynamic history of this critical case while weaving in the role of Walt Disney and his company. He provides not only important insight into competing goals but also a pathway to environmental improvement.” * John C. Cruden, former Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, US Department of Justice *Table of ContentsPrincipal Participants Prologue: In the Supreme Court A Ski Development at Mineral King 1. A Resort in the American Alps 2. An Invitation from the Forest Service 3. Dueling Applications 4. A Cabinet Brawl 5. A Recreation and Conservation Plan The New World of the Courts 6. Formulating a Lawsuit 7. A Shocking Injunction 8. The Shutout 9. Standing Front and Center 10. Opening the Courthouse Door The Fate of Mineral King 11. Cracks in the Wall of Support 12. A Park-Barrel Bill Epilogue: The Inflection Point Acknowledgments Notes on Sources and Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index
£22.80
The University of Chicago Press Cartographic Humanism
Book SynopsisPiechocki calls for an examination of the idea of Europe as a geographical concept, tracing its development in the 15th and 16th centuries.Trade Review"Piechocki is conceptually rigorous, she reads many languages and her research is impeccable. She is a careful critic but also a deeply imaginative historian. This is a contribution to the 'darker side' of cartography and the Renaissance, emphasizing the relationship between writing and scholarship and the exercise of power and exploitation, but its analysis never departs from the measured and reflective." * Times Higher Education *"This is an ambitious book which convincingly achieves its goals. It makes great claims for Humanism, the Renaissance and especially for cartography in establishing a new idea of Europe, and presents detailed evidence for those claims in closely argued and highly detailed case studies." -- Michael Wintle * European History Quarterly *"[A] timely book...well worth a read." * Journal of Historical Geography *“Through a close reading of literary texts, Cartographic Humanism traces a shift in understanding of the shapes, meanings, relationships, and constituent parts of the globe. Piechocki’s linguistic range is astounding, and her fluid translations convey the poetry of the original passages. She has assembled a rich array of texts and images, and the imaginative ways in which she reads them add up to something new and compelling. She draws out their cartographic ideas and makes a convincing case for their centrality in defining both Europe and its swaggering presence across the globe. Her readings are fresh and energetic. The book will be a major contribution to literary and cultural studies and their intersection with the history of cartography.” -- Valerie A. Kivelson, author of Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and Its Meanings in Seventeenth-Century Russia"Katharina Piechocki’s Cartographic Humanism is an indispensable book for scholars in many disciplines who think or write about cartography, Europeanness, or [the] Renaissance." * The Polish Review *"Cartographic Humanism is the wonderful achievement of a major critic, scholar, literary historian and multicultural thinker. With wide-ranging scholarship, philological acuteness, sensitivity to textual and poetic nuance, and enviable linguistic ease in Latin, German, Polish, French, Italian, Spanish, English and Portuguese, Katharina Piechocki offers a new understanding of the sixteenth-century cartographic invention of Europe from a pot-pourri of real and imagined borderlands. In taut analyses of writers little studied outside specialist contexts or well-known but not as mappers of a new Europe—Conrad Celtis, Maciej Miechowita, Geoffroy Tory, Girolamo Fracastoro and Luís Vaz de Camões—Piechocki tracks a cartopoietic story that 'starts' with efforts to delimit central (Germanic), eastern (Polish or 'Sarmatic') and a core (French) 'Europe' from and against indeterminate or non-existent Asian, Mediterranean and African borders, passes through attempts to establish this 'place' against an also indeterminate other—'America' or 'not-Europe,' all intimately bound, in Fracastoro, to disease and/or its cure and to the fictive imagination, and 'ends' with Camões’ nomad poetic imposition of a colonizing Mediterranean map on an age-old Indian Ocean one, a European cartography on and of the world. In the effervescent Renaissance scholarship of history as cartography Piechocki’s is a splendidly compelling new voice, one, too, that lets us see hitherto silent or 'peripheral' actors as key to modern Europe’s invention." -- Timothy Reiss, author of Mirages of the Selfe: Patterns of Personhood in Ancient and Early Modern Europe"Cartographic Humanism is a tour de force. Impeccably researched and beautifully written, this major intervention into the histories of cartography and literature asks what we mean when we say ‘Europe.’ Piechocki addresses this question—so urgent today—by exploring how early modern poets and mapmakers imagined interstitial geographies and, thus, Europe’s ever-changing borders and contact zones. Drawing from a rich multilingual archive of humanists from Germany, Poland, France, Italy, and Portugal, Cartographic Humanism shows that Europe is not a monolith and never was. A must-read not only for scholars of early modernity, but for anyone who has ever said the word ‘Europe.’” -- Phillip John Usher, author of The Exterranean: Extraction in the Humanist Anthropocene“Cartographic Humanism is a deeply ambitious, exhaustively researched, and carefully argued book that covers a number of literary and historical issues in Renaissance European culture. Piechocki successfully brings together the unwieldy materials of language, local identification, a multidisciplinary approach, and temporal breadth, providing valuable insight into Latin humanist texts that undergird more familiar vernacular cartographic texts.” -- William J. Kennedy, author of Petrarchism at Work: Contextual Economies in the Age of Shakespeare"Katharina N. Piechocki’s elegant and incisive new work on how an assemblage of sixteenth-century humanists took the classical designation of 'Europa' and transformed it from a loosely defined appendage to Asia’s landmass into a more sharply delineated territory with political and metaphysical overtones." * Isis *"How did Europe emerge through pictorial maps, and what did early Renaissance maps and cartopoetics have to do with that emergence? Cartographic Humanism is an intertextual study of the history of cartography that looks at transnational spaces of fantasy and exploration, knowledge and emotion, and symbolic places and claimed discovery. . . .In this effervescent book of literary criticism and the map, there is much creative ground to be gained." * Austrian History Yearbook *"Piechocki's study is a complex contribution to the study of the understanding of Europe in the Renaissance... Although this is never explicitly mentioned by the author herself, this book can also be understood as a serious examination of the reception of Ptolemaic geography in the 15th and 16th centuries... Piechocki's impressive contribution remeasures the broad field of early modern European research." * H-Soz-Kult (translated from German) *Table of ContentsList of Figures A Note on Translations Introduction 1. Gridding Europe’s Navel: Conrad Celtis’s Quatuor Libri Amorum secundum Quatuor Latera Germanie (1502) 2. A Border Studies Manifesto: Maciej Miechowita’s Tractatus de Duabus Sarmatiis (1517) 3. The Alpha and the Alif: Continental Ambivalence in Geoffroy Tory’s Champ fleury (1529) 4. Syphilitic Borders and Continents in Flux: Girolamo Fracastoro’s Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus (1530) 5. Cartographic Curses: Europe and the Ptolemaic Poetics of Os Lusíadas (1572) Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Index
£29.45
The University of Chicago Press From the Seashore to the Seafloor An Illustrated
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Look closely, dear people. Look with sympathy and fascination and awe. Look upon these majesties of marine life, read about them, learn something about them—and be grateful you were born on the blue planet. . . . The minds and the eyes of these two journeying women will take you places you haven’t been.” * David Quammen *"From the Seashore to the Seafloor . . . takes its readers on a watercolor illustrated journey between its title locations of the northeastern Pacific Ocean, blending into its narrative explanations of some of the creatures and systems to be found along the way with exhortations to conserve them." * The Well-read Naturalist *"From the Seashore to the Seafloor is a gem. . . Reflecting the scientific experiences of Dr. Voight, an expert in mollusks who has taken eight dives in the deep-sea Alvin submersible, each chapter focuses on a different marine ecosystem. . . Almost every page is graced with Macnamara’s carefully observed and lively, brilliantly colorful illustrations. . . From the Seashore to the Seafloor is a lovely and very informative work that would be welcome in any scientist’s or artist’s library." * American Biology Teacher *
£19.00
The University of Chicago Press Sonic Mobilities
Book SynopsisA fascinating look at how the popular musical culture of Guangzhou expresses the city's unique cosmopolitanism. Guangzhou is a large Chinese city like many others. With a booming economy and abundant job opportunities, it has become a magnet for rural citizens seeking better job prospects as well as global corporations hoping to gain a foothold in one of the world's largest economies. This openness and energy have led to a thriving popular music scene that is every bit the equal of Beijing's. But the musical culture of Guangzhou expresses the city's unique cosmopolitanism. A port city that once played a key role in China's maritime Silk Road, Guangzhou has long been an international hub. Now, new migrants to the city are incorporating diverse Chinese folk traditions into the musical tapestry. In Sonic Mobilities, ethnomusicologist Adam Kielman takes a deep dive into Guangzhou's music scene through two bands, Wanju Chuanzhang (Toy Captain) and Mabang (Caravan), that express tiesTrade Review“Sonic Mobilities is elegantly written and informative. Kielman has produced a thorough and well-written analysis of the production of worlds through “cosmopolitan musicking” in Southern China. Kielman’s extensive experience, first as a musician and then later as an ethnographer, affords him a truly deep understanding of the issues that impact the musical lives of those he encounters and the rich theoretical potential gained through performance in every sense of the word.” -- Jennifer Matsue, author of Making Music in Japan’s Underground: The Tokyo Hardcore Scene“Adam Kielman’s manuscript focuses on the life, condition, practice, experience, and culture created by music bands in Guangzhou. It is a valuable piece of original scholarship that fills in the gap of knowledge in this particular music epoch in China.” -- Anthony Fung, author of Global Capital, Local Culture: Transnational Media in China"This book is a valuable contribution to the fields of popular music studies and cultural studies in China. It presents a hybridized and mosaic-like musical landscape from a locality that accommodates both national and transnational migrations. Leveraging the historical depths of Chinese music and culture, Kielman constructs multi-dimensional micro-narratives of several individual musicians’ biographies, their connections to their music, their identities and their approaches to communication with the audiences." * The China Quarterly *Table of ContentsNote on Romanization 1 Musical Cosmopolitanism and New Mobilities 2 Worlding Genres 3 Places and Styles Converging 4 Singing in Dialects No One Understands 5 Musical Lives: Mabang 6 Musical Lives: Wanju Chuanzhang 7 Sonic Infrastructures Epilogue: Music, China, and the Political Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index
£72.20
The University of Chicago Press Sonic Mobilities
Book SynopsisA fascinating look at how the popular musical culture of Guangzhou expresses the city's unique cosmopolitanism. Guangzhou is a large Chinese city like many others. With a booming economy and abundant job opportunities, it has become a magnet for rural citizens seeking better job prospects as well as global corporations hoping to gain a foothold in one of the world's largest economies. This openness and energy have led to a thriving popular music scene that is every bit the equal of Beijing's. But the musical culture of Guangzhou expresses the city's unique cosmopolitanism. A port city that once played a key role in China's maritime Silk Road, Guangzhou has long been an international hub. Now, new migrants to the city are incorporating diverse Chinese folk traditions into the musical tapestry. In Sonic Mobilities, ethnomusicologist Adam Kielman takes a deep dive into Guangzhou's music scene through two bands, Wanju Chuanzhang (Toy Captain) and Mabang (Caravan), that express tiesTrade Review“Sonic Mobilities is elegantly written and informative. Kielman has produced a thorough and well-written analysis of the production of worlds through “cosmopolitan musicking” in Southern China. Kielman’s extensive experience, first as a musician and then later as an ethnographer, affords him a truly deep understanding of the issues that impact the musical lives of those he encounters and the rich theoretical potential gained through performance in every sense of the word.” -- Jennifer Matsue, author of Making Music in Japan’s Underground: The Tokyo Hardcore Scene“Adam Kielman’s manuscript focuses on the life, condition, practice, experience, and culture created by music bands in Guangzhou. It is a valuable piece of original scholarship that fills in the gap of knowledge in this particular music epoch in China.” -- Anthony Fung, author of Global Capital, Local Culture: Transnational Media in China"This book is a valuable contribution to the fields of popular music studies and cultural studies in China. It presents a hybridized and mosaic-like musical landscape from a locality that accommodates both national and transnational migrations. Leveraging the historical depths of Chinese music and culture, Kielman constructs multi-dimensional micro-narratives of several individual musicians’ biographies, their connections to their music, their identities and their approaches to communication with the audiences." * The China Quarterly *Table of ContentsNote on Romanization 1 Musical Cosmopolitanism and New Mobilities 2 Worlding Genres 3 Places and Styles Converging 4 Singing in Dialects No One Understands 5 Musical Lives: Mabang 6 Musical Lives: Wanju Chuanzhang 7 Sonic Infrastructures Epilogue: Music, China, and the Political Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index
£22.00
The University of Chicago Press Handbook of Quantitative Ecology
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Quantitative ecology is the application of mathematical modeling and probability theory to ecological concepts. Kitzes provides a short introduction to the quantitative methods most relevant to an introductory undergraduate course in ecology. In addition to short chapters introducing the methods of quantitative ecology, 20 chapters each present a simple example that can be studied through a quantitative method. Each chapter extends to four or five pages. After presenting the chapter's problem, the appropriate mathematical method is explained. Kitzes presents readers with specific instructions on setting up the mathematical model in a spreadsheet. His writing style is very clear, employing only minimal jargon. The mathematics is limited to algebra, presenting a low barrier to students without much mathematical background. The methods include difference equations, probability, matrix models, and several others. . . . Recommended." * Choice *"Handbook of Quantitative Ecology is most valuable. The book clearly, briefly, and gently introduces readers to many quantitative approaches one can find used in ecology today . . . This book can (and should) be given to the enthusiastic undergraduate with an interest in ecology, the master’s or PhD student with little to no mathematical training, or a professor looking to develop or reshape a course in quantitative biology. The author beautifully illustrates how effective quantitative analysis can be for solving ecological questions." * The Quarterly Review of Biology *“A stroke of genius. Kitzes does an excellent job of translating the properties of biological systems into mathematical models, using basic logic and without any advanced math. His approach is a powerful way to demystify these models and make them intuitive.” -- Corlett Wolfe Wood, University of Pennsylvania“A low-threshold, high-ceiling introduction. Kitzes’s book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students who wish to increase their quantitative understanding to be able to better engage with the literature (which has grown increasingly quantitative) and take the first step—a large leap, in fact—toward becoming practitioners of quantitative ecology.” -- Andrew Rominger, University of MaineTable of ContentsIntroduction Part I Change over Time Chapter 1 Introducing Difference Equations Chapter 2 Duckweed on a Pond: Exponential Growth Chapter 3 Throwing Shade I: Logistic Growth Chapter 4 Throwing Shade II: Lotka-Volterra Competition Chapter 5 Rabies Removal: SIR Models Part II Understanding Uncertainty Chapter 6 Introducing Probability Chapter 7 A Bird in the Cam I: Single-Variable Probability Chapter 8 A Bird in the Cam II: Two-Variable Probability Chapter 9 Picking Ticks: Bayes’s Rule Chapter 10 Rabbit Rates: Probability Distributions Part III Modeling Multiple States Chapter 11 Introducing Matrix Models Chapter 12 Imagine All the Beetles: Age-Structured Models Chapter 13 The Road to Succession: Transition Matrices Chapter 14 A Pair of Populations: Absorption Chapter 15 Fish Finders: Diffusion Part IV Explaining Data Chapter 16 Introducing Statistics Chapter 17 Seedling Counts I: Maximum Likelihood Chapter 18 Seedling Counts II: Model Selection Chapter 19 Flattened Frogs I: Generalized Linear Models Chapter 20 Flattened Frogs II: Hypothesis Testing Part V Expanding the Toolbox Chapter 21 Other Techniques Chapter 22 Bird Islands: Graphical Thinking Chapter 23 Max Plant Institute: Optimization Chapter 24 Bears with Me: Stochastic Simulation Chapter 25 Natives in the Neighborhood: Cellular Automata References Index
£20.00
The University of Chicago Press National Parks Forever Fifty Years of Fighting
Book SynopsisTrade Review"In this self-described 'dual memoir,' Jonathan and Destry take turns making the case—and then synthesize their viewpoints—that the National Park Service needs to be independent from the political 'whipsaw' of Washington politics, making it more like the Smithsonian Institution. . . . By providing both historical and personal context to the NPS’s politicization, the Jarvis brothers make a powerful case." * American Scientist *"There’s an argument that can be made, one backed by evidence, that the past fifty years have seen the most egregious attempts to subvert the mission of the National Park Service to preserve and protect natural resources unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations. That argument is clearly laid out in National Parks Forever. . . . A rich collection of institutional knowledge from within the machinations of government and from within the National Park Service." -- Kurt Repanshek * National Parks Traveler *“An earnest plea to move the National Park Service out of the highly politicized Department of the Interior and make it an independent agency.” * Kirkus Reviews *"Painful history plus a roadmap for change equals a compelling book." * Revelator *"Offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of the park service." -- Rob Hotakainen * E&E News:Greenwire *"The text offers a readable, well-organized argument for the independence proposal, illustrated by selected black-and-white photos. Readers interested in the US government's interface with conservation will appreciate this book. . . . Recommended." * Choice *"This book is compelling reading for all conservation biologists to emulate positive aspects and avoid pitfalls when developing an effective and self-sustaining park system." * Community Ecology *“In careers spanning half a century, both Jon and Destry Jarvis personally witnessed how the National Park Service became a partisan battleground for competing political ideologies, with policies ricocheting back and forth every time a new administration came to power. Filled with detailed firsthand accounts and insightful analysis, National Parks Forever not only chronicles the sorrowful result, but also points to a way to rescue ‘America’s best idea’—and make it even better.” -- Dayton Duncan, writer/producer, "The National Parks: America’s Best Idea"“The history retold by these two brothers, each outstanding in their lifelong dedication to Parks, is compelling and instructive, as well as a very good read. But their lessons learned and call for independence must be enacted if the parks are to survive. I advised NPS leadership for eight years; I witnessed that a major priority is to ensure that the full history of Americans is preserved in the places where that history unfolded. If NPS remains a political football, we will lose not only magnificent landscapes but the hundreds of parks that tell the true stories of America’s past. At this time when our history has become violently politicized, we must depoliticize the one federal agency that knows how to memorialize the truth for future generations.” -- Margaret J. Wheatley, author of "Leadership and the New Science" and former member of National Parks Advisory BoardTable of ContentsForeword by Chris Johns Preface Introduction and a Brief History of the National Parks: 1872-1972 One. Growing the System and Telling a More Complete Story Two. Alaska: Doing It Right the First Time Three. The Politics of Park Policy Four. Using the Best Available Science Five. Ecosystem Thinking Requires Collaboration Six. Interference in the Mission Seven. Independence: Finding a Sustainable Future for a Perpetuity Agency Notes Bibliography and Further Reading Index of People and Places
£72.20
University of Chicago Press Fascinating Shells
£19.12
The University of Chicago Press Downriver Into the Future of Water in the West
Book SynopsisTrade Review"[A] strength of Downriver is Hansman’s ability to make complex and historically fraught water issues understandable. It can take years of engagement to fully comprehend many of the topics she discusses, such as tribal water rights. But Hansman’s writing is clear and succinct, and she has done a great deal of research. As someone who has spent the better part of a decade thinking about Colorado River governance, I was impressed by the book. Hansman exceeded my expectations. Her descriptions and discussions of western water topics are so useful and accurate that they make an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to learn more about these issues." * American Scientist *“Heather Hansman’s new book is a must-read for anyone who loves rivers or is concerned about the future of the West . . . The river carries Hansman through Wyoming ranches, natural-gas fields, cities, and national parks, and she finds that seemingly everyone wants a piece of its pie. So she follows her curiosity, learning where the water goes—and who’s fighting over what.” * Outside *"In an energizing mix of travelogue and investigative journalism, Hansman, a raft guide and environmental reporter, provides a straightforward elucidation of the mind-bogglingly complicated subject of water rights in the American West. . . . Travel enthusiasts will appreciate Hansman’s descriptions of her rafting exploits, love of wildlife, and admiration for the power of water, while policy advocates will mull over her thought-provoking insight into the West’s water conundrum." * Publishers Weekly *"Hansman delivers a worthy updating of a core library containing such works as Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert and Philip Fradkin's A River No More. An insightful look into the unsustainability of western waterways." * Kirkus *"Whether you're a westerner or not, you'll be caught up in the hustle and flow of this universal story, one that has rippling effects on our entire country." * Shape *"Hansman’s new book Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West explores the water emergency with remarkable calm and even-handedness." * New Republic *"Heather Hansman wants her readers to connect the dots between water use, natural resources, and human impact" * Sunset Magazine *"[Downriver] is a blend of personal narrative, water policy research and on-the-ground reporting in the rural West. It’s about her growing comfort with solitude, the technicalities that define a water right, and the people she met along the way. But it’s also a testament to how recreation can serve as a door to learning and an opportunity to engage with big issues that paddlers—and all outdoorspeople, including climbers, skiers, hikers, surfers—tend to be passionate about." * Uncommon Path (REI Blog) *"Downriver should be required reading for everyone who enjoys this podcast—it strikes the perfect balance of being entertaining and educational while examining all sides of the many issues facing the West’s water supply. There are few topics in the West as divisive and emotional as water, and in her book, Heather provides a balanced overview of all the issues, delving deep into the substance of water-related arguments, without crossing over into the mind-numbing jargon that defines most water-related writing." * Mountain & Prairie *"Hansman is willing to interrogate her own assumptions, to speak to people with differing views, and to allow western water issues to become more complicated, not less, as she moves down the river. She explores the sticky parts of western water policy, just as she explore the less-loved sections of the Green." -- Melissa Sevigny, author of Mythical River: Chasing the Mirage of New Water in the American Southwest"Downriver contains [Hansman's] commentary on the state of the river, sprinkled with useful information on the laws that control the river, federal water regulations, and studies that address contemporary issues such as endangered species and climate change." * Journal of Arizona History *"Heather Hansman's time as a rafting guide piqued her interest and her journey on the river, along 730 miles of water from Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. It is so wonderfully written you'll forget you're reading non-fiction." * The Colorado Sun *Table of ContentsOn the River702 cfsFarms686 cfsThe Law of the River Growing a Crop of Humans in the Desert All Those People Have to EatCities2,790 cfsThe Only Watering Hole in the Whole County Flowing Uphill to Money Whose Rights?Dams6,940 cfsClaiming and Reclamation After the Dam Protect the Green River at All Cost The Map of What’s NextFish9,080 cfsLarval Triggers Humans Are a Species, Too What’s the Point of a Wild River? One Big Fish TankRecreation9,180 cfsThrough the Gates What Is It Worth? We Save What We Love and We Love What We KnowFuture Risks10,600 cfsEnergy and Power Water Is Where the Fight Is Climate Change Is Water ChangeFuture Plans6,820 cfsThis Land Is Your Land You Can’t Just Sell Out to a City Getting Comfortable with RiskConfluence3,220 cfs Timeline Acknowledgments Notes Index
£14.25
The University of Chicago Press The Indies of the Setting Sun
Book SynopsisPadrón reveals the evolution of Spain's imagining of the New World as a space in continuity with Asia. Narratives of Europe's westward expansion often tell of how the Americas came to be known as a distinct landmass, separate from Asia and uniquely positioned as new ground ripe for transatlantic colonialism. But this geographic vision of the Americas was not shared by all Europeans. While some imperialists imagined North and Central America as undiscovered land, the Spanish pushed to define the New World as part of a larger and eminently flexible geography that they called las Indias, and that by right, belonged to the Crown of Castile and León. Las Indias included all of the New World as well as East and Southeast Asia, although Spain's understanding of the relationship between the two areas changed as the realities of the Pacific Rim came into sharper focus. At first, the Spanish insisted that North and Central America were an extension of the continent of Asia. Eventually, they cTrade Review"It should be essential reading for anyone seeking a fresh approach to understanding Spain’s imperial ambitions during the Age of Discovery." * The Portolan *"Columbus thought that Cuba was an appendage of Asia, and, though it may surprise readers, it would be more than a century before more accurate accounts of the Pacific Ocean and the distinctions between the landforms of Asia and North America emerged. Padrón relays this story with comprehensive knowledge and a skillful interpretation of cartographic and narrative sources, which often rationalized Spanish imperial aims to show that the Spanish Empire had Asian components thanks to the world-encompassing meridian line that divided Spanish and Portuguese zones for exploitation. . . . This highly recommended book clarifies the history of seemingly naïve but at times politically useful sets of flawed assumptions." * CHOICE *"This is a salutary book. . . . it is immensely valuable in making us see how sixteenth-century Spaniards conceptually framed the Americas, the Pacific and beyond; it literally takes us into another world." * The Globe: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Map Society *"Historian Ricardo Padrón’s The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West attempts to understand how, in discursive and visual terms, the Spanish crown sought to project its geopolitical and historical influence in the world from the sixteenth century forward. . . . The book is a valuable contribution not only because of its rigorous and intelligent interpretations, but also because it invites us to think about two major issues. First, it shows that territories such as the Americas were not 'invented' once and for all but were revised and reinvented over time and from different places and communities. Second, the book reminds us that we must decenter our gaze from the battles of conquest and pay attention instead to the voyages and ways of understanding vast spaces such as the oceans that were key in politically configuring our modern experience of the globe." * Terrae Incognitae *"In The Indies of the Setting Sun, Ricardo Padrón explores the spatial imaginaries of elite Spaniards in the period bookended by Balboa’s “discovery” of the Pacific Ocean in 1513 in present- day Panama and the 1606 Spanish conquest of the Moluccas. " * Early American Literature *"With this work, Padrón demonstrates that the Pacific has been a fundamental issue in the invention of America, a process that, as he firmly asserts, 'has been repeatedly revised and reinvented over the course of the years, and has meant different things at different times in different discursive communities.' Padrón encourages readers to view the geopolitical imagination of Habsburg Spain in a different light and to rethink the possibilities offered by new approaches to consider the Pacific not as marginal, but as a central location of the Spanish empire." * Bulletin of the Comediantes *"The Indies of the Setting Sun is an original and thoughtful study of the ‘invention’ and subsequent reinventions of the Pacific Ocean as part of the Spanish empire. Padrón brings to this project the same lucid, elegant prose and methodology that characterized his earlier monograph, and again he provides an argument supported by a careful study of sources employing the best historical approaches, closely contextualized reading, and an expansive definition of cartography. This is a much needed intervention, highlighting the importance of Spanish Asia in the history of Spanish imperial expansion." -- María M. Portuondo, author of The Spanish Disquiet: The Biblical Natural Philosophy of Benito Arias Montano"The Indies of the Setting Sun examines the way that Spanish knowledge about the South Sea—now known as the Pacific Ocean—was developed. Challenging the historical idea that Magellan's circumnavigation had established Europeans' understanding of the Americas as divided from Asia by the vast Pacific, Padrón reveals an 'alternative European cartography' that persisted across the sixteenth century. In this odd parallel universe, America was merely the forecourt to Asia, and the South Sea was a small basin within the larger Indies, then Spain's overseas empire. This is the first book I've ever read that colors the larger 'Indies' so vividly." -- Barbara Mundy, author of The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City"The author’s aim. . . is ambitious but the reader will not be disappointed. Padrón, in fact, leads his audience on a real journey through time, dismantling many commonplaces and prejudices about the modern perception of the way the world has been thought of and represented on maps at the dawn of modernity. The author breaks the patterns in the way we think about historical cartography between rigid categories of ‘right and wrong’, ‘precise and approximate’. Instead, Padrón highlights a complex historical process in which different cultural and political theories competed with each other in a dialectic that shaped our way of understanding geography. . . . Ricardo Padrón’s book: The Indies of the Setting Sun should be welcomed as a useful and much needed book. . . . I believe that today, in an era of redefinition of the balance between global powers with enormous interests in the Pacific area, this book is of great usefulness and relevance." * Rutter Project *"A nuanced reading of Spanish cartographic literature about the Pacific region in the sixteenth century. . . . The book’s central strength is in its analytical acuity, which dredges up tensions, contradictions, ironies and ambivalence from multivalent cartographic and written texts." * Imago Mundi *Table of ContentsList of Figures Introduction 1 The Map behind the Curtain 2 South Sea Dreams 3 Pacific Nightmares 4 Shipwrecked Ambitions 5 Pacific Conquests 6 The Location of China 7 The Kingdom of the Setting Sun 8 The Anxieties of a Paper Empire Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index
£26.60
The University of Chicago Press Stacked Decks
Book SynopsisA startling look at the power and perspectives of city building inspectors as they navigate unequal housing landscapes. Though we rarely see them at work, building inspectors have the power to significantly shape our lives through their discretionary decisions. The building inspectors of Chicago are at the heart of sociologist Robin Bartram's analysis of how individuals impactor attempt to impacthousing inequality. In Stacked Decks, she reveals surprising patterns in the judgment calls inspectors make when deciding whom to cite for building code violations. These predominantly white, male inspectors largely recognize that they work within an unequal housing landscape that systematically disadvantages poor people and people of color through redlining, property taxes, and city spending that favor wealthy neighborhoods. Stacked Decks illustrates the uphill battle inspectors face when trying to change a housing system that works against those with the fewest resources. Trade Review"Bartram examines the role of housing inspectors in Chicago, focusing on the judgment calls that inspectors make when deciding whom to cite for building code violations. . . . Her analysis highlights the uphill battle that inspectors face when trying to change a housing system that works against those with the fewest resources." * Law & Social Inquiry *"This volume is a very accessible exploration of how different sources of inequality contribute to unequal housing outcomes by race, income, and social class in US cities. . . In this case study, [Bartram] focuses on the ways in which institutions, laws, decisions, and policies contribute to inequality in the housing market in Chicago. . . This work will likely be of strongest interest to students and scholars of urban sociology, urban studies, urban planning, and possibly public administration. It may also be suitable for general readers looking for publications on housing issues in contemporary US cities." * Choice *"The heart of Bartram’s book is a rich, nuanced description of her time accompanying Chicago’s building inspectors on their rounds as they responded to complaints called into the city’s Department of Buildings. What she found is not only interesting as ethnological description, but challenges much of the conventional wisdom. . . It should be read by anyone concerned with the reality on the ground in America’s urban neighborhoods. . ." * Journal of Urban Affairs *"A fresh look at the work of building inspectors. . . . Stacked Decks is a much-needed examination of how inspectors make sense of complex situations, and how their sense of deservingness influences their judgment." * Social Forces *“Bartram’s smart, succinct, and elegantly written book is ostensibly an ethnographic study of building inspectors in Chicago. In reality, Stacked Decks is a book about power. It uses the daily struggles of building inspectors in Chicago to illuminate a fundamental moral, economic and political problem of our era – the persistence of racialized housing inequality despite the efforts of “frontline” city workers to mitigate it. Distinguishing between individual inspectors’ efforts to mete out justice and the systemic workings of power, Bartram shows us that the former will always be thwarted as long as the latter remains obscure. Stacked Decks is a compact study that raises big questions. Anyone interested in cities, the built environment, racism, wealth inequality, and the operation of municipal, legal, and financial power will want to read it.” -- Beryl Satter, Rutgers University“Stacked Decks is a much needed and methodologically cutting-edge example of the EMERGING sociology of housing, giving us new tools with which to observe that the long-standing structures that made housing opportunity unequal by race are alive and well in new forms. Expertly leveraging ethnography, interviews, archival records on code violations, and 311 calls, Bartram brings into glaring relief the seemingly mundane and invisible dynamics of urban housing, sounding an alarm about housing insecurity, racial equity, and social mobility in America. Stacked Decks is a must read as we as a nation consider how to confront our housing crises.” -- Stefanie DeLuca, Johns Hopkins University“Bartram brilliantly opens a window onto an enormous world of overlooked activity. We see how Chicago building inspectors take ‘stabs at justice’ as they enforce the law. Reading this book compels us to think about how all workers in America understand inequalities and injustices—and how they might use their discretion on the job to right the country’s wrongs.” -- Debbie Becher, Barnard College, Columbia UniversityTable of ContentsPreface Introduction Chapter 1. Stacked Decks Chapter 2. Building Inspections Chapter 3. Rentals and Relative Assessments Chapter 4. Helping Out Homeowners: Changing Faces and Stubborn Realities Chapter 5. Justice Blockers Conclusion. Reshuffling the Deck Acknowledgments Appendix A. Methodology Appendix B. Building Violation Counts Appendix C. Map of Strategic Task Force Inspections Notes References Index
£22.00
The University of Chicago Press The Hidden Universe
Book Synopsis
£18.70
The University of Chicago Press We Are All Whalers
Book SynopsisRelating his experiences caring for endangered whales, a veterinarian and marine scientist shows we can all share in the salvation of these imperiled animals. The image most of us have of whalers includes harpoons and intentional trauma. Yet eating commercially caught seafood leads to whales' entanglement and slow death in rope and nets, and the global shipping routes that bring us readily available goods often lead to death by collision. Weall of usare whalers, marine scientist and veterinarian Michael J. Moore contends. But we do not have to be. Drawing on over forty years of fieldwork with humpback, pilot, fin, and, in particular, North Atlantic right whalesa species whose population has declined more than 20 percent since 2017Moore takes us with him as he performs whale necropsies on animals stranded on beaches, in his independent research alongside whalers using explosive harpoons, and as he tracks injured whales to deliver sedatives. The whales' plight is a complex, confoundiTrade Review"The threat to whales goes beyond the conventional images of harpooning ships, according to this moving and impassioned debut from veterinarian and marine scientist Moore. . . . . Moore injects his descriptions of the dire situation with a personal angle, sharing stories about how he came to study and care passionately about whales, creatures with awe-inspiring intelligence and social skills but whose population is threatened by humanity. . . . Technology offers a ray of hope—in his final chapter, Moore describes how using ropeless nets for commercial fishing and studying whale population movements can prevent accidental collisions and lessen the death toll. This empowering call to action stuns." * Publishers Weekly, Starred Review *“Moore, a marine scientist and veterinarian, makes a compelling argument that whales’ survival depends on each of us—not just on those who venture out on ships, hunting whales for meat and blubber. It’s sobering to grapple with the ways we might unwittingly contribute to the mammals’ demise, like by eating commercially caught seafood. But Moore also offers reason to be hopeful, including new technologies for ropeless fishing.” * Washington Post, “15 Books to Read This Fall” *"After the world spent more than two centuries slaughtering whales to the point of near-extinction, international commercial whaling was finally banned in 1986. But in this highly persuasive book, the marine scientist Moore demonstrates that many of the gains are being undone by a combination of commercial fishing (in which whales are strangled with ropes and nets) and shipping (whales are often hit by passing cargo ships, and their songs are drowned out by the incessant drum of engines). The North Atlantic right whale’s population, for instance, has declined more than 20% since 2017. It’s not all doom and gloom, though: Moore (not to be confused with the filmmaker of the same name) furnishes solutions while sounding the alarm." * Bloomberg, “Six Best Books This Fall” *"In. . . We Are All Whalers: The Plight of Whales and Our Responsibility, Moore writes that our choices about the food and other products we buy can make a difference in what happens to whales. The extension of that argument is that society as a whole could—and should—provide more support for fishers to move to ropeless gear." * Monga Bay *"A fascinating memoir by a marine biologist-veterinarian who has devoted his entire life to developing methods for saving wild whales in distress, especially critically endangered North Atlantic right whales." * Forbes *"Moore is right that the general public is culpably ignorant of the harms in which they participate. His book is a constructive call to action, since he believes that these problems can be solved. . . . [Written] with vividness and compassion." -- Martha C. Nussbaum * New York Review of Books *"Moore goes where few scientists are comfortable to go, and where most scientists take deliberate steps to avoid. . . . His forty-three years of study, mostly focused on marine mammals, have exposed him to the animal pain and suffering side of what to many has been a mathematical exercise as North Atlantic right whale numbers freefall towards extinction—as they are beaten down by collisions with ships, entanglement in fishing gear, and climate change." * Cape Cod Times *"Unsparing. . . . Intimate. . . . It is time for the government to support the changes that will have to be made if the right whale is to survive. Consumers, too, have a role. I can’t help thinking that the value of this book is bringing the problem up close and personal. The threat of extinction is, in the end, an abstraction, compared to the physical suffering of an entangled whale. Who wants to be the cause of that?" * Portland Press Herald *"Moore’s decades in the field were accompanied by a growing sense of urgency about one species in particular, the North Atlantic right whale. His new book, We Are All Whalers, looks back at his own life and forward to the tenuous future of these imperiled behemoths. He spent his career learning how to save right whales on an individual basis, with some success. 'But,' he writes, 'I also knew that prophylaxis had to be the ultimate goal of any veterinarian.' To save an entire species, Moore warns, we need a lot more hands on deck." * Bluedot Living *"Whale hunters aren’t the only threats to the world’s largest mammal, argues marine scientist Moore in this treatise on protecting the animals and helping them thrive." * Publishers Weekly, "Fall 2021 Announcements: Science" *"This is the book all conservationists wish they could emulate... What may be most notable about this text is the author's sensitivity not only to the species he covers but also to all stakeholders in whale conservation, from indigenous hunters to commercial fishers. It is a thoughtful treatise that, through fact-based analysis, leads readers to confront the root of the problem—choices consumers make in a post-industrial society... Moore offers a most outstanding example of communicating science to advance conservation... Essential." * Choice *"We Are All Whalers is an intensely personal, warts-and-all account that does not avoid the moral grey areas and internal struggles this research brings to one man’s mind. This is certainly one of the more thought-provoking and disturbing books I have read in a while. Anything less would not have done this topic justice." * Inquisitive Biologist *"A scientific memoir of over thirty years of research, a great tale of the sea, and a call to arms." * Sirene *"Moore paints a comprehensive picture of the challenges facing right whales, emphasizing the role that everyone plays in their conservation. . . . Passionate and philosophical." * Whales Online *“Veterinarian Moore knows right whales inside and out, literally. Working chest deep in the guts of dead right whales, he sees, better than anyone, what’s killing them. It’s us. Moore describes how, demonstrating honestly, clearly, and compassionately the consequences of our cruelty, if inadvertent, toward a sentient animal.” -- Deborah Cramer, author of "The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey"“An affecting book, authored by a man whose life has circled the great whales, and whose sense of concern and care for these animals has only deepened over time. Moore challenges us to confront how implicated we all are in the ongoing destruction of sea life—and leaves the reader with indelible images of the suffering of countless magnificent animals fettered, gagged, slashed, and lost in the fatal obstacle course we have made of their domain.” -- D. Graham Burnett, author of "The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century"“A truly compelling, captivating, and in places heart-wrenching story of one scientist’s journey caring for a highly endangered species. The very predicament of North Atlantic right whales is our fault, and their recovery is also our responsibility, as we are all consumers and hence all culpable in the environmental costs of fish products and goods and services transported at sea. Coexistence with whales is possible, and Moore’s book lays the foundation.” -- Moira Brown, Canadian Whale Institute“Most of us know that whales are in danger but have only a vague understanding of why. Moore’s perspective from personal experience is unique, and this clear book should be read by the conservation community, scientists, and anyone interested in nature and human-whale interactions.” -- Jane Maienschein, Arizona State University and the Marine Biological LaboratoryTable of ContentsPreface 1 Young Man, There Are No Whales Left 2 The First Whale I Had Ever Seen 3 Whaling with Intent 4 The Bowhead Is More than Food 5 Whaling by Accident 6 Treating Whales 7 Our Skinny Friend 8 Taking the Long View: Why Can’t We Let Right Whales Die of Old Age? Postscript 1: Getting Really Cold Postscript 2: A Lonely Tunnel with No Light at the End Acknowledgments Notes Index
£14.25
The University of Chicago Press Science on a Mission
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Impressive and authoritative. . . . Over the past two decades, Oreskes has helped transform how scholars understand the history of scientific and political debates over continental drift and anthropogenic climate change. Her latest work weaves together insights from these and other intellectual spheres to deliver a crucial message: Patronage of knowledge production—that is, who pays for science—matters deeply. . . . Oreskes uses fascinating historical episodes to reveal serious, underappreciated consequences of oceanographers' prolonged reliance on secret, mission-driven navy projects. . . . We need more historical scholarship on how powerful entities produce ignorance as well as knowledge, and Oreskes provides a model for doing so. . . . As an exposé of how navy-sponsored oceanographers wound up constraining their own research agendas and believing their own myths, the book should give pause to all scientists who consider themselves immune to the potential influence of their funders, or who romanticize the golden age of military scientific patronage." * Science *"Insightful. . . . The book reminds us that science does not happen in a vacuum." * Scientific American *"Science on a Mission is what you want in a history: interesting research, stories with context and multiple points of view, clearly and compellingly written." * Nature *"With its empirical richness and its conceptual concerns, this book is essential reading." * Metascience *"Anyone who really wants to understand Cold War-era oceanography now has a definitive text to turn to... Oreskes makes a strong case for why histories of physics must now encompass oceanography." * Physics Today *"In Science on a Mission, historian Naomi Oreskes delves into the role of patronage in science, what emerges is a vivid portrait of how naval oversight transformed what we know about the sea. It is a detailed, sweeping history that illuminates the ways funding shapes the subject, scope, and tenor of research, and it raises profound questions about American science. What difference does it make who pays? A lot." * Yale Climate Connections *"Important and fascinating work. . . . The book is well documented and features many interesting stories and illustrations that professionals and academicians will find appealing. . . . Highly recommended." * Choice *"Had I known then what I have learned from Oreskes’s new book, I would have been a better Scripps director." -- Charles Kennel, former director, Scripps Institution of Oceanography"Oreskes's timely, clear-eyed, and extensive history serves as a powerful reminder in a time when our oceans and basic science are under attack: we must defend scientific truth." -- Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island"Science on a Mission is a subtle, human picture of science at war, both hot and cold. Focusing on three vastly important institutes of oceanography, Oreskes tracks how the demands of international conflict have shaped the discipline. In fascinating detail, she explores the discovery of the deep ocean currents and their dynamics; in another precisely documented section, she illuminates the military origins of the ‘pure science’ bathysphere Alvin. With engaging prose and scientific grasp, Oreskes gives us a rich and well-told history of how the navy’s engagement redefined the field, ushering in central discoveries of modern oceanography while hiding its secret-cloaked depths." -- Peter Galison, Harvard University“With her characteristic but rare combination of philosophical and historical insight, and her sharp eye for the politics beneath the surface, Oreskes has skillfully interpreted the wide-ranging legacies of oceanography and brought them into our understanding of scientific—and political—debates of the present day." -- Katharine Anderson, York University"Oreskes has given us a monumental history of the social and political construction of Cold War science. Her analysis lends fascinating insight to the role of the war economy in the creation of American oceanography and raises complex questions about scientific integrity, intellectual autonomy, and the difference between pure and tainted science." -- Matthew England, University of New South Wales"Science on a Mission is a remarkable work of scholarship built on deep research into the institutions and people involved in advancing American oceanography at the height of the Cold War. Oreskes relies on a detailed approach, including over a dozen illustrations and diagrams alongside extensive quotations from relevant scientific papers, to provide internal histories, whether in accounting for how one experiment led to the next or how personalities and ideologies clashed within an institution. As such, the work makes important contributions to the literature and is an excellent companion to texts on naval and industrial laboratories." * Isis *"In this book, Naomi Oreskes demonstrates once again that the history of science is not merely a discipline for the ivory tower. In her work on the denial of man-made climate change and on the procedures that guarantee the trustworthiness of scientific knowledge, she combines historical analysis with topics of current political importance in an exemplary manner." * Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (translated from German) *“Highly recommended for anyone interested in the broad topics of geophysics, the history of the oceans, and how American naval spending influenced the shape of modern oceanography.” * The Northern Mariner *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 The Personal, the Political, and the Scientific 2 Seeing the Ocean through Operational Eyes: The Stommel-Arons Model of Abyssal Circulation 3 Whose Science Is It Anyway? The Woods Hole Palace Revolt 4 Stymied by Secrecy: Harry Hess and Seafloor Spreading 5 The Iron Curtain of Classification: What Difference Did It Make? 6 Why the Navy Built Alvin 7 Painting Projects White: The Discovery of Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents 8 From Expertise to Advocacy: The Seabed Disposal of Radioactive Waste 9 Changing the Mission: From the Cold War to Climate Change Conclusion: The Context of Motivation Acknowledgments Sources and Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index
£26.00
The University of Chicago Press Future Sea
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Rowan Wright makes a strong case for how choices—big and small, collective and individual—can change the world." * Publishers Weekly *"Rowan Wright’s book emits passion and fire coupled with a growing urgency to 'put things right'—to make good our failings to protect the life of seas and oceans. Wright highlights good practice and encourages its dissemination and adaptation where possible, whilst castigating politicians for ignoring the science and aligning themselves with those who would exploit our seas to the point at which they become lifeless. . . . This book is simply too important not to be read by the general public, marine scientists, ecological/environmental conservationists, representatives of marine-based industries and especially politicians; and since most of it is jargon-free there really is no excuse." -- Stephen R. Hoskins CBiol FRSB FLS * The Biologist *"A profound plan to save the seas. . . . Our ocean life-support system continues to buckle under human pressures. We have been approaching marine conservation backward, Rowan Wright argues at the outset of her new book, Future Sea. Instead of regulating individual fisheries or putting boundaries around select areas of the ocean, we need to protect the whole thing." -- Mary Ellen Hannibal * Science *"In his book Half-Earth, the famous biologist E.O. Wilson proposed setting aside half of the planet’s surface for conservation purposes. Rowan Wright will do you one better; given how important they are for life on the planet, how about we completely protect the oceans. What, all of it? Yes, not half, all of it. We need a gestalt shift, from ‘default profit and exploitation to default care and respect.’ Such a bold proposal is likely to elicit disbelief and cynicism—’Impossible!’—and Rowan Wright has experienced plenty of that. But hear her out, for sometimes we are our own worst enemy. Future Sea is a surprisingly grounded, balanced, and knowledgeable argument that swayed me because, guess what, the oceans are already protected. . . . I admit that Rowan Wright’s initial brief raised my eyebrows. However, her even-handed treatment of the subject and her insights into environmental law quickly tempered my skepticism. The way forward proposed here will not be easy, and she never pretends it will be, but the urgency with which she makes her case is utterly convincing. Future Sea is a galvanizing book." -- Leon Vlieger * The Inquisitive Biologist *“Future Sea sets out marine policy researcher Rowan Wright’s ideas about how to end destructive industrial activities at sea and enable ocean wildlife to return and thrive. Luckily, she includes steps that anyone, from children to political leaders, can take." * New Scientist *"Future Sea delivers not only the promised 'how' but also the reasons why we should safeguard the ocean from human activities. Advocate and researcher Rowan Wright outlines the critical link between the ocean’s health and our ability to mitigate global warming, the tremendous potential of marine renewable energy, and the ocean’s timeless role as a resource to communities around the world. More profoundly, she argues for its intrinsic value, outside of a human context, noting the vastness and richness of coastal and underwater ecosystems, home to millions of species that are yet unclassified, yet unknown. . . . The times when Rowan Wright draws on her own experiences with ocean life and researching her subjects are when the language is liveliest. Her arguments are most convincing when her own voice is clearest—when the frustration, passion, and will for change of an individual emanate in a kind of slow-burning glow of articulate British restraint. The voice of a single rational, concerned woman make the bolder claims and proposals all the more stealthily convincing. . . . It is her sensitivity to both the complex emotional response to environmental destruction and the profound connections human beings have to the natural world that make the book an effective advocacy tool. I certainly didn’t feel emotionally prepared to take in more environmental ‘bad news,’ but found myself changed after reading the book, feeling that understanding, bearing witness, is also part of making a change. The trick is to move past the paralysis. Rowan Wright pinpoints what is perhaps the greatest challenge, our current global leadership vacuum, describing her dream of ‘leaders with compassion and integrity.’ The implicit message is that for good leadership, too, we all bear some responsibility." -- Megin Jimenez * Chicago Review of Books *"A solutions-oriented read about the dire state of our oceans and how we can better protect them. . . . Books about climate change are often rife with doomy predictions, but Future Sea brims with hopeful stories of communities around the world that are working to protect and conserve our oceans. Our seas face many threats, including climate change, pollution, and overfishing, but this book is solutions-oriented. A marine-policy researcher, Rowan Wright puts forth a sweeping—if somewhat radical—plan that offers total protection of all oceans on Earth and all of their living inhabitants. The book also includes actions individuals can take right now to be better stewards of the seas." -- Amy Brady * LitHub *"A very stimulating and rewarding read." -- Mark AveryOne of 2020's "12 books on climate and environment for the holidays." * Yale Climate Connections *“Rowan Wright combines insightful conversations with brilliant minds in marine science with vivid storytelling and detailed analysis to renew readers’ sense of hope that it is not too late to save our seas. . . . All at once eye-opening, thought-provoking, rage-inducing, and empowering, Future Sea is an excellent read for ocean lovers.” -- Rishad Maynard * Marine Biologist *“If you want to get into understanding ocean management—this is the book for you! If you want to know what your government can be doing to help the ocean—this is the book for you! If you just love the ocean, you guessed it—this is the book for you! To all my nature lovers, ocean swimmers, and people who want to see the world not go up in flames.” * Teenage Reads *"An ambitious and useful handbook. . . . It is an eye-opening book that will fill your soul with the right amount of optimism and call for action. It will tell you in an easy-to-read, step-by-step outline of how to save the planet’s seas." * a la luz *"Combines a legal scholar’s understanding of arcane theories and doctrines . . . with a modern conservation practitioner’s knowledge of the many threats to ocean populations and ecosystems. . . . Timely and provocative. . . . Rowan Wright provides us optimists with a roadmap to substantially restore the health of ocean ecosystems. It’s been a few weeks since I finished reading Future Sea and I’m still thinking about it: thinking about how to convince NGOs and governments to start making some big changes. But one of my favorite chapters (‘The Power of Many Small Changes’) lays out a convincing and detailed case that we can all do a lot to reduce our impacts on ocean wildlife: things like reducing our carbon footprint, eating less beef, eating only sustainably harvested seafood, and participating in beach cleanups." * Current Biology *"Independent researcher and ocean advocate Rowan Wright offers an information-packed and carefully crafted review of challenges to the life and health of oceans... Her passionate engagement and work with environmental NGOs, including Friends of the Earth and Marinet (a fish conservation network), have gained her familiarity with relevant international law—the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, UN Fish Stocks Agreement, and the Convention on Biological Diversity—mandating comprehensive stewardship of the oceans. Rowan Wright's unsentimental analysis shows that well-intentioned conventions can suffer from three failings: weak governance, flimsy monitoring, and minimal compliance. . . . Highly recommended." * Choice *“In Future Sea, Rowan Wright makes a convincing call to optimism. From ‘Inky the octopus’ to the Law of the Sea convention she provides a cogent, easy-to-read argument for protecting the whole of our blue marble planet. A fast read on a deep subject, this thoughtful book will leave you feeling empowered to take the plunge, understanding that in saving the natural abundance and diversity of our seas we’re really saving ourselves.” -- David Helvarg, author of "Saved by the Sea" and "The Golden Shore"“Rowan Wright’s book is a clear call to action to modernize the Law of the Sea so that it can deal with the changes in society, in the sea, on land, and in the atmosphere that have arisen since it came into force in 1994. This is the freshest, most sensible, and most optimistic perspective I have seen in a long time. I enjoy very much the positive, can-do approach. Very motivating.” -- Drew Harvell, Cornell University, author of "A Sea of Glass" and "Ocean Outbreak"Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Back-to-Front World 2. The Laws of Life 3. Teeming Seas 4. The Free Sea 5. Theory to Reality 6. Counteroffensive 7. Worrying about the Wrong Stuff 8. The Silver Bullet? 9. The Power of Many Small Changes 10. Finding Like Minds Acknowledgments Notes Index
£12.00
The University of Chicago Press Principles of Soundscape Ecology
Book Synopsis
£41.80
The University of Chicago Press The Great American Transit Disaster
Book SynopsisA potent re-examination of America's history of public disinvestment in mass transit. Many a scholar and policy analyst has lamented American dependence on cars and the corresponding lack of federal investment in public transportation throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century. But as Nicholas Dagen Bloom shows in The Great American Transit Disaster, our transit networks are so bad for a very simple reason: we wanted it this way. Focusing on Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and San Francisco, Bloom provides overwhelming evidence that transit disinvestment was a choice rather than destiny. He pinpoints three major factors that led to the decline of public transit in the United States: municipal austerity policies that denied most transit agencies the funding to sustain high-quality service; the encouragement of auto-centric planning; and white flight from dense city centers to far-flung suburbs. As Bloom makes clear, these local public policy decisions werTrade Review“American transit agencies are standing on the brink of a devastating fiscal cliff. . . . Dire though the present situation is, this is hardly the first time that transit officials have been locked in a Sisyphean struggle to maintain service levels with shrinking funding and ridership. As Bloom, a professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College, describes in his new book, The Great American Transit Disaster, US public transportation has lurched from one crisis to the next throughout the past century.” * Bloomberg CityLab *“In this excellent socioeconomic history, Bloom offers a comprehensive and thought-provoking account of the rise and fall of US mass transit, skillfully assessing successes and stumbles so that we may learn from them and correct course.” * Booklist *“Serves as a powerful introduction for urban scholars, practitioners, and students interested in American public transit policy. Offering extensive historical hindsight, the book nicely prefaces any consideration of current trends related to public transit.” * Journal of Urban Affairs *“A timely exploration of America’s experience with transit.” * Journal of the American Planning Association *“Bloom begins The Great American Transit Disaster by debunking the popular historical conspiracy that big auto and tire manufacturers destroyed a robust urban streetcar system in the United States. But if it wasn’t an elaborate and nefarious plot on the part of the automobile industry to destroy a dense network of public urban transportation, what did? . . . This question sits at the center of Bloom’s extensively researched and expertly argued exploration of the demise of urban public transit in the United States. And, as in the best historical research and writing, his answer is layered and multifaceted.” * Pacific Historical Review *“Bloom makes a compelling case that Americans did this to themselves by demanding better streets for cars at the expense of transit, and favoring low-density, suburban living that makes cars indispensable and transit hard to justify. . . . The book’s greatest strength is its hard look at how racism helped ruin US transit.” * Newcity *“A worthy addition to Chicago’s Historical Studies of Urban America series.” * Technology and Culture *“The Great American Transit Disaster presents a thoughtful and thorough history of public transit development in a number of major American cities. As in his previous books, Bloom makes a significant contribution to the history of twentieth-century urban America.” * Jon C. Teaford, author of The American Suburb: The Basics *“Bloom is a distinguished and prolific scholar of American urban politics. In this cogent and deeply researched book, he seeks to explain why leaders in cities such as Atlanta, Detroit, and Chicago chose to invest in highways and airways rather than mass transit. Bloom, wisely and perceptively, avoids discredited anti-bus and anti-streetcar ideas, focusing instead on pay-as-you-go transit, auto-centric planning, and white flight. Nick Bloom, as always, is readable, assignable, and compelling.” -- Mark H. Rose, coauthor of A Good Place to Do Business: The Politics of Downtown Renewal since 1945Table of ContentsIntroduction Pre–World War II Part 1 Urban Transit Rise and Decline Chapter 1 Baltimore: City Leaders versus Private Transit Chapter 2 Chicago: A Limited Public Commitment to Transit Chapter 3 Boston: Reverse Engineering Public Transit The Postwar Transit Disaster, 1945 to 1980 Part 2 Unsubsidized Private Transit Chapter 4 Baltimore: Urban Crisis, Race, and Private Transit Collapse Chapter 5 Atlanta: Race, Transit, and the Sunbelt Boom Part 3 “Pay as You Go” Public Transit Chapters 6 Chicago: The Failure of “Pay as You Go” Public Transit Chapter 7 Detroit: Racism and America’s Worst Big-City Transit Part 4: Public Transit That Worked Better Chapter 8 Boston Pioneers Public Regional Transit Chapter 9 San Francisco: Deeply Subsidized Public Transit Conclusion Beyond Transit Fatalism Acknowledgments Notes Index
£26.60
The University of Chicago Press Uncertain Climes
Book SynopsisUncertain Climeslooks to the late nineteenth century to reveal how climate anxiety was a crucial element in the emergence of American modernity. Even people who still refuse to accept the reality of human-induced climate change would have to agree that the topic has become inescapable in the United States in recent decades. But as Joseph Giacomelli shows in Uncertain Climes, this is actually nothing new: as far back as Gilded Age America, climate uncertainty has infused major debates on economic growth and national development. In this ambitious examination of late-nineteenth-century understandings of climate, Giacomelli draws on the work of scientists, foresters, surveyors, and settlers to demonstrate how central the subject was to the emergence of American modernity. Amid constant concerns about volatile weather patterns and the use of natural resources, nineteenth-century Americans developed a multilayered discourse on climate and what it might mean for the nation's future. Although climate science was still in its nascent stages during the Gilded Age, fears and hopes about climate change animated the overarching political struggles of the time, including expansion into the American West. Giacomelli makes clear that uncertainty was the common theme linking concerns about human-induced climate change with cultural worries about the sustainability of capitalist expansionism in an era remarkably similar to the United States' unsettled present. Trade Review"Giacomelli lucidly presents climate change as a topic that was actively discussed in the US in the second half of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century . . . Readers learn that climate change has been a polarizing topic in the US for several generations. Recommended." * Choice *“What did nineteenth-century Americans mean when they insisted that planting farms would bring more rain? How do we make sense of the heated but head-spinning debates over all the things that human beings might do to alter their climate? Clamorous but conflicting assertions insisted that Plains tribes or industrious Mormons, artificial canals or the advance of western settlement might change temperature, weather patterns, and nature itself. In this deeply-researched book, Giacomelli demonstrates that substantial public conversation in the Gilded Age was devoted to human role in climate change. He also shows the central presence of uncertainty in those debates. Probabilistic thinking, statistics, maps, data: all were part of climatic contention by elite thinkers and small-town boosters. Our modern worries over climate are crucial in our present crisis, but not unique. Uncertainty and public debate, Giacomelli shows us, have long been how Americans have grappled with the challenges of human influence on the natural world.” * Conevery Bolton Valencius, author of The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land *"Uncertain Climes offers a necessary corrective and a significant historiographical contribution that will change how we think about Gilded Age science and environmental history. The genius of Giacomelli’s book is that it embraces the complexity and messiness of the past, challenging the conventional stories historians tell about late-nineteenth-century environmental thought and science.” * Adam Wesley Dean, author of An Agrarian Republic: Farming, Antislavery Politics, and Nature Parks in the Civil War Era *“Here is a history of climate, science, and culture that is fully a study of morality, caution, and uncertainty. Giacomelli does readers a great service by disrupting our twenty-first-century perception that ‘questions of irreducible uncertainty’ are new. Uncertain Climes is big history, making the past feel closer all the time.” * Benjamin Cohen, author of Pure Adulteration: Cheating on Nature in the Age of Manufactured Food *"As a blend of a history of science, intellectual history, and environmental history, Giacomelli provides historians with a text to explore the many angles of climate history. As such, this is an important text to consider the long history of climate-theory and its place in American society. In doing so, the author offers readers a better grasp on the present and maybe, some paths for the future." * History: Reviews of New Books *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Questions “Forever Remain”1 A Climate Fit for Civilization2 Climate and Capitalism in the Great West and Beyond3 In the Middle Border: Gustavus Hinrichs and His Network of Volunteer Observers4 Fluid Geographies: Mapping Climate ChangeInterlude: Rainmakers and Other “Paradoxers”5 Mysterious Ecologies6 Technocracy and the Mastery of UncertaintyConclusion: The Meanings of UncertaintyAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
£30.40
The University of Chicago Press The Next Supercontinent
Book SynopsisAn internationally recognized scientist shows that Earth's separate continents, once together in Pangea, are again on a collision course. You've heard of Pangea, the single landmass that broke apart some 175 million years ago to give us our current continents, but what about its predecessors, Rodinia or Columbia? These supercontinents from Earth's past provide evidence that land repeatedly joins and separates. While scientists debate what that next supercontinent will look likeand what to name itthey all agree: one is coming. In this engaging work, geophysicist Ross Mitchell invites readers to remote (and sometimes treacherous) lands for evidence of past supercontinents, delves into the phenomena that will birth the next, and presents the case for the future supercontinent of Amasia, defined by the merging of North America and Asia. Introducing readers to plate tectonic theory through fieldwork adventures and accessible scientific descriptions, Mitchell considers flows deep in the Earth's mantle to explain Amasia's future formation and shows how this developing theory can illuminate other planetary mysteries. He then poses the inevitable question: how can humanity survive the intervening 200 million years necessary to see Amasia? An expert on the supercontinent cycle, Mitchell offers readers a front-row seat to a slow-motion mystery and an ongoing scientific debate.Trade Review"Although Mitchell’s destination is the distant future, don’t be fooled. His book is as much a romp through the past as it is a look ahead, complete with references unique to the present....Throughout the book, Mitchell’s clear explanations and carefully chosen images help make sense of even the most complicated concepts." * Science News *"Locked in rocks, mountains, and oceans lies evidence of an ancient, active earth. Subduction, plate tectonics, and volcanic activity continually reshape continents. . . . [Those] interested in geology and geophysics will appreciate Mitchell’s compelling vision and research." * Booklist *"Ross Mitchell provides a cinematic view of Earth over billion-year timescales, showing how the slow-motion dance of the continents has a deep underlying logic that makes it possible to predict geographies of the distant future." -- Marcia Bjornerud | author of "Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World""Geological puzzles don’t get bigger than unravelling the choreography of continents since Earth’s childhood. It takes bold thinking, and reconciliation of hard-won field data with computer models of our planet’s interior, to figure out the lay of the land hundreds of millions of years ago. Ross Mitchell draws on his own cutting-edge research to explain how Earth’s heat engine works, and what ancient configurations of land and sea—vastly different from today’s map—meant for the atmosphere, climate and, crucially, the evolution of life. It’s a gripping story, vivaciously told, of prescient scientists, perilous fieldwork, and the amazing ways in which geology empowers us to situate humanity in the context of billions of years of Earth history, and to ground speculation of how the next billion might play out." -- Clive Oppenheimer | author of "Eruptions that Shook the World"“Mitchell is the only person who could write this inviting and engaging book, which shares the thrill of scientific discovery.” -- Brendan Murphy | St. Francis Xavier University"The world is like a giant clock, with enormous tectonic gears of seemingly infinite complexity. That clock will keep ticking long after we humans are extinct, and Ross Mitchell, watchmaker, lets us see far into that future: an amazing Amasia." -- Peter Ward | author of "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe"“A clear, accessible introduction to a ‘super’ significant topic—the supercontinent cycle—and to scientific study itself.” -- Richard E. Ernst | Carleton University"An engaging insider’s story of geological discovery and insight at a grand scale—the unification and fragmentation of supercontinents over geologic time, and why such behavior is repeating, yet changing. This first-hand account reads like The Double Helix, but with mountains for molecules." -- Paul Hoffman | Harvard UniversityTable of ContentsPreface Introduction 1. Pangea 2. Rodinia 3. Columbia 4. The Unknown Archean 5. The Next Supercontinent Epilogue: Surviving Amasia Acknowledgments Notes Index
£22.80
The University of Chicago Press A Sense of Urgency
Book SynopsisA study of how the climate crisis is changing human communication from a celebrated rhetorician. Why is it difficult to talk about climate change? Debra Hawhee argues that contemporary rhetoric relies on classical assumptions about humanity and history that cannot conceive of the present crisis. How do we talk about an unprecedented future or represent planetary interests without privileging our own species? A Sense of Urgency explores four emerging answers, their sheer novelty a record of both the devastation and possible futures of climate change. In developing the arts of magnitude, presence, witness, and feeling, A Sense of Urgency invites us to imagine new ways of thinking with our imperiled planet.Trade Review“A Sense of Urgency presents four detailed analyses of emerging rhetorical responses to the impact of climate change. . . . But the introduction and conclusion go beyond the case studies by arguing that contemporary environmental concerns now exert pressure on rhetorical scholarship itself.” * Inside Higher Ed *“With inimitable creativity, Hawhee shows that climate change is not immune to comprehension but rather open to wildly curious rhetorical fashioning. She provides a fully embodied account of rhetoric and climate, time and temperature, showing that such supposed abstractions are actually glimmering sensations that blend feeling and knowing in the most intimate ways. This book is a gift.” -- John Durham Peters, Yale University“The unfolding climate crisis poses unprecedented challenges that require not only new scientific diagnostics but also a new social imaginary that reassesses dominant values, ways of knowing, and collective aspirations. One can hope we are all ready to heed this book’s call to reimagine communication—and the world.” -- Phaedra C. Pezzullo, University of Colorado Boulder“A Sense of Urgency compels us to acknowledge that the magnitude of climate change courses through everything—including facts and feelings, information and sensations. Hawhee demonstrates just how intense rhetoric must become to meet these unprecedented challenges. Working with an extinct glacier, youth activists, a multisensory art installation, and more, Hawhee helps us once again consider an approach to rhetoric that we could not before fathom, but now must.” -- Casey Boyle, University of Texas at AustinTable of ContentsList of Figures 1. Introduction: Intensifications 2. Glacial Death: Making Future Memory Present 3. “In a World Full of ‘Ifs’”: The Felt Time of Youth Climate Rhetors 4. Learning Curves: COVID-19, Climate Change, and Mathematical Magnitude 5. Presence and Placement in Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest 6. Epilogue: Fathoming Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press A Sense of Urgency
Book SynopsisA study of how the climate crisis is changing human communication from a celebrated rhetorician. Why is it difficult to talk about climate change? Debra Hawhee argues that contemporary rhetoric relies on classical assumptions about humanity and history that cannot conceive of the present crisis. How do we talk about an unprecedented future or represent planetary interests without privileging our own species? A Sense of Urgency explores four emerging answers, their sheer novelty a record of both the devastation and possible futures of climate change. In developing the arts of magnitude, presence, witness, and feeling, A Sense of Urgency invites us to imagine new ways of thinking with our imperiled planet.Trade Review“A Sense of Urgency presents four detailed analyses of emerging rhetorical responses to the impact of climate change. . . . But the introduction and conclusion go beyond the case studies by arguing that contemporary environmental concerns now exert pressure on rhetorical scholarship itself.” * Inside Higher Ed *“With inimitable creativity, Hawhee shows that climate change is not immune to comprehension but rather open to wildly curious rhetorical fashioning. She provides a fully embodied account of rhetoric and climate, time and temperature, showing that such supposed abstractions are actually glimmering sensations that blend feeling and knowing in the most intimate ways. This book is a gift.” -- John Durham Peters, Yale University“The unfolding climate crisis poses unprecedented challenges that require not only new scientific diagnostics but also a new social imaginary that reassesses dominant values, ways of knowing, and collective aspirations. One can hope we are all ready to heed this book’s call to reimagine communication—and the world.” -- Phaedra C. Pezzullo, University of Colorado Boulder“A Sense of Urgency compels us to acknowledge that the magnitude of climate change courses through everything—including facts and feelings, information and sensations. Hawhee demonstrates just how intense rhetoric must become to meet these unprecedented challenges. Working with an extinct glacier, youth activists, a multisensory art installation, and more, Hawhee helps us once again consider an approach to rhetoric that we could not before fathom, but now must.” -- Casey Boyle, University of Texas at AustinTable of ContentsList of Figures 1. Introduction: Intensifications 2. Glacial Death: Making Future Memory Present 3. “In a World Full of ‘Ifs’”: The Felt Time of Youth Climate Rhetors 4. Learning Curves: COVID-19, Climate Change, and Mathematical Magnitude 5. Presence and Placement in Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest 6. Epilogue: Fathoming Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
£22.00
The University of Chicago Press Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy
Book Synopsis
£45.60
The University of Chicago Press The Sociology of Housing
Book SynopsisA landmark volume about the importance of housing in social life. In 1947, the president of the American Sociological Association, Louis Wirth, argued for the importance of housing as a field of sociological research. Now, seventy-five years later, the sociology of housing has still not developed as a distinct subfield, leaving efforts to understand housing's place in society to other disciplines, such as economics and urban planning. With this volume, the editors and contributors solidify the importance of housing studies within the discipline of sociology by tackling topics like racial segregation, housing instability, the supply of affordable housing, and the process of eviction. In doing so, they showcase the very best traditions of sociology: they draw on diverse methodologies, present unique field sites and data sources, and foreground a range of theoretical approaches to elucidate the relationships between contemporary housing, public policy, and key social outcomes. The STrade Review“In The Sociology of Housing, McCabe and Rosen push housing research from the background to the foreground of so many core sociological questions about how we structure society and interact with one another. This volume offers an expert syllabus on housing for academics, students, and practitioners. There is no book like it, and it will stand as the reference tool for decades to come.” -- Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University“The Sociology of Housing addresses an important topic: how housing is created and, in turn, influences and shapes our lives. Much has been written about the economics and financing of housing. But the multifaceted social influences of housing on society have long been overlooked. With contributions from leading scholars, this volume will make an important contribution to our understanding of how housing is interwoven into our lives.” -- Lance Freeman, James W. Effron University Professor of City and Regional Planning & Sociology, University of PennsylvaniaTable of ContentsIntroduction. How Homes Shape Our Social Lives Brian J. McCabe, Georgetown University; Eva Rosen, Georgetown University Part I: Mechanisms of Housing Inequality 1. Housing as Capital: US Policy, Homeownership, and the Racial Wealth Gap Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana, University of Albany 2. Latino Homeownership: Opportunities and Challenges in the Twenty-First Century Allen Hyde, Georgia Institute of Technology; Mary J. Fischer, University of Connecticut 3. Latinos’ Housing Inequality: Local Historical Context and the Relational Formation of Segregation María G. Rendón, University of California, Irvine; Deyanira Nevárez Martínez, Michigan State University; Maya Parvati Kulkarni, University of California, Irvine 4. The Renaissance Comes to the Projects: Public Housing Policy, Race, and Urban Redevelopment in Baltimore Peter Rosenblatt, Loyola University Chicago 5. Unsettling Native Land: Indigenous Perspectives on Housing Jennifer Darrah-Okike, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa; Lorinda Riley, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa; Philip M. E. Garboden, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa; Nathalie Rita, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa 6. Affordable Housing Is Public Health: How Landlords Struggle to Contain America’s Lead Poisoning Crisis Matthew H. McLeskey, SUNY Oswego 7. Audit Studies of Housing Discrimination: Established, Emerging, and Future Research S. Michael Gaddis, University of California, Los Angeles; Nicholas V. DiRago, University of California, Los Angeles Part II: Housing Insecurity and Instability 8. Centering the Institutional Life of Eviction Kyle Nelson, University of California, Los Angeles; Michael C. Lens, University of California, Los Angeles 9. Manufactured Housing in the US: A Critical Affordable Housing Infrastructure Esther Sullivan, University of Colorado, Denver 10. Shared Housing and Housing Instability Hope Harvey, University of Kentucky; Kristin L. Perkins, Georgetown University 11. Informal Housing in the US: Variation and Inequality among Squatters in Detroit Claire Herbert, University of Oregon 12. Housing Deprivation: Homelessness and the Reproduction of Poverty Chris Herring, Harvard University Part III: Housing Markets and Housing Supply 13. Housing Supply as a Social Process Joe LaBriola, Brown University 14. Housing Market Intermediaries Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, University of New Mexico; Robin Bartram, Tulane University; Max Besbris, University of Wisconsin–Madison 15. Housing in the Context of Neighborhood Decline Sharon Cornelissen, Harvard University; Christine Jang-Trettien, Princeton University 16. Learning from Short-Term Rentals’ “Disruptions” Krista E. Paulsen, Boise State University 17. Moving Beyond “Good Landlord, Bad Landlord”: A Theoretical Investigation of Exploitation in Housing Philip M. E. Garboden, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa 18. How We Pay to House Each Other Isaac William Martin, University of California, San Diego Part IV: Housing, Racial Segregation, and Inequality 19. The Future of Segregation Studies: Questions, Challenges, and Opportunities Jacob William Faber, New York University 20. Understanding Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Residential Mobility among Housing Choice Voucher Holders Erin Carll, University of Washington; Hannah Lee, University of Washington; Chris Hess, Kennesaw State University; Kyle Crowder, University of Washington 21. All in the Family: Social Connections and the Cycle of Segregation Maximilian Cuddy, University of Illinois, Chicago; Amy Spring, Georgia State University; Maria Krysan, University of Illinois, Chicago; Kyle Crowder, University of Washington 22. Policing, Property, and the Production of Racial Segregation Rahim Kurwa, University of Illinois, Chicago 23. Criminal Justice Contact and Housing Inequality Brielle Bryan, Rice University; Temi Alao, University of Florida 24. The Housing Divide in the Global South Marco Garrido, University of Chicago Works Cited Index
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press The Sociology of Housing
Book SynopsisA landmark volume about the importance of housing in social life. In 1947, the president of the American Sociological Association, Louis Wirth, argued for the importance of housing as a field of sociological research. Now, seventy-five years later, the sociology of housing has still not developed as a distinct subfield, leaving efforts to understand housing's place in society to other disciplines, such as economics and urban planning. With this volume, the editors and contributors solidify the importance of housing studies within the discipline of sociology by tackling topics like racial segregation, housing instability, the supply of affordable housing, and the process of eviction. In doing so, they showcase the very best traditions of sociology: they draw on diverse methodologies, present unique field sites and data sources, and foreground a range of theoretical approaches to elucidate the relationships between contemporary housing, public policy, and key social outcomes. The STrade Review“In The Sociology of Housing, McCabe and Rosen push housing research from the background to the foreground of so many core sociological questions about how we structure society and interact with one another. This volume offers an expert syllabus on housing for academics, students, and practitioners. There is no book like it, and it will stand as the reference tool for decades to come.” -- Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University“The Sociology of Housing addresses an important topic: how housing is created and, in turn, influences and shapes our lives. Much has been written about the economics and financing of housing. But the multifaceted social influences of housing on society have long been overlooked. With contributions from leading scholars, this volume will make an important contribution to our understanding of how housing is interwoven into our lives.” -- Lance Freeman, James W. Effron University Professor of City and Regional Planning & Sociology, University of PennsylvaniaTable of ContentsIntroduction. How Homes Shape Our Social Lives Brian J. McCabe, Georgetown University; Eva Rosen, Georgetown University Part I: Mechanisms of Housing Inequality 1. Housing as Capital: US Policy, Homeownership, and the Racial Wealth Gap Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana, University of Albany 2. Latino Homeownership: Opportunities and Challenges in the Twenty-First Century Allen Hyde, Georgia Institute of Technology; Mary J. Fischer, University of Connecticut 3. Latinos’ Housing Inequality: Local Historical Context and the Relational Formation of Segregation María G. Rendón, University of California, Irvine; Deyanira Nevárez Martínez, Michigan State University; Maya Parvati Kulkarni, University of California, Irvine 4. The Renaissance Comes to the Projects: Public Housing Policy, Race, and Urban Redevelopment in Baltimore Peter Rosenblatt, Loyola University Chicago 5. Unsettling Native Land: Indigenous Perspectives on Housing Jennifer Darrah-Okike, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa; Lorinda Riley, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa; Philip M. E. Garboden, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa; Nathalie Rita, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa 6. Affordable Housing Is Public Health: How Landlords Struggle to Contain America’s Lead Poisoning Crisis Matthew H. McLeskey, SUNY Oswego 7. Audit Studies of Housing Discrimination: Established, Emerging, and Future Research S. Michael Gaddis, University of California, Los Angeles; Nicholas V. DiRago, University of California, Los Angeles Part II: Housing Insecurity and Instability 8. Centering the Institutional Life of Eviction Kyle Nelson, University of California, Los Angeles; Michael C. Lens, University of California, Los Angeles 9. Manufactured Housing in the US: A Critical Affordable Housing Infrastructure Esther Sullivan, University of Colorado, Denver 10. Shared Housing and Housing Instability Hope Harvey, University of Kentucky; Kristin L. Perkins, Georgetown University 11. Informal Housing in the US: Variation and Inequality among Squatters in Detroit Claire Herbert, University of Oregon 12. Housing Deprivation: Homelessness and the Reproduction of Poverty Chris Herring, Harvard University Part III: Housing Markets and Housing Supply 13. Housing Supply as a Social Process Joe LaBriola, Brown University 14. Housing Market Intermediaries Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, University of New Mexico; Robin Bartram, Tulane University; Max Besbris, University of Wisconsin–Madison 15. Housing in the Context of Neighborhood Decline Sharon Cornelissen, Harvard University; Christine Jang-Trettien, Princeton University 16. Learning from Short-Term Rentals’ “Disruptions” Krista E. Paulsen, Boise State University 17. Moving Beyond “Good Landlord, Bad Landlord”: A Theoretical Investigation of Exploitation in Housing Philip M. E. Garboden, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa 18. How We Pay to House Each Other Isaac William Martin, University of California, San Diego Part IV: Housing, Racial Segregation, and Inequality 19. The Future of Segregation Studies: Questions, Challenges, and Opportunities Jacob William Faber, New York University 20. Understanding Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Residential Mobility among Housing Choice Voucher Holders Erin Carll, University of Washington; Hannah Lee, University of Washington; Chris Hess, Kennesaw State University; Kyle Crowder, University of Washington 21. All in the Family: Social Connections and the Cycle of Segregation Maximilian Cuddy, University of Illinois, Chicago; Amy Spring, Georgia State University; Maria Krysan, University of Illinois, Chicago; Kyle Crowder, University of Washington 22. Policing, Property, and the Production of Racial Segregation Rahim Kurwa, University of Illinois, Chicago 23. Criminal Justice Contact and Housing Inequality Brielle Bryan, Rice University; Temi Alao, University of Florida 24. The Housing Divide in the Global South Marco Garrido, University of Chicago Works Cited Index
£22.80
The University of Chicago Press Catastrophic Thinking
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Catastrophic Thinking presents the best introductory account of how the idea of species-wide loss was conceived and established in scientific circles. . . . [Sepkoski] convincingly suggests that ideas about extinction in each historical period reflect broader social and cultural concerns in the modern world, from the intimate connections between extinction and imperialism to current concerns about the global biodiversity crisis. . . . Extinction is no longer a specialized concern. In this climate, David Sepkoski’s accessible guide is most welcome." * Times Literary Supplement *"Convincingly demonstrates that an ecological perspective has profoundly shaped our views of biological and social communities. . . . Sepkoski's magisterial work will hopefully serve as an inspiration for more comprehensive histories of the concept of diversity. . . . Catastrophic Thinking is essential reading for those seeking to understand the origin of one of the most powerful concepts under consideration today." * Science *"A brilliant examination of an urgent subject, with lessons not just for addressing mass extinction but also for reckoning with the intellectual background against which we have failed to do so. Sepkoski is a scientific Maurice Sendak, conjuring a strange world in which the wild things are not the lost animals and plants of the earth’s past so much as the scientists clamouring to study—if not save—them. . . . This book uncovers a pattern of stasis and rupture; ideas, like species, thrive for a time, only to see the context in which they thrived wiped out. Arriving at this particular moment, in a world stalked by extremists and stoked by a profit-driven public square, Sepkoski’s account of where the wild things went makes perfect sense. In an age of rupture, what other way could it have been written? To paraphrase one of Sepkoski’s own sources: Catastrophic Thinking is the extinction story our era deserves." * Social History of Medicine *"Excellent. . . . Catastrophic Thinking is a closely argued, gracefully written book. In fact, it might even be regarded as several books in one: as a history of extinction science, an essay on the origin of a social value, and more subtlety, a piece of cultural criticism. These elements blend together almost seamlessly. Sepkoski achieves just the right mix of historical detachment, scientific sophistication and cultural perceptiveness to carry off his ambitious project. There are plenty of surprises for the reader along the way, and not a little wisdom. In our present age of catastrophes and catastrophizing, it deserves a wide and enthusiastic readership." * Metascience *"Far from a dry recitation of the scientific literature, Sepkoski's meta-analysis of extinction and biological diversity foregrounds ideas and rhetorical choices. . . . Lucidly written and keenly personal, Catastrophic Thinking is engaging from beginning to end. . . . Sepkoski delineates new territory in the discourse of extinction by reviewing and revisiting the most important scientific figures and literature (popular and academic) of each era since catastrophic thinking took hold of the Western imaginary. Readers interested in the scientific history of extinction as a modern concept, particularly as it was formed by human institutions, will find much of interest in Sepkoski's book." * Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society *"This book is impeccably researched, and—rather than a popular science book—does not repackage and distil others' work but provides a novel, academic argument. This fresh take on how we collectively see extinction—and its flipside, loss of diversity—will help readers understand and contextualise the current crisis and the Anthropocene. Sepkoski will give many pause to reflect not just on how our research is influenced by our broader culture, but also how important it is to influence and impact society and politics: to move the needle on the climate and biodiversity crises. . . . Buy a copy of Catastrophic Thinking to better understand—and even be inspired to change—these terrifying times we are living in." * Holocene *"Timely and fascinating. . . . This is a fabulous book, expertly weaving cultural and intellectual history into a rich tapestry of ideas about loss, precarity, and diversity, whose relevance and significance can hardly be overstated. Sepkoski takes readers on an eye-opening journey into a history that remains surprisingly little known despite its obvious importance given the catastrophic biodiversity crisis we currently face. It's an absolute pleasure to read." * Lukas Rieppel, New Books in Science, Technology, and Society *"Sepkoski has written a book that is as dynamic and paradoxical as extinction and diversity themselves. This is a book about extinction and death, but also about diversity and life. Although extinction is a potentially bleak and distressing territory, Sepkoski guides the reader faithfully through it. . . . He transforms the trenches of extinction into navigable terrain for the reader who is willing to consider their own role in the history of extinction." * Environment and History *"How do humans perceive the nature of extinction, and how has that shaped how humans perceive each other and aspects of society? This thought-provoking book examines those questions and reveals how knowing that we can lose something forever—and the realization that extinction comes with cultural and ecological costs—motivates us to protect everything else." * Revelator *"Catastrophic Thinking stands out for the depth of its scholarship. . . . [The book] is positively bristling with fascinating insights. Obviously, this is a must-read for science historians, but palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists interested in the history of their discipline can also safely pick this up. Furthermore, thanks to the compelling arguments and accessible writing, this book should appeal strongly outside of these disciplines to anyone with an interest in palaeontology, evolution, or mass extinctions." * Inquisitive Biologist *"A solid introduction to one of the most critical issues of today. . . . Recommended." * Choice *"In his wise and meticulously argued new book, Sepkoski explains why every era gets the dinosaur story it deserves, how the threat to biodiversity helped fashion cultural diversity into an ideal, and why extinction has become personal to each and every one of us. An urgent and brilliant exemplar of history of science at its very best, Catastrophic Thinking beautifully shows that the ways we construct the past are always reflections of our hopes and fears for the future." -- Oren Harman, author of Evolutions: Fifteen Myths That Explain Our World"An authoritative, compelling, and insightful account of how biological and cultural diversity has come to be so highly prized in contemporary Western society. This is a definitive history of the cultural and scientific developments, especially in paleontology, that have helped forge our sense of the modern biodiversity crisis. Lucid, historically sweeping, and accessible, Sepkoski's book ably reconstructs key aspects of the larger culture in which ideas about extinction, catastrophe, and diversity emerged." -- Mark V. Barrow, Jr., Virginia Tech"Sepkoski concludes the book with an insightful discussion of neoliberalism and the concept of the Anthropocene that inspires a critical reconsideration of the evidently catastrophic attitude of humans. Indeed, Homo sapiens is ‘the dinosaur and the asteroid’ of our era. Finally, although the book was written before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Catastrophic Thinking seems to provide a very appropriate framework in which to address current questions relating to the major challenges facing human beings on a global scale." * History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences *
£21.85
The University of Chicago Press Flowers Guns and Money
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Scholars of US foreign policy have longed for a biography of Joel Poinsett, the diplomat, secret agent, and legislator who actively shaped US–Latin American relations for three crucial decades in the early nineteenth century. Lindsay Schakenbach Regele’s marvelous new study more than meets the task, not only revealing the extensive scope of his influence at home and abroad but also making an important argument about the evolution of early American political economy.” -- Amy S. Greenberg, The Pennsylvania State University"A revealing if at times critical biographical study that highlights the role of economic interests in early 19th-century foreign relations." * The Wall Street Journal *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1 Founding a Man, 1779–1810 Chapter 2 International and Domestic Politics, 1811–1819 Chapter 3 Domestic and International Politics, 1820–1825 Chapter 4 Interest in Mexico, 1825–1830 Chapter 5 Southern “Honor,” 1830–1836 Chapter 6 War, 1837–1841 Chapter 7 Final Battles, 1841–1851 Epilogue Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Notes Index
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press Flowers Guns and Money
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Scholars of US foreign policy have longed for a biography of Joel Poinsett, the diplomat, secret agent, and legislator who actively shaped US–Latin American relations for three crucial decades in the early nineteenth century. Lindsay Schakenbach Regele’s marvelous new study more than meets the task, not only revealing the extensive scope of his influence at home and abroad but also making an important argument about the evolution of early American political economy.” -- Amy S. Greenberg, The Pennsylvania State University"A revealing if at times critical biographical study that highlights the role of economic interests in early 19th-century foreign relations." * The Wall Street Journal *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1 Founding a Man, 1779–1810 Chapter 2 International and Domestic Politics, 1811–1819 Chapter 3 Domestic and International Politics, 1820–1825 Chapter 4 Interest in Mexico, 1825–1830 Chapter 5 Southern “Honor,” 1830–1836 Chapter 6 War, 1837–1841 Chapter 7 Final Battles, 1841–1851 Epilogue Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Notes Index
£20.00
The University of Chicago Press Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms
Book SynopsisA whirlwind journey through fungus frontiers that underscores how appreciating fungi is key to understanding our planet's power and fragility. What can we learn from the lives of fungi? Splitting time between the northern and southern hemispheres, ecologist Alison Pouliot ensures that she experiences two autumns per year in the pursuit of fungifrom Australia's deserts to Iceland's glaciers to America's Cascade Mountains. In Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms, we journey alongside Pouliot, magnifiers in hand, as she travels the world. With Pouliot as our guide, we smell fire-loving truffles that transform their scent after burning to lure mammals who eat them and, ultimately, spread their spores. We spot the eerie glow of the ghost fungus, a deceptive entity that looks like an edible oyster mushroom but will soon heave back outalong with everything else in your stomachif you take a bite. And we crawl alongside vegetable caterpillars, which are neither vegetable nor caterpillar but a fungus that devours insects from the inside out. Featuring stunning color photographs of these mycological miracles, Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms shows that understanding fungi is fundamental for harmonizing with the natural world.Trade Review"In this captivating study, ecologist Pouliot expounds on mushrooms she’s encountered during her fieldwork....The result is an enjoyable tour of the fungal kingdom." * Publisher's Weekly *"As Pouliot wryly describes her companions and their forays into forests, the fungi that inhabit them emerge as her protagonists….Attending also to the prominent women (including Beatrix Potter) who helped found mycology as a science and fungi’s place in habitat conservation, Pouliot delivers a charming, informative presentation of a world beneath our feet." * Booklist *"[Pouliot makes a] convincing case . . . Fungi are essential to the world as we know it." * New York Review of Books *"In this book, [Pouliot] takes us with her all over the world as she brings fungi to life with lush descriptions, infectious enthusiasm, and gorgeous pictures. But she also shows the reader just how important fungi are to the natural world, as well as what they do for humans." * Book Riot *"Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms is an information-packed, entertaining read that also has gorgeous color photos of fungi. Pouliot takes the reader on an adventure in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres...learning about these mysterious mycological wonders and the roles they play in our ecological systems." -- Jaime Herndon * American Scientist *"Conveying an impassioned message for conservation and awareness, Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms is a compelling, enlightening look at lowly but remarkable fungi that are often hidden in the shadows." * Foreword Reviews *"So—do we really need another book about mushrooms? The answer is yes, but only if it’s this one. Alison Pouliot has written a lovely book that digs deep but wears its learning lightly, and manages to cover—in a series of relatively short, readable, enjoyable and accurate chapters—most of the important issues in popular mycology." * Fungi *“Pouliot is a mycologist whose knowledge of fungi is extraordinarily vast and intricate.” * The Saturday Paper *“I was entertained and enthralled reading this book and I promise I have never read a book from cover to cover on fungi before. I didn't think it was my jam, but [it turns out] it should be everyone's jam. Fungi is literally the glue that keeps us together.” * Readings *“Pouliot conveys the otherworldly charisma of mushrooms with love and skill.” * The Sydney Morning Herald * “Powerful stuff, which should be read by all those who continue to support the insane logging of our native forests.” -- Jonathan Watts, author and environmental activist"This subterranean journey introduces the quirks of behavior that allow fungi to spread through soils, support living plants, and recycle the debris of nature. Alison is an accomplished storyteller." -- Nicholas P. Money | Miami University"[Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms] is a joy to read." -- Sophie Cunningham | author of "City of Trees""Sensual and scientific. Dazzling and boundary breaking. [Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms] will make you see the world anew." -- Long Litt Woon | author of "The Way Through the Woods""The world of fungi is our world even if we don’t know it and can’t see most of it—strange, dazzling, spooky, unpredictable, friendly, deadly, sly. And Alison is the perfect guide. She surprises and informs, delights and warns; makes you wish you could walk with her and her passionate companions. That’s OK. In this book you do." -- Paul Kelly | songwriter"An evocative, accessible and important book about one of the most vital, yet hugely ignored, kingdoms on our planet—fungi. After reading this you cannot help but see the world in a different light—and should approach mushrooms and truffles with new relish." -- Charles Massy | author of "Call of the Reed Warbler""Anyone who has joined Alison in a forest, anywhere in the world, will know her incredible ability to magnify those microscopic organisms that hold our natural world together, to connect every element of human life—physical, emotional or social—to the function of our natural landscapes. [Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms] is like a walk in the forest, pungent and complex, filled with curiosity and wonder, and leaving you with a sense that there is so much more to uncover." -- Millie Ross | ABCTV "Gardening Australia""The underground teaches us a different language—and Alison Pouliot is the perfect translator." -- Toby Kiers | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam"[Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms] takes storytelling about fungi to a captivating new level. A well-researched page turner." -- Anders Dahlberg | Swedish University of Agricultural SciencesTable of ContentsA Note on Fungal Terminology 1 Stirrings in the Subterrain 2 Life in the Mycosphere 3 Into the Australian Bush 4 No Such Thing as a Bad Fungus 5 Fungi, Fire, and Ice 6 Fungal Renegades 7 The Mycophagists 8 Conserving the Bizarre and the Beautiful 9 Women as Keepers of Fungal Lore 10 Restoring Fungi Epilogue Acknowledgments Images Species Register Glossary Selected Sources Index
£19.00
The University of Chicago Press Waste and the Wasters
Book SynopsisTrade Review"One of those rare academic books that remixes a collection of ideas—medieval poetry, land management, weather, bees, God’s vengeance, and climate change—in a style that’s eminently readable, bringing the past to life and connecting it to the present in one engaging sentence after another." * The Christian Century *“Waste and the Wasters deftly maps the contours of ecosystemic imagination in medieval England through close engagement with one of its major vehicles: poetry. Johnson’s compelling study shows the importance of dealing with premodern sources in all their complexity as they work to make sense of the dense relational landscape that they inhabit and their responsibilities within it." -- Brooke Holmes, Princeton University“Literary scholars in the Anthropocene can’t help but notice precarity, both precarity of time (there may not be much left!) and discursive precarity (does our discipline have much to offer?). Enter Eleanor Johnson. When we finish reading this vigorously conversational book, the ecosystem of our discipline will find refreshing new networks within which to work.” -- James Simpson, Harvard University“A beautiful and urgent essay on ecosystemic thought in late medieval England that is also a call to action on the climate catastrophe now unfolding. Look to art, says Johnson, when there’s no organized vocabulary for expressions of ecosystemic peril. Look to medieval poetry to find complex and ethical ruminations on what it is to waste and to be a waster, both critical communal problems tying individuals to larger concepts of social justice. In our current eco-meltdown, this book will emphatically not waste anyone’s time.” -- Carolyn Dinshaw, New York UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction / Thinking and Talking Ecosystemically Chapter One / The Five Disasters Facing Medieval Ecosystems Chapter Two / The Laws of Waste: The Bible and the Common Law Chapter Three / Waste in Sermons and Penitential Manuals: The Unjust Steward Chapter Four / Winner and Waster: The Imperilment of the Land Chapter Five / Wasters and Workers in Piers Plowman: Famine and Food Insecurity Chapter Six / Chaucer’s Yeoman’s Wasting Body: Pollution and Contagion Chapter Seven / The Wasted Lands of the Green Knight, and the Wasting of Camelot: Climate Change, Climate Revenge Chapter Eight / Gardens, Bees, and Wastours: Political Waste and the Fantasy of Sustainability Chapter Nine / Aftermath: From Wasting to Waste Matter Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Index
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press Waste and the Wasters
Book SynopsisA groundbreaking examination of ecological thought in medieval England. While the scale of today's crisis is unprecedented, environmental catastrophe is nothing new. Waste and the Wasters studies the late Middle Ages, when a convergence of land contraction, soil depletion, climate change, pollution, and plague subsumed Western Europe. In a culture lacking formal scientific methods, the task of explaining and coming to grips with what was happening fell to medieval poets. The poems they wrote used the terms waste or wasters to anchor trenchant critiques of people's unsustainable relationships with the world around them and with each other. In this book, Eleanor Johnson shows how poetry helped medieval people understand and navigate the ecosystemic crisesboth material and spiritualof their time.Trade Review"One of those rare academic books that remixes a collection of ideas—medieval poetry, land management, weather, bees, God’s vengeance, and climate change—in a style that’s eminently readable, bringing the past to life and connecting it to the present in one engaging sentence after another." * The Christian Century *“Waste and the Wasters deftly maps the contours of ecosystemic imagination in medieval England through close engagement with one of its major vehicles: poetry. Johnson’s compelling study shows the importance of dealing with premodern sources in all their complexity as they work to make sense of the dense relational landscape that they inhabit and their responsibilities within it." -- Brooke Holmes, Princeton University“Literary scholars in the Anthropocene can’t help but notice precarity, both precarity of time (there may not be much left!) and discursive precarity (does our discipline have much to offer?). Enter Eleanor Johnson. When we finish reading this vigorously conversational book, the ecosystem of our discipline will find refreshing new networks within which to work.” -- James Simpson, Harvard University“A beautiful and urgent essay on ecosystemic thought in late medieval England that is also a call to action on the climate catastrophe now unfolding. Look to art, says Johnson, when there’s no organized vocabulary for expressions of ecosystemic peril. Look to medieval poetry to find complex and ethical ruminations on what it is to waste and to be a waster, both critical communal problems tying individuals to larger concepts of social justice. In our current eco-meltdown, this book will emphatically not waste anyone’s time.” -- Carolyn Dinshaw, New York UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction / Thinking and Talking Ecosystemically Chapter One / The Five Disasters Facing Medieval Ecosystems Chapter Two / The Laws of Waste: The Bible and the Common Law Chapter Three / Waste in Sermons and Penitential Manuals: The Unjust Steward Chapter Four / Winner and Waster: The Imperilment of the Land Chapter Five / Wasters and Workers in Piers Plowman: Famine and Food Insecurity Chapter Six / Chaucer’s Yeoman’s Wasting Body: Pollution and Contagion Chapter Seven / The Wasted Lands of the Green Knight, and the Wasting of Camelot: Climate Change, Climate Revenge Chapter Eight / Gardens, Bees, and Wastours: Political Waste and the Fantasy of Sustainability Chapter Nine / Aftermath: From Wasting to Waste Matter Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Index
£22.80
