Search results for ""Author Paul K. Conkin""

Agriculture is the most fundamental of all human activities. Today, those who till the soil or tend livestock feed a world population of approximately 6.5 billion. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained such a large population, and according to present projections, farmers will have to feed nine billion people by 2050. The greatest agricultural revolution in history has occurred in the last fifty years, with farmers in the United States leading the way. America's declining number of farms, however, comes as a surprise to many and may have dramatic implications. Paul K. Conkin's A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 charts the profound changes in farming that have occurred during his lifetime. Conkin's personal experience growing up on a small Tennessee farm complements compelling statistical data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Using economic and historical analysis, Conkin assesses the skills, new technologies, and government policies that helped transform American farming. He clarifies the present status of a subsidized, large-scale, mechanized, and chemically supported agriculture, evaluates its environmental and human costs, and surveys alternatives to a troubled, widely challenged system.

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The present era of staggering scientific and technological innovations, with major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, commerce, and communications, seems to document unparalleled human achievement. Yet when we examine the long-term implications, it becomes clear that an ever-growing number of humans have threatened the delicate environmental balance that sustains life on this planet. The past century may be remembered not as a period of great progress but as one marked by unrestrained consumption and failure to come close to a sustainable use of the earth's limited natural resources. In The State of the Earth, noted historian Paul K. Conkin provides a comprehensive analysis of the many environmental hazards that humans must face in this still-young century. Our activities have threatened the survival of many plants and animals, created scarcities in cultivatable soils and water needed for irrigation, used up a large share of fossil fuels, polluted air and water, and most likely created the conditions that will lead to major climate changes. Conkin not only evaluates the challenges but recognizes the successes of concerned individuals and organizations in creating awareness and in supporting policies that will best preserve a healthy earth. The State of the Earth is an invaluable resource for those who desire a broad yet thorough and scientifically informed introduction to present environmental challenges. Even when humans possess the knowledge and the tools to cope with mounting environmental problems, they may not be willing to make the needed sacrifices. Conkin demonstrates that the issues are as much moral and political as technological.

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With characteristic eloquence and insight, prominent historian Paul K. Conkin explores large, indeed cosmic issues in When All the Gods Trembled. Conkin focuses his analysis on the numerous challenges in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to age-old beliefs in the existence of a god, in a world that exhibits some extrinsic or intrinsic purpose, in the divine origin and special destiny of humans, and in transcendent moral values. By the 1920s, these challenges had created a major crisis of faith. Conkin traces the origins of Western beliefs about the gods and about human origins, beliefs shared by the three great Semitic religions. He proceeds with a searching and original analysis of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, rejecting conventional understandings of Darwin in order to probe the logical credentials of his thesis and its implications for Christian theology. From Darwin he moves to the deep rifts that developed between American orthodox, evangelical, and fundamentalist Christians on the one hand and liberals and modernists on the other. These tensions created the enormous public interest in the Scopes trial of 1925, which provides the subject of a revealing chapter. The final two chapters focus on the intellectual debates during and immediately after the famous trial. One involves a dialogue among the most representative and vocal Christian intellectuals in the 1920s—the orthodox E. Gresham Machen, the liberal Harry Emerson Fosdick, and the modernist Shailer Matthews. The last chapter includes brief vignettes of a diverse group of intellectuals who rejected any version of theism, including John Dewey, George Santayana, Harry Elmer Barnes, John Crowe Ransom, Walter Lippmann, and Joseph Wood Krutch. Conkin's survey reveals a degree of the public's disillusionment with American intellectuals during this critical period. The fundamental themes of Western civilization were crumbling, and Americans had to give up on one consoling certainty after another. The loss was great and the possible gains for humanity unsure and precarious. Yet most American intellectuals failed to provide either a deep analysis of the issues at stake or more than myths and fictions to replace the spiritual loss. While recognizing this failure, Conkin eschews any facile condemnation, appreciating how poignant and even tragic were the dilemmas faced by the first generation of intellectuals to confront a world that seemed to exhibit no preordained goal, and provide no promise of human redemption.

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Demonstrating the intellectual excitement that is the practice of history at its best, Paul Conkin's The New Deal is still one of the best known titles in the very popular American History Series, edited by John Hope Franklin and A. S. Eisenstadt. The New Deal is still the best succinct and coherent description of a chaotic period. It is an account of the major domestic policies adopted during the Roosevelt administration. It is also a rich portrait of Roosevelt the man and consummate politician, and the satellite figures around him. This highly interpretive text, with its spirited and often subtle assessments of New Deal personalities and programs, will continue to bring the period to life for new generations of students. Includes extensive photo essay.

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