In this brilliant, gracefully written, and important new book, former Secretary of the Interior and Governor of Arizona Bruce Babbitt brings fresh thought to questions of how we can build a future we want to live in.
We’ve all experienced America’s changing natural landscape as the integrity of our forests, seacoasts, and river valleys succumbs to strip malls, new roads, and subdivisions. Too often, we assume that when land is developed it is forever lost to the natural world--or hope that a patchwork of local conservation strategies can somehow hold up against further large-scale development.
In Cities in the Wilderness, Bruce Babbitt makes the case for why we need a national vision of land use. We may have a space program, he points out, but here at home we don’t have an open-space policy that can balance the needs for human settlement and community with those for preservation of the natural world upon which life depends. Yet such a balance, the author demonstrates, is as remarkably achievable as it is necessary. This is no call for developing a new federal bureaucracy; Babbitt shows instead how much can be--and has been--done by making thoughtful and beneficial use of laws and institutions already in place.
Babbitt draws on his extensive experience to take us behind the scenes negotiating the Florida Everglades restoration project, the largest ever authorized by Congress. In California, we discover how the Endangered Species Act has been employed to restore regional habitat. In the Midwest, we see how new World Trade Organization regulations might be used to help restore Iowa’s farmlands and rivers. As a key architect of many environmental success stories, Babbitt reveals how broad restoration projects have thrived through federal- state partnerships and how their principles can be extended to other parts of the country.
 In this inspiring and informative book, Babbitt offers a vision of land use as grand as the country’s natural heritage.

Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in America

Biographies & Memoirs

Babbitt, Bruce

Leaders & Notable People

Shearwater Books

The Digital Age was expected to usher in an era of clean production, an alternative to smokestack industries and their pollutants. But as environmental journalist Elizabeth Grossman reveals in this penetrating analysis of high tech manufacture and disposal, digital may be sleek, but it’s anything but clean. Deep within every electronic device lie toxic materials that make up the bits and bytes, a complex thicket of lead, mercury, cadmium, plastics, and a host of other often harmful ingredients. High Tech Trash is a wake-up call to the importance of the e-waste issue and the health hazards involved. Americans alone own more than two billion pieces of high tech electronics and discard five to seven million tons each year. As a result, electronic waste already makes up more than two-thirds of the heavy metals and 40 percent of the lead found in our landfills. But the problem goes far beyond American shores, most tragically to the cities in China and India where shiploads of discarded electronics arrive daily. There, they are “recycled”—picked apart by hand, exposing thousands of workers and community residents to toxics. As Grossman notes,“This is a story in which we all play a part, whether we know it or not. If you sit at a desk in an office, talk to friends on your cell phone, watch television, listen to music on headphones, are a child in Guangdong, or a native of the Arctic, you are part of this story.” The answers lie in changing how we design, manufacture, and dispose of high tech electronics. Europe has led the way in regulating materials used in electronic devices and in e-waste recycling. But in the United States many have yet to recognize the persistent human health and environmental effects of the toxics in high tech devices. If Silent Spring brought national attention to the dangers of DDT and other pesticides, High Tech Trash could do the same for a new generation of technology’s products.

High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health

Grossman, Elizabeth

Computers & Technology

On a promising January morning, the first day of a new year, writer Tim Palmer and his wife set out in their custom-outfitted van on a nine-month journey through the Pacific Coast Range, the ribbon of rugged landscape lining the sunset edge of our continent. With a route stretching from the dry mesas of the Baja Peninsula to the storm-swept Alaskan island of Kodiak, they embarked on an incomparable tour of North America's coastal mountains high above the Pacific.In Pacific High, Palmer recounts that adventure, interweaving tales of exploration and discovery with portraits of the places they visited and the people they came to know along the way. Bringing together images of locations both exotic and familiar with profiles of intriguing people and descriptions of outdoor treks on foot, skis, mountain bike, canoe, and whitewater raft, Palmer captures the brilliant wonders of nature, the tragedy of irreversible loss, and the hope of everyone who cares for this extraordinary but threatened edge of North America.At the heart of the story is the author's concern for the health of the land and all its life. Nature thrives in many parts of the Coast Range - pristine rivers and ancient forests still promise refuge to the king salmon and the grizzly bear - but with a human population of 36 million, nature is under attack throughout the region. Clearcutting, smog, sprawling development, and more threaten even national parks and refuges. Yet throughout Palmer remains hopeful, introducing readers to memorable people who strive for lasting stewardship in this land they call home.

Pacific High: Adventures in the Coast Ranges from Baja to Alaska

Travel

Palmer, Tim

Specialty Travel

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