Environmental Science Book List Abbey, E. The monkey wrench ...

303-15200: Environmental Science II Spring 2003
Environmental Science Book List
Abbey, E. The monkey wrench gang. The backlist bestselling underground cult classic that
raised American consciousness of environmentalism, reissued in a trade paperback edition. When
a gang of renegades sets forth on their mission to destroy the power lines, new road and bridges
springing up across their cherished desert, all hell breaks loose.
Abbey, E. Desert solitaire. 337 pages Ballantine Books (Mm). Reissue edition (April 1991). With
language as colorful as a Canyonlands sunset and a perspective as pointed as a prickly pear,
Cactus Ed captures the heat, mystery, and surprising bounty of desert life. Desert Solitaire is a
meditation on the stark landscapes of the red-rock West, a passionate vote for wilderness, and a
howling lament for the commercialization of the American outback.
Antonetta, S. Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir
In this harrowing yet lovely memoir, poet Antonetta (Bardo) describes her childhood vacations in
New Jersey's Pine Barrens, a holiday spot replete with crabbing, fishing and sunbathing and a local
water system tainted by nuclear waste, pesticides, cyanide, lead, mercury and other poisons. Some
30 years later, she relates, that region "is the center of a cluster of childhood cancers of the brain
and nervous system.”
Baskin, Y., A. Rorer and P.Ehrlich. 1997. The Work of Nature : How the Diversity of Life
Sustains Us. 288 pages. Island Press. Baskin, a science journalist with a pleasingly lucid style,
reports on the findings of an innovative ecological survey conducted in the hopes of answering the
question, "What are the possible consequences of the accelerating losses in biodiversity?"
Berry, W. 1996. The Unsettling of America.. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, CA. A
Kentucky farmer writes about the consequences of Americans losing respect for land and each
other, primarily from an agricultural perspective.
Bullard, R.D. 1994. Unequal protection. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, CA. 392 pages. A
compendium of case studies of environmental problems facing communities of color and the need
for better environmental justice.
Callenbach, E. 1975 (reissued in 1990). Ecotopia. Bantam Books. 181 pages. Ecotopia was
founded when northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the Union to create a
"stable-state" ecosystem: the perfect balance between human beings and the environment. Now,
twenty years later, the isolated, mysterious Ecotopia welcomes its first officially sanctioned
American visitor: New York Times-Post reporter Will Weston. Like a modern Gulliver, the
skeptical Weston is by turns impressed, horrified, and overwhelmed by Ecotopia's strange
practices: employee ownership of farms and businesses, the twenty-hour work week, the fanatical
elimination of pollution, "mini-cities" that defeat overcrowding, devotion to trees bordering on
worship, a woman-dominated government, and bloody, ritual war games. Bombarded by
innovative, unsettling ideas, set afire by a relationship with a sexually forthright Ecotopian
woman, Weston's conflict of values intensifies-and leads to a startling climax.
Callenbach, E. 1981. Ecotopia Emerging. Banyan Tree Books. A multistranded novel
dramatizing the rise and triumph of a powerful American movement to preserve the earth as a
safe, habitable environment. Its heroine is a brash and brilliant highschool student who invents a

303-15200: Environmental Science II Spring 2003
better photovoltaic cell. Her mother organizes "cancer commandos." Figures who also appear in
ECOTOPIA, to which this is a "prequel," first join the story here. An epic: the birth of a new
nation.
Carson, R. 1962. Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, MA. 368 pages. A landmark
book on the environmental consequences of pesticide use.
Colborn, T., Dumanoski, D., and J. P. Myers. 1996. Our Stolen Future, Dutton Publ. (Penguin
Books), NY. 305 pages. Following in the tradition of Silent Spring, this book investigates
whether chemicals in the environment are disrupting the reproductive function of animals and
humans.
Daily, G.C. (Ed.) and J. Reichert. 1997. Nature's Services: Societal Dependence on Natural
Ecosystems. Island Press. 416 pages. Nature's Services brings together world-renowned scientists
from a variety of disciplines to examine the character and value of ecosystem services, the
damage that has been done to them, and the consequent implications for human society.
Contributors present a detailed synthesis of our current understanding of a suite of ecosystem
services and a preliminary assessment of their economic value.
Ehrlich, P.R., Ehrlrich, A.H. and G.C. Daily. 1995. The Stork and the Plow : The Equity
Answer to the Human Dilemma. Putnam’s. 384 pages.
Gore, A. 1992. Earth in the Balance: ecology and the human spirit. 432 pages. Houghton
Mifflin, NY. Global warming. The deteriorating ozone layer. The rapid destruction of the world's
rain forests. Rising carbon dioxide levels. This bestselling work on our planet's environmental
crisis gives a shocking account of just how serious all of these problems have become. The
vice-presidential candidate describes how far-reaching the environmental crisis is and calls for a
radical change in human civilization's relationship with the planet.
Grant, L. 1996. Juggernaut: growth on a finite planet. Seven Locks Press, Washington, DC.
310 pages. An interdisciplinary perspective on the causes and consequences of global population
growth. Fairly technical.
Harden, B. 1996. A River Lost. This book is a historical review of the management of the
Columbia River. It integrates information of water management, agricultural practices, nuclear
energy production, and preserving runs of anadromous salmon.
Harr, J. 1996. A Civil Action, Vintage Books (Random House), NY, 502 pages. This is a nonfictional
account of a legal battle between a small community and corporate America over
chemical contamination of well water.
Leopold, A.C. 1946. A sand county almanac. Ballantine Books. A classic in environmental
science. These astonishing portraits of the natural world explore the breathtaking diversity of the
unspoiled American landscape -- the mountains and the prairies, the deserts and the coastlines. A
stunning tribute to our land and a bold challenge to protect the world we love.
Jensen, D. A Language Older Than Words

303-15200: Environmental Science II Spring 2003
“Every morning I wake up and ask myself whether I should write a book or blow up a dam,"
writes Jensen in his opening pages. "Every day I tell myself I should continue to write. Yet I'm not
always convinced I'm making the right decision." This is the agony of an environmentalist and a
pacifist who has come to realize that he's been throwing snowballs at army tanks. While he
debates and negotiates with the polluters, the developers and the industrialists, they continue their
destructive activities virtually unimpeded. How long, wonders Jensen, can we afford to go on
being pacifists?
Quinn, Daniel. Ishmael, Bantam Books 263 pages. Reissue edition (June 1995). The narrator of
this extraordinary tale is a man in search for truth. He answers an ad in a local newspaper from a
teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a
full-grown gorilla who is nibbling delicately on a slender branch. "You are the teacher?" he asks
incredulously. "I am the teacher," the gorilla replies. Ishmael is a creature of immense wisdom and
he has a story to tell, one that no other human being has ever heard. It is a story that extends
backward and forward over the lifespan of the earth from the birth of time to a future there is still
time save. Like all great teachers, Ishmael refuses to make the lesson easy; he demands the final
illumination to come from within ourselves. Is it man's destiny to rule the world? Or is it a higher
destiny possible for him-- one more wonderful than he has ever imagined?
Revkin, A. The Burning Season : The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon
Rain Forest. 1994. Plume Publ. A well-researched and deftly written account of the life and times
of Mendes, the Brazilian rubber tapper and grass-roots environmentalist who was murdered in
1988 by ranchers intent on their short term gain.
Steingraber, S. Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood
Steingraber (Living Downstream) offers the commonest of stories how she got pregnant, gave
birth and fed her baby in a most uncommon way. A cross between the quirkily thorough detail of
Natalie Angier's science-writing and the passionate environmental advocacy of Rachel Carson,
Steingraber's style would have been insufferably heroic if the pregnancy had been smooth,
mind-over-matter. The climax, however, is not her daughter Faith's birth, but the dilemma over
the safety of breastfeeding. The medical benefits of breast milk are compelling: it provides
excellent nutrition and important immunities. But with rising environmental pollution,
biomagnification implies that deadly toxins like DDT and dioxin will concentrate in human milk,
the top of the food chain. The only answer: fight this pollution and make the world safer for
nursing babies. With humor Steingraber compares childbirth to rocking a car out of a snowdrift or
angling big furniture through a small doorway to leaven the scientific forays, this is a positively
riveting narrative.
Steingraber, S. Living Downstream: A Scientist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the
Environment
With this eloquent and impassioned book, biologist and poet Sandra Steingraber shoulders the
legacy of Rachel Carson, producing a work about people and land, cancer and the environment,
that is as accessible and invaluable as Silent Spring--and potentially as historic.
In her early twenties, Steingraber was afflicted with cancer, a disease that has afflicted other
members of her adoptive family. Writing from the twin perspectives of a survivor and a
concerned scientist, she traces the high incidence of cancer and the terrifying concentrations of
environmental toxins in her native rural Illinois. She goes on to show similar correlation in other
communities, such as Boston and Long Island, and throughout the United States, where cancer

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rates have risen alarmingly since mid-century. At once a deeply moving personal document and
a groundbreaking work of scientific detection, Living Downstream will be a touchstone for
generations, reminding us of the intimate connection between the health of our bodies and the
integrity of our air, land, and water.
Williams, T T. 1992. Refuge. Vintage Books, 304 pages. A woman’s perspective on the effects
of development and nuclear weapon testing on the wilderness and people living in the American
West.