Did you know that mosquitoes’ mouthparts are helping to develop pain-free surgical needles? Who'd have thought that the humble mussel could inspire so many useful things, from plywood production to a “glue” that can cement...
Books
384 pages
6 x 9
42 illustrations
Hunting, Harvesting, and Farming Seafood in the Information Age
Overfishing. For the world’s oceans, it’s long been a worrisome problem with few answers. Many of the global fish stocks are at a dangerous tipping point, some spiraling toward extinction. But as older fishing fleets retire and new...
272 pages
6 x 9
14 illustrations, 1 au photo
Uniting Farmers and Environmentalists to Transform American Agriculture
America’s farms are key to the preservation of vital ecosystems and a stable climate. Yet farmers and environmentalists have not always seen eye-to-eye about the best ways to manage agricultural landscapes. Since 1980, American Farmland...
304 pages
6 x 9
Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming
A powerful movement is happening in farming today—farmers are reconnecting with their roots to fight climate change. For one woman, that’s meant learning her tribe’s history to help bring back the buffalo. For another, it’...
200 pages
6 x 9
6 illustrations
A Falconer's Journey and the Healing Power of Wildlife
To escape the tough streets of Southeast Washington, D.C. in the late 1980s, young Rodney Stotts would ride the metro to the Smithsonian National Zoo. There, the bald eagles and other birds of prey captured his imagination for the first time. In...
224 pages
5 x 8
11 photos
Hands-On Community Engagement for Enduring Spaces and Places
The room is dim, the chairs are in perfectly lined rows. The city planner puts up a color-coded diagram of the street improvement project, dreading the inevitable angry responses. Jana loves her community and is glad to be able to attend the...
216 pages
6 x 9
57 figures
How William H. Whyte's Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life
On an otherwise normal weekday in the 1980s, commuters on busy Route 1 in central New Jersey noticed an alarming sight: a man in a suit and tie dashing across four lanes of traffic, then scurrying through a narrow underpass as cars whizzed by...
352 pages
6 x 9
14 photos
Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities
For decades, American cities have experimented with ways to remake themselves in response to climate change. These efforts, often driven by grassroots activism, offer valuable lessons for transforming the places we live. In From the...
304 pages
7 x 10
81 photos, 32 illustrations
Taking Conservation to Scale in Complex Systems
As environmental problems grow larger and more pressing, conservationists have had to adapt. With a shrinking window of time to act, they are turning to broad approaches to combat continental- and global-scale crises of biodiversity loss,...
328 pages
7 x 10
135 figures/illustrations