Monthly archives: June 2017

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was first published in three serialized excerpts in the New Yorker in June of 1962. The book appeared in September of that year and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water.

Silent Spring

 in Books by
From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. - What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? - What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? - Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat?

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

 in Books by
This groundbreaking book dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. Here is a world history that really is a history of all the world's peoples, a unified narrative of human life even more intriguing and important than accounts of dinosaurs and glaciers.

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

 in Books by
Forget everything you think you know about global warming. It's not about carbon – it's about capitalism. The good news is that we can seize this crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better. In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein, author of the global bestsellers The Shock Doctrine and No Logo, exposes the myths that are clouding climate debate. 

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

 in Books by
One hundred thousand years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

 in Books by
Leading political and environmental commentator on where we have gone wrong, and what to do about it "Without countervailing voices, naming and challenging power, political freedom withers and dies. Without countervailing voices, a better world can never materialise. Without countervailing voices, wells will still be dug and bridges will still be built, but only for the few. Food will still be grown, but it will not reach the mouths of the poor. New medicines will be developed, but they will be inaccessible to many of those in need."

How Did We Get Into This Mess?

 in Books by