Floating Coast An Environmental History Of The Bering Strait

Author : Bathsheba Demuth
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393635171
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait written by Bathsheba Demuth and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between capitalism, communism, and Arctic ecology since the dawn of the industrial age. Whales and walruses, caribou and fox, gold and oil: through the stories of these animals and resources, Bathsheba Demuth reveals how people have turned ecological wealth in a remote region into economic growth and state power for more than 150 years. The first-ever comprehensive history of Beringia, the Arctic land and waters stretching from Russia to Canada, Floating Coast breaks away from familiar narratives to provide a fresh and fascinating perspective on an overlooked landscape. The unforgiving territory along the Bering Strait had long been home to humans—the Inupiat and Yupik in Alaska, and the Yupik and Chukchi in Russia—before Americans and Europeans arrived with revolutionary ideas for progress. Rapidly, these frigid lands and waters became the site of an ongoing experiment: How, under conditions of extreme scarcity, would the great modern ideologies of capitalism and communism control and manage the resources they craved? Drawing on her own experience living with and interviewing indigenous people in the region, as well as from archival sources, Demuth shows how the social, the political, and the environmental clashed in this liminal space. Through the lens of the natural world, she views human life and economics as fundamentally about cycles of energy, bringing a fresh and visionary spin to the writing of human history. Floating Coast is a profoundly resonant tale of the dynamic changes and unforeseen consequences that immense human needs and ambitions have brought, and will continue to bring, to a finite planet.

Author : Bathsheba Demuth
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0393635163
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Floating Coast written by Bathsheba Demuth and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Best Book of the Year as chosen by Nature, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal. A groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between capitalism, communism, and Arctic ecology since the dawn of the industrial age. Whales and walruses, caribou and fox, gold and oil: through the stories of these animals and resources, Bathsheba Demuth reveals how people have turned ecological wealth in a remote region into economic growth and state power for more than 150 years. The first-ever comprehensive history of Beringia, the Arctic land and waters stretching from Russia to Canada, Floating Coast breaks away from familiar narratives to provide a fresh and fascinating perspective on an overlooked landscape. The unforgiving territory along the Bering Strait had long been home to humans—the Inupiat and Yupik in Alaska, and the Yupik and Chukchi in Russia—before Americans and Europeans arrived with revolutionary ideas for progress. Rapidly, these frigid lands and waters became the site of an ongoing experiment: How, under conditions of extreme scarcity, would the great modern ideologies of capitalism and communism control and manage the resources they craved? Drawing on her own experience living with and interviewing indigenous people in the region, as well as from archival sources, Demuth shows how the social, the political, and the environmental clashed in this liminal space. Through the lens of the natural world, she views human life and economics as fundamentally about cycles of energy, bringing a fresh and visionary spin to the writing of human history. Floating Coast is a profoundly resonant tale of the dynamic changes and unforeseen consequences that immense human needs and ambitions have brought, and will continue to bring, to a finite planet.

Author : Gregory T. Cushman
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107004136
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World written by Gregory T. Cushman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-25 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the history of bird guano, demonstrating how this unique commodity helped unite the Pacific Basin with the industrialized world.

Author : Donald S. Garden
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1576078698
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific written by Donald S. Garden and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-08-19 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating study of the environmental history of Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of the Pacific, from the time of the dinosaurs to the present day. Of interest to students and academics alike, this book provides a much-needed synthesis of the recent literature on the environmental history of Australia and Oceania. Part of ABC-CLIO's Nature and Human Societies series, this book maps out the key trends in the region's environmental history, charting the creation of the Australian continent from the ancient land mass of Gondwanaland to the arrival of humans. Especially fascinating are the chapters highlighting how successive waves of human migration created environmental havoc throughout the region, leading to the collapse of the Easter Island civilization and the spread of nonindigenous flora and fauna. From the controversies over the reasons why creatures such as the marsupial lion and the giant kangaroo became extinct to such contemporary problems as deforestation and global warming, this book contains sobering lessons for us all.

Author : J. R. McNeill
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674545036
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Great Acceleration written by J. R. McNeill and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-04 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pace of energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and population growth has thrust the planet into a new age—the Anthropocene. Humans have altered the planet’s biogeochemical systems without consciously managing them. The Great Acceleration explains the causes, consequences, and uncertainties of this massive uncontrolled experiment.

Author : W. Jeffrey Bolster
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674070461
Total Pages : 413 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Mortal Sea written by W. Jeffrey Bolster and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-08 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the Viking ascendancy in the Middle Ages, the Atlantic has shaped the lives of people who depend upon it for survival. And just as surely, people have shaped the Atlantic. In his innovative account of this interdependency, W. Jeffrey Bolster, a historian and professional seafarer, takes us through a millennium-long environmental history of our impact on one of the largest ecosystems in the world. While overfishing is often thought of as a contemporary problem, Bolster reveals that humans were transforming the sea long before factory trawlers turned fishing from a handliner's art into an industrial enterprise. The western Atlantic's legendary fishing banks, stretching from Cape Cod to Newfoundland, have attracted fishermen for more than five hundred years. Bolster follows the effects of this siren's song from its medieval European origins to the advent of industrialized fishing in American waters at the beginning of the twentieth century. Blending marine biology, ecological insight, and a remarkable cast of characters, from notable explorers to scientists to an army of unknown fishermen, Bolster tells a story that is both ecological and human: the prelude to an environmental disaster. Over generations, harvesters created a quiet catastrophe as the sea could no longer renew itself. Bolster writes in the hope that the intimate relationship humans have long had with the ocean, and the species that live within it, can be restored for future generations.

Author : Philip E. Steinberg
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521010573
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Social Construction of the Ocean written by Philip E. Steinberg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-10-25 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2001 book discusses the changing uses, regulations and representation of the sea from 1450 to now.

Author : Samuel Turvey
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191580198
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Witness to Extinction written by Samuel Turvey and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-08-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tragic recognition of the extinction of the Yangtze River Dolphin or baiji in 2007 became a major news story and sent shockwaves around the world. It made a romantic story, for the baiji was a unique and beautiful creature that features in many Chinese legends and folk tales. The Goddess of the Yangtze, as it was known, was also the lone representative of an entire and ancient branch of the Tree of Life. But perhaps the greater tragedy is that its status as one of the world's most threatened mammals had been widely recognized, yet despite wide publicity virtually no international funds became available. A compelling read by a young naturalist, Samuel Turvey tells the story of the plight of the Yangtze River Dolphin from his unique perspective as a conservation biologist deeply involved in the struggle to save the dolphin. This is both a celebration of a beautiful and remarkable animal that once graced one of China's greatest rivers, its natural history and its role as a cultural symbol; and also a personal, eyewitness account of the failures of policy and the struggle to get funds that led to its tragic demise. It is a true cautionary tale that we must learn from, for there are countless other threatened species that will suffer from the same human mistakes, and whose loss we shall not know until it is too late.

Author : Hugh Montgomery
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780744594836
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Voyage of the Arctic Tern written by Hugh Montgomery and published by . This book was released on 2003-06 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title is a classic tale of treason, treachery and treasure, sweeping across many centuries and different lands, from Scandinavia to Spain to the south-west of England. At its heart is the ship's skipper, Bruno, cursed to a life of eternal wandering in a moment of greed and betrayal.

Author : Andrea Geiger
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469667843
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Converging Empires written by Andrea Geiger and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making a vital contribution to our understanding of North American borderlands history through its examination of the northernmost stretches of the U.S.-Canada border, Andrea Geiger highlights the role that the North Pacific borderlands played in the construction of race and citizenship on both sides of the international border from 1867, when the United States acquired Russia's interests in Alaska, through the end of World War II. Imperial, national, provincial, territorial, reserve, and municipal borders worked together to create a dynamic legal landscape that both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people negotiated in myriad ways as they traversed these borderlands. Adventurers, prospectors, laborers, and settlers from Europe, Canada, the United States, Latin America, and Asia made and remade themselves as they crossed from one jurisdiction to another. Within this broader framework, Geiger pays particular attention to the ways in which Japanese migrants and the Indigenous people who had made this borderlands region their home for millennia—Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian among others—negotiated the web of intersecting boundaries that emerged over time, charting the ways in which they infused these reconfigured national, provincial, and territorial spaces with new meanings.