Books & Profiles

This book reveals how IUCN experts struggled to make global schemes for nature conservation a central concern for UNESCO, UNEP and other intergovernmental organizations.

This collection investigates the emergence of specific toxic, pathogenic, carcinogenic, and ecologically harmful chemicals as well as the scientific, cultural and legislative responses they have prompted.

This book packs into one slender volume a sweeping tale of fire, and humanity’s interactions with fire, from prehistory to the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Sybille Heidenreich takes the reader on a journey through art history with an “ecological eye.” Looking at examples of Dürer, Monet, and Van Gogh, she offers insight into the emergence of present-day ecological crises and valuable food for thought on issues of sustainability.

Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene argues that the current climate crisis calls for new ways of thinking and producing knowledge, suggesting that our collective inclination has been to go on in an experimental and exploratory mode, in which we refuse to foreclose on options or jump too quickly to “solutions.”

Vital Reenchantments takes up E. O. Wilson’s Biophilia (1984), James Lovelock’s Gaia (1979), and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos (1980), to show how each work fleshes out scientific concepts with attention to “affective wonder.”

Contributing authors examine what happens when we cease to assume that only humans exert agency, by considering animals and vegetables as agents rather than mere objects.

Adrian Ivakhiv proposes an ecological realism based on humanity’s eventual demise, asking what we can do now and what quality of compost we should leave behind.

Through a collection of 445 photographs taken from precisely the same places at intervals of months, years and decades,Die Zeit des Waldes [The forest over time] offers a stop-action look at the diversity of transformations within Germany’s forests.

In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism warns the reader about the possibility that we have already entered a catastrophic time, determined by the apparently uncontrollable impact of anthropogenic activities and the incapability of governments and authorities to respond effectively.