A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations

By Clive Ponting

British historian Ponting provides a fascinating and comprehensive environmental perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations, including the Sumerians, the Egyptians, and the Mayans. Beginning with hunting-and-gathering societies, settled societies, and the industrialized societies of today, he describes how each has had greater effects on the environment than the last. Settled societies use more resources to support larger populations, often overextending the resources available. "Since the rise of settled societies . . . the majority of the world's population have lived in conditions of grinding poverty." Ponting's forecast for the future based on current population trends and available resources is equally bleak. "To feed the whole world on the diet enjoyed by the average American, using the same level of inputs into agriculture, would require all the world's current oil production and exhaust known reserves within not much more than a decade."

The Holocene: An Environmental History

By Neil Roberts

In its first edition, The Holocene provided undergraduates with a much-needed coherent scientific account of the great transformation of nature that had taken place during the Holocene, the last 10,000 years in the history of the planet and the period in which we are all now living. This period has included major shifts in climate and human culture, and in the natural environment at every level. Completely revised and updated to take full account of the most recent advances, the new edition of this established text includes substantial material on scientific progress in the understanding of climate change and abrupt climatic events, of disturbance effects on the landscape, and of ice core records. Not only have improved dating methods, such as luminescence, been included but also the timescale for the book has been moved to calendar (i.e. real) years. Coverage and supporting case study material have also been broadened and extended.

Environmentalism: A Global History

By Ramachandra Guha

A new entry in the Longman World History Series, Environmentalism: A Global History is perfect for professors who want to assign short topical paperbacks which explore global issues and movements in their world history classes. This volume will fit into the second half of World History courses which typically cover the period from 1500 to the present century. Environmentalism: A Global History is the first genuinely global history of environmentalism. Written by one of the foremost thinkers on ecological issues relating to South Africa, Guha has become one of the more provocative and perceptive commentators on environmentalism in its cross-cultural and global dimensions. Students will find this new text to be a lively and engaging study of ideas and debates that are central to our lives in the twentieth-first century.

Previously Listed Books
Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis	Everything Kids' Environment Book	Albatross: Their World, Their Ways
Cradle to Cradle	The Bridge at the Edge of the World	Ecology and the Politics of Survival
Planet U: Sustaining the World, Reinventing the University	The Complete Idiot's Guide to Green Living	Wake Up and Smell the Planet
Planet U: Sustaining the World, Reinventing the University	The Complete Idiot's Guide to Green Living	Wake Up and Smell the Planet
Winning Our Energy Independence	Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that will Recharge America	Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming
Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals	Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America	Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity
The Noble Wilds	The Great Bear Rainforest: Canada's Forgotten Coast	Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
Farewell, My Subaru	Green to Gold	Freedom from Oil
Cutting Your Car Use	Field Notes from a Catastrophe	Environmental Solutions