The Way We Will Be 50 Years from Today: 60 Of The World's Greatest Minds Share Their Visions of the Next Half-Century 
The world is an uncertain place, which is why the future and the unknown absolutely fascinate us.
Veteran television journalist Mike Wallace asked the question "What will life be like 50 years from now?" to sixty of the world's greatest minds. Their responses offer a fascinating glimpse into the cultural, scientific, political, and spiritual moods of the times.
Edited and with an introduction by Mike Wallace, this book provides an imaginative and thought-provoking look at the critical issues that underlie our hopes, prayers, fears, and dreams for life in the 21st century. Contributors include former presidents, leading scientists, noted writers and artists, respected religious leaders, and current political figures.
Editor: Mike Wallace
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Publishers
ISBN: 978-0-8499-0370-0
Earth: The Sequel
If you're looking for a book to inspire you about the search to find the best solutions to global warming and create a clean energy economy, check this one out.
Earth: The Sequel reveals an exciting race that is just beginning – a race to develop low-carbon energy in time to turn our planet's greatest environmental crisis into our greatest economic opportunity.
Written by Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp and journalist Miriam Horn, Earth: The Sequel takes you on a behind-the-scenes tour of emerging clean energy ventures. It tells the story of the scientists and businessmen, visionaries and dreamers, innovators and risk-takers who are pushing technology to the limit on a quest to find new ways to create energy.
These include such brazen inventions as flying windmills and artificial carbon-eating trees. It examines breakthroughs in solar and biomass technologies, and explores how we will reinvent everything from cars to concrete, replacing the old, dumb, centralized electrical grid with a smart, multidirectional energy network. And it means remaking the economics of the rainforest.
This hopeful vision challenges the familiar, grim model of business as usual. With smart national cap-and-trade policy, these new technologies can come online and reverse the environmental degradation, national security risks, economic downturns, and health impacts that have long been the unintended consequences of our nation's energy appetite.
With the power of markets, and with the ingenuity and innovation that are apparent on every page of this book, we can end global warming before it is too late.
Earth: The Sequel was released March 10, 2008. Go to www.earththesequel.com to order your copy now.
Authors: Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 978-0393066906
Four Seasons North: Exploration and Research in the Arctic and Subarctic
Dr. Krear describes the full range of his activities and preparations for expeditions in arctic and subarctic areas conducted early in his extensive career as a scientist and nature lover. From ecological research in the boreal forest, muskeg, and tundra-terrain in subarctic Quebec and Labrador on the Ungava Peninsula, to fur seal research with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sea otter research on Amchitka Island in the western Aleutians, Dr. Krear spent many years learning hands-on about these marvelous arctic animals. Most importantly, he was a member of the 1956 expedition that played a major role in establishing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Northeast Alaska in 1980.
Throughout Four Seasons North, Dr. Krear conveys his love and respect of nature, describing the activities of the animals he observed in ecologically precarious regions, as well as providing updates on the populations concerned. With detailed descriptions and comprehensive appendices, this book is not only the story of one man’s early career as a scientist, but a practical guide to living and working in areas far north.
H. Robert Krear, born and raised in western Pennsylvania, developed a strong love of nature while roaming the forests nearby. Having served in the 10th Mountain Infantry Division in World War II, he went on to earn a B.S. in forestry from Pennsylvania State College, an M.S. in zoology from the University of Wyoming, and a Ph.D. in animal behavior and ecology from the University of Colorado. A professional mountaineer and skier, Dr. Krear has taught biology at a number of schools, including the University of Colorado, Mankato State College, and Michigan Technological University. He continues to travel extensively, visiting nature preserves, national parks, and tropical reefs.
Author: H. Robert Krear
Publisher: Vantage Press, Inc.
ISBN: 9780533153367
Compromising Democracy: The Rise and Fall of the Second Conquest of Western Rangelands
With the onset of global climate change and the pending breakdown of many ecological systems, many are beginning to ask, "Why didn't we listen to the environmentalists!" By tapping into over 20 years of experience and education in public lands livestock grazing, water and Indian law, author Harold Shepherd gives us the opportunity to do just that. He reveals not only the root causes of overgrazing and loss of aquatic habitat by domestic livestock on public lands, but more importantly what we can do about it. Drawing on personal experience, scientific research, a legal background in natural resource law, and insight into legal and political land management, no other author since Wallace Stegner has painted such a colorful and complete picture of the American West and its politics.
Many of the environmental predictions such as global warming, conflicts over water, degradation of water quality and public lands have or are coming to fruition. "With Newt Gingrich now calling himself an environmentalist, you know things are pretty bad. Yet, it is not too late, if even those who used to laugh at things like global warming are willing to recognize the causes of the environmental crises, then it is easy to take the next step which is to do something about them," Shepherd says.
In Compromising Democracy, Shepherd reveals a unique insight in the management of federal rangelands in the West. He inspires us to hope, as vividly illustrated by the message voters sent to capital hill after the 2007 congressional election, that there is finally public and political momentum for the protection of ecological systems on western public lands.
Author: Harold Shepherd
Publisher: iUniverse
Order a copy from Arches Book Company.
Lives Per Gallon
This book by the Special Advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger and former head of the California EPA is a diagnosis of our petroleum problem and a prescription for change. The choice is clear: continuing paying with our health, or kick our addiction and evolve beyond an oil-dependent economy. By forcing corporate giants to pay the true cost of their business practices, whether in the courtroom or the court of public opinion, the economics change in favor of more sustainable, healthier products. Tamminen shows how we can evolve beyond oil to products that are far cleaner and truly sustainable - more fuel-efficient vehicles, hydrogen vehicles and fuels, and biofuels.
Read a Q&A with the author
Author: Terry Tamminen
Publisher: Island Press
Click here for more information or to place an order.
Wind River Wilderness
A stunning compilation of photographs and essays depicting the pristine wilderness environment of the Wind River area in Wyoming. Featuring work from renowned photographers and writers as well as local environmentalists, Wind River Wilderness celebrates the natural, and yet fragile, beauty of a region that has, until recently, rarely been showcased.
Although primarily a book of photographic images, Gretel Ehrlich, whose Solace of Open Spaces has become a classic, has written an overview essay. It is also interspersed with seven thematic essays written by people recognized for their contributions to literature as well as their many years of experience in the area: Meredith Taylor on wildlife and resources, C.L. Rawlins on the mountain ranges, Tucker Smith on the artistic legacy, Erik Molvar on the Red Desert, Dennis Sun Rhodes on the Native American legacy, Florence Rose Shepard on the historical context, and Ronald Frost on the geology of the area.
In addition, some of the writers and photographers, along with others who live in and care deeply about the area, have written testimonial statements expressing their love and concern for the future of this important and threatened natural environment.
Editor:Ronald H. Chilcote
Publisher: Laguna Wilderness Press. .
Last Great Wilderness: The Campaign to Establish the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
In the early 1950s, three decades before the battle over oil development in the Arctic Refuge began, a group of visionary conservationists launched a hard-fought campaign to protect northeast Alaska as an archetypal wilderness. Last Great Wilderness is the story of how Olaus and Mardy Murie, Howard Zahniser, Sigrud Olson, Justice William O. Douglas and others overcame powerful opposition and established a wilderness area of unprecedented size and purpose. The book is a fastinating exploration of the interwoven set of tangible and intangible values—cultural, spiritual, and symbolic as well as wildlife, ecological, and recreational values that motivated the founders of the Arctic Refuge, and continue to inspire its defenders.
The story also chronicles the evolution of the wilderness concept during a pivotal period of American environmental history. It reveals how the struggle over this distant place was emblematic of the larger contest between competing views of the appropriate relationship between postwar America and its changing environment.
Author: Roger Kaye
Publisher: University of Alaska Press. To order, call toll free 1-888-252-6657, or online at
Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act
Author Mark Harvey, a professor of history at North Dakota Sate University, began researching the life and work of Wilderness Act author Howard Zahniser in the mid-1990s. Harvey's work includes years of research, interviews, and travel to places such as Zahniser's family home in Tionesta, Pennsylvania, which lies near the southwest corner of the Allegheny National Forest along the Allegheny River. Several articles highlighting the book's publication and Zahniser's ties to Pennsylvania and the Allegheny National Forest appeared in local papers including the Oil City (PA) Derrick and the Warren (PA) Times Observer.
Harvey's new book, "Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act", details Zahniser's work to establish a coast to coast system of permanently protected federal lands - what we now know as the National Wilderness Preservation System.
"Too few Americans today have any knowledge of Howard Zahniser. Even among activists in the environmental movement, his name if often unknown," said Harvey. "Yet in his time he stood tall among Americans who professed an interest in conservation and wilderness preservation.
"Zahniser was a gifted literary craftsman, and was unfailingly polite in his dealings with others, even those who strongly disagreed with him. Confident of his own views, for him making room for wild lands was a matter of inclusion," he continued.
Howard Zahniser was the executive director of The Wilderness Society from 1945 to 1964. He authored the first draft of the Wilderness Act in 1956 and advocated tirelessly for its passage until his untimely death in the spring of 1964, just months before the bill would be signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.
Author/Photographer: Mark Harvey
Publisher: . To order, call toll-free 1-800-441-4115 (206-543-8870 in state) or online at http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/
Rocky Traverse
A Journey Across the Rocky Mountains on the Trail of the Corps of Discovery
Two hundred years ago, the Lewis and Clark Voyage of Discovery was making its way across the Rocky Mountain West. Their discoveries not only included new lands previously unknown by a young United States but a plethora of biological discoveries as well.
Author Jerry Dixon took a journey to see firsthand what changes had taken place to the land as well as the flora and fauna first documented by Lewis and Clark.
“As a biologist who had accomplished studies in the Salmon River country of Idaho and in Alaska, I was fascinated by the ‘Lewis and Clark’ country and wanted to document what was to be found today,” Dixon relates. “By retracing the route of the Corps of Discovery, I hoped to experience and document these changes. Like most journeys, this was not only one of traversing a mountain range, but a personal one as well. What I found was that there are still so many wild lands and unbelievably beautiful rivers in the West that merit protection.”
Author/Photographer: Jerry Dixon
ISBN: 1-59453-781-X
Publisher: Airleaf
Where Mountains Are Nameless
The remote, northeastern corner of Alaska is home to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which politicians call ANWR, a nineteen-million-acre wilderness that may contain as much as 16 billion barrels of crude oil. Conservationists and developers have fought bitterly over the land for the last half-century, an era in which petroleum has virtually come to define Alaska. Struggling to combat the big-money politics that threaten the region, the conservation efforts of one couple, Olaus and Mardy Murie, made them legendary.
Jonathan Waterman blends historical narrative with vivid tales of his journeys into the Arctic wilderness, creating a tension between past and present, science and politics, reflection and investigation. Since 1983, he has taken eighteen trips into the far North, and spent over two hundred days in and around the embattled refuge. While paddling or trekking cross-country, Waterman encounters howling wolves, British Petroleum workers, Inupiat hunters, and the oil-ravaged Prince William Sound. Where Mountains Are Nameless explores how the hunt for oil has choked Alaska’s pristine wilderness and also traces the lives of the celebrated Muries, who spearheaded establishment of the original wildlife range. This memorable portrait makes the stakes over the refuge vividly clear.
The Impossible Will Take a Little While:
A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear
How do we learn to speak out on our deepest beliefs, and keep on despite all the obstacles? Creating an antidote to despair, Paul Rogat Loeb draws together some of the world’s finest engaged writers to explore what keeps us going when times get tough. The range of powerful voices includes Diane Ackerman, Mary Catherine Bateson, Wendell Berry, Ariel Dorfman, Marian Wright Edelman, Susan Griffin, Vaclav Havel, Mark Hertsgaard, Jonathan Kozol, Bill McKibben, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Cornel West, Alice Walker, Terry Tempest Williams, and Howard Zinn, plus an array of wonderful other activists and writers.
In their essays, memoirs and poems, and his own reflections, Loeb explores the historical, ecological and spiritual frameworks that help us to go up against Goliath -- with concrete examples of how people have faced and overcome despair. Named the #3 political book of last fall by the History Channel and the American Book Association, The Impossible explores how to persist in this hard political time. But also how people kept going in the struggles of the past: what it was like to confront South African apartheid, Eastern Europe's Communist dictatorships, or the environmental destructiveness of nuclear testing. The stories don't sugarcoat the obstacles. But they inspire hope by showing what keeps us keeping on--even when the odds seem overwhelming. They replenish the wellsprings of our commitment.
If you care about change in a world where most people are told their voices don't count, think of this book as a gift to yourself -- bread for the journey to keep on working for change, and sustenance to return to again and again when your spirit begins to flag.
As Bill Meadows writes: “Paul Loeb takes voices from our human experience and turns them into a powerful chorus of hope. No matter how powerless we feel, simply answering the call to participate gives us strength to change the world. Loeb introduces us to a community of heroic individuals who by their actions sustain themselves and can help inspire the rest of us. We gain courage knowing this community exists, acting at what Seamus Heaney calls the meeting point of hope and history, where what has happened is met by what we make of it.”
Author: Paul Rogat Loeb
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465041663
See http://www.theimpossible.org
Walking the Big Wild: From Yellowstone to the Yukon on the Grizzly Bear’s Trail
Wildlife biologist and Canadian park ranger Karsten Heuer hiked, paddled, and skied 2100 miles from Yellowstone to the Yukon. "Walking the Big Wild: From Yellowstone to the Yukon on the Grizzly Bear's Trail" is Heuer's account of what he experienced during his remarkable journey. The lessons of wildlife biology are balanced by stories of the trail, stories of beauty and awe but also of avalanches, raging rivers and grizzly bears. The rigors of the trail doom one romantic relationship for Heuer, but rekindle another.
This is an adventure story--but it's also about ground testing a bold conservation idea. Could established parks be linked by wildlife corridors, allowing animals to move from one "island" to another? How intact was the landscape? More importantly, would people who lived and worked in the area embrace the idea?
Karsten Heuer's name may be familiar to those who follow Alaska conservation issues as well. Karsten and his wife Leanne Allison envisioned and produced the dramatic film, "Being Caribou." Their epic five-month journey follows the caribou migration across the rugged Arctic tundra, showcasing the herd's delicate habitat and the devastation it would face if proposed oil and gas development is allowed in the herd's calving grounds in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land
Photographer Subhankar Banerjee, in collaboration with six essayists, presents a portrayal of a unique landscape made up of equal parts beauty and hazard. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an incomparable wilderness, is habitat to some 250 wildlife species, including millions of birds.
Jimmy Carter, George Schaller, and The Wilderness Society’s own Bill Meadows narrate the story with essays that delve into the history of the Refuge, the political battles -- past and present -- and the fragility of the ecosystem. Peter Matthiessen, reflecting on his journey through the Refuge with Banerjee, passionately defends the need to preserve these lands and the people and the wildlife they shelter.
Author/Photographer : Subhankar Banerjee
ISBN: 0-89886-909-9
Publisher: Mountaineer Books
