Hutchins Library News Blog

In 1970, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea of a nationwide environmental teach-in, and he recruited Denis Hayes to be the national coordinator. That first event became known as Earth Day, and the event has been observed ever since on April 22. Today communities in the United States and around the world engage in actions to focused on nature and environmental issues. Today the observance is coordinated by EarthDay.org.

Here is a selected list of resources that may be of interest.

Some books from Hutchins Library. You can find these and other books searching the library catalog.

The Official Earth Day Guide to Planet Repair by Denis Hayes

Call Number: Stacks 363.7 H417o 2000

ISBN: 9781559638098

Publication Date: 2000-02-02

Everyone talks about the weather but no one ever does anything about it. Sadly, that old joke is no longer true. A large body of increasingly compelling scientific evidence is telling us that many things we do -- from the kinds of cars we drive to how we heat our homes -- are directly affecting our global climate in unprecedented and alarming ways. But what can any one person do about this vast, global problem? Help fix it! And it doesn't have to be a do-it-yourself project; we citizens and stewards of the earth can unite in greater numbers and power than ever before.In The Official Earth Day Guide to Planet Repair, Earth Day leader and renewable energy expert Denis Hayes tells us how changes in individual, local, and national energy choices can slow or even stop the dangerous build-up of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, while at the same time saving us money, helping the economy, creating new jobs, and enhancing human health. A how-to home improvement guide for the planet, the book: describes the problem of global warming today as well as its likely effects in the future considers the sources of energy available to us, and explains why one of them is the Earth's best hope offers dozens of ways to painlessly reduce your own energy use provides action steps to affect the world's energy use and help change policy tells where to go for further help and more information The first Earth Day in 1970 helped launch the modern environmental movement. Rather than waiting for elected officials to take action to address environmental abuses, environmental maverick Denis Hayes and his compatriots took the lead in bringing the subject to the forefront of American consciousness. Through three decades, the idea of Earth Day has flourished, and now more than ever, individuals need to take matters into their own hands and create change from the ground up and from the whole earth down. As citizens and consumers, we hold a vast capacity for improving our environment and leaving a bright legacy for our children. For seasoned green veterans and environmental newcomers alike, The Official Earth Day Guide to Planet Repair is the must-have book for the next century.

 

American Earth: Environmental Writing since Thoreau by Bill McKibben (Editor)

Call Number: Stacks 820.936 A5115 2008

ISBN: 9781598530209

Publication Date: 2008-04-17

As America and the world grapple with the consequences of global environmental change, writer and activist Bill McKibben offers this unprecedented, provocative, and timely anthology, gathering the best and most significant American environmental writing from the last two centuries. Classics of the environmental imagination, the essays of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and John Burroughs; Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac; Rachel Carson's Silent Spring - are set against the inspiring story of an emerging activist movement, as revealed by newly uncovered reports of pioneering campaigns for conservation, passages from landmark legal opinions and legislation, and searing protest speeches. Here are some of America's greatest and most impassioned writers, taking a turn toward nature and recognizing the fragility of our situation on earth and the urgency of the search for a sustainable way of life. Thought-provoking essays on overpopulation, consumerism, energy policy, and the nature of nature, join ecologists - memoirs and intimate sketches of the habitats of endangered species. The anthology includes a detailed chronology of the environmental movement and American environmental history, as well as an 80-page color portfolio of illustrations.

 

Silent Spring Revolution by Douglas Brinkley

Call Number: Stacks 333.72 B858s 2022

ISBN: 9780063212916

Publication Date: 2022-11-15

New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed presidential historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties (1960-1973), telling the story of an indomitable generation that saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. With the detonation of the Trinity explosion in the New Mexico desert in 1945, the United States took control of Earth's destiny for the first time. After the Truman administration dropped atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, a grim new epoch had arrived. During the early Cold War years, the federal government routinely detonated nuclear devices in the Nevada desert and the Marshall Islands. Not only was nuclear fallout a public health menace, but entire ecosystems were contaminated with radioactive materials. During the 1950s, an unprecedented postwar economic boom took hold, with America becoming the world's leading hyperindustrial and military giant. But with this historic prosperity came a heavy cost: oceans began to die, wilderness vanished, the insecticide DDT poisoned ecosystems, wildlife perished, and chronic smog blighted major cities. In Silent Spring Revolution, Douglas Brinkley pays tribute to those who combated the mauling of the natural world in the Long Sixties: Rachel Carson (a marine biologist and author), David Brower (director of the Sierra Club), Barry Commoner (an environmental justice advocate), Coretta Scott King (an antinuclear activist), Stewart Udall (the secretary of the interior), William O. Douglas (Supreme Court justice), Cesar Chavez (a labor organizer), and other crusaders are profiled with verve and insight. Carson's book Silent Spring, published in 1962, depicted how detrimental DDT was to living creatures. The exposé launched an ecological revolution that inspired such landmark legislation as the Wilderness Act (1964), the Clean Air Acts (1963 and 1970), and the Endangered Species Acts (1966, 1969, and 1973). In intimate detail, Brinkley extrapolates on such epic events as the Donora (Pennsylvania) smog incident, JFK's Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Great Lakes preservation, the Santa Barbara oil spill, and the first Earth Day. With the United States grappling with climate change and resource exhaustion, Douglas Brinkley's meticulously researched and deftly written Silent Spring Revolution reminds us that a new generation of twenty-first-century environmentalists can save the planet from ruin. Silent Spring Revolution features two 8-page color photo inserts.

 

Natural Visions by Finis Dunaway

Call Number: Stacks 333.7209 D897n 2005

ISBN: 9780226173252

Publication Date: 2005-11-15

Walden Pond. The Grand Canyon.Yosemite National Park. Throughout the twentieth century, photographers and filmmakers created unforgettable images of these and other American natural treasures. Many of these images, including the work of Ansel Adams, continue to occupy a prominent place in the American imagination. Making these representations, though, was more than a purely aesthetic project. In fact, portraying majestic scenes and threatened places galvanized concern for the environment and its protection. Natural Visions documents through images the history of environmental reform from the Progressive era to the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, showing the crucial role the camera played in the development of the conservation movement. In Natural Visions, Finis Dunaway tells the story of how visual imagery--such as wilderness photographs, New Deal documentary films, and Sierra Club coffee-table books--shaped modern perceptions of the natural world. By examining the relationship between the camera and environmental politics through detailed studies of key artists and activists, Dunaway captures the emotional and spiritual meaning that became associated with the American landscape. Throughout the book, he reveals how photographers and filmmakers adapted longstanding traditions in American culture--the Puritan jeremiad, the romantic sublime, and the frontier myth--to literally picture nature as a place of grace for the individual and the nation. Beautifully illustrated with photographs by Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and a host of other artists, Natural Visions will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in American cultural history, the visual arts, and environmentalism.

 

The End of Eden by Thomas Rain Crowe; Robert Johnson (Artist)

Call Number: Stacks 333.7 C953e 2008

ISBN: 9781893239807

Publication Date: 2008-01-01

The essays of Thomas Rain Crowe combine with the stirring illustrations of Robert Johnson to produce a prophetic vision of the world in which we live -- a vision of what we have and what we stand to lose through our careless disregard for the Earth and its finite resources. Crowe shows us the means by which we may save ourselves and our planet.

 

 

For the Health of the Land by Scott Russell Sanders (Foreword by); Aldo Leopold; J. Baird Callicott (Editor); Eric T. Freyfogle (Editor)

Call Number: Stacks 333.951 L587f

ISBN: 9781559637633

Publication Date: 1999-09-01

A collection of previously unavailable essays by environmentalist Aldo Leopold, building on the tradition of ethical land use and developing the concept of land health and the practical measures landowners can take to sustain it. Containing over 40 short pieces arranged in a seasonal almanac form along with longer essays arranged chronologically, each piece is introduced and set in context by the editors.

 

Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas L. Friedman

Call Number: Stacks 363.705 F911h 2008

ISBN: 9780374166854

Publication Date: 2008-09-08

In his brilliant, essential new book, Friedman takes a fresh and provocative look at two of the biggest challenges we face today: America's surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11; and the global environmental crisis, which is affecting everything from food to fuel to forests. In this groundbreaking account of where we stand now, he shows us how the solutions to these two big problems are linked--how we can restore the world and revive America at the same time. Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world's middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is "hot, flat, and crowded." Already the earth is being affected in ways that threaten to make it dangerously unstable. In just a few years, it will be too late to fix things--unless the United States steps up now and takes the lead in a worldwide effort to replace our wasteful, inefficient energy practices with a strategy for clean energy, energy efficiency, and conservation that Friedman calls Code Green. This is a great challenge, Friedman explains, but also a great opportunity, and one that America cannot afford to miss. Not only is American leadership the key to the healing of the earth; it is also our best strategy for the renewal of America. In vivid, entertaining chapters, Friedman makes it clear that the green revolution we need is like no revolution the world has seen. It will be the biggest innovation project in American history; it will be hard, not easy; and it will change everything from what you put into your car to what you see on your electric bill. But the payoff for America will be more than just cleaner air. It will inspire Americans to something we haven't seen in a long time--nation-building in America--by summoning the intelligence, creativity, boldness, and concern for the common good that are our nation's greatest natural resources. Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman: fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the challenge--and the promise--of the future.

 

 

Storming the Wall by Todd Miller

Call Number: Stacks 304.873 M651s 2017

ISBN: 9780872867154

Publication Date: 2017-09-12

As global warming accelerates, droughts last longer, floods rise higher, and super-storms become more frequent. With increasing numbers of people on the move as a result, the business of containing them--border fortification--is booming. In Storming the Wall, Todd Miller travels around the world to connect the dots between climate-ravaged communities, the corporations cashing in on border militarization, and emerging movements for environmental justice and sustainability. Reporting from the flashpoints of climate clashes, and from likely sites of futures battles, Miller chronicles a growing system of militarized divisions between the rich and the poor, the environmentally secure and the environmentally exposed. Stories of crisis, greed and violence are juxtaposed with powerful examples of solidarity and hope in this urgent and timely message from the frontlines of the post-Paris Agreement era.

 

The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

Call Number: Stacks 304.28 W195u 2019

ISBN: 9780525576709

Publication Date: 2019-02-19

 It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible--food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An "epoch-defining book" (The Guardian) and "this generation's Silent Spring" (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it--the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation--today's.

 

 

Losing Earth by Nathaniel Rich

Call Number: Stacks 363.738 R499L 2019

ISBN: 9780374191337

Publication Date: 2019-04-09

By 1979, we knew nearly everything we understand today about climate change--including how to stop it. Over the next decade, a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists, led by two unlikely heroes, risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince the world to act before it was too late. Losing Earth is their story, and ours. The New York Times Magazine devoted an entire issue to Nathaniel Rich's groundbreaking chronicle of that decade, which became an instant journalistic phenomenon--the subject of news coverage, editorials, and conversations all over the world. In its emphasis on the lives of the people who grappled with the great existential threat of our age, it made vivid the moral dimensions of our shared plight. Now expanded into book form, Losing Earth tells the human story of climate change in even richer, more intimate terms. It reveals, in previously unreported detail, the birth of climate denialism and the genesis of the fossil fuel industry's coordinated effort to thwart climate policy through misinformation propaganda and political influence. The book carries the story into the present day, wrestling with the long shadow of our past failures and asking crucial questions about how we make sense of our past, our future, and ourselves. Like John Hersey's Hiroshima and Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, Losing Earth is the rarest of achievements: a riveting work of dramatic history that articulates a moral framework for understanding how we got here, and how we must go forward.

 

Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes; Erik M. Conway

Call Number: Stacks 174.95 O669m 2011

ISBN: 9781608193943

Publication Date: 2015-02-26

Featuring a new Foreword by former Vice President Al Gore, Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. "Important and timely. We ignore this message at our peril."--Elizabeth Kolbert Merchants of Doubt has been praised--and attacked--around the world, for reasons easy to understand. This book tells, with "brutal clarity" (Huffington Post), the disquieting story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. The same individuals who claim the science of global warming is "not settled" have also denied the truth about studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. "Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These "experts" supplied it. Merchants of Doubt rolls back the rug on this dark corner of American science. Now with a new Foreword by former Vice President Al Gore, and with a new Postscript by the authors.

Want to do some more research on Earth Day or other environmental and nature topics? You can use one of our periodical databases. You can find our databases from the library website going under "Electronic Resources." You could try the following databases to find articles popular and scholarly:

• GreenFile
• Agricola
• Science Direct
• J-Stor

From the web, in addition to the links above:

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Earth Day page.
• The National Geographic Society Earth Day page.

Hutchins Library is featuring a display of Herbarium Sheets for the Ecological Weed Management Course. These are sheets created by students in Dr. Nancy Gift's class during  the Fall 2017 semester. The display can be viewed in  the library's main floor through the end of the semester.

Dr. Gift provided the following statement on the display:

Plant scientists can, of course, grow a wide variety of plants in greenhouses and arboretums and botanical gardens, but the true library of a plant scientist is a herbarium.  For Ecological Weed Management class (ANR/SENS 328), we use a cabinet as a weed herbarium, and students contribute to this herbarium by collecting 30 weeds.  While the purpose of the samples is functional – to help future weed scientists study the weeds of our time and place – many of these samples may also be beautiful. 

Of course, many of these weeds were collected on Berea College campus, in the gardens, flower beds, lawns, and farm fields.  Some weeds, like wintercreeper and burning bush, are invasive weeds that were introduced as landscaping plants.  Some weeds, like common blue violet and red clover, are beneficial plants that make their appearances in lawns not treated with herbicides.  Many weeds, like chickweed and dandelion, are edible, and were an important component to nutrition for many Appalachian families.  Sometimes a plant, like dandelion, may be considered a weed in one place (a golf course) and a beneficial plant in another place (a bee-friendly lawn). 

On the cards accompanying the plant samples, you see the Latin name (Genus and species), the common name, the family name, the name of the collector, and the date and location of the collection.  Once the identity of a plant is known, the land manager (farmer, gardener, homeowner) can look up more information about the life cycle of the plant and decide whether and how to control the plant, either with herbicides or with management decisions.

Here is a sample photo:

The 2nd Annual Dandelion Festival will be happening this Saturday, April 8th, at Berea College. Enjoy a variety of activities such as Live Music, Artwork and Illustrations, and Foods from more than 20 vendors while learning about the importance of sustainable landscaping and keeping our pollinators happy and off the endangered species list.

For more information about the event, check out the Facebook event page located here 

If you are interested in learning more about the ideas presented at the festival, check out these interesting books located on display in front of the Reference Desk:

Edible Wild Plants and Herbs by Alan M. Cvancara

Publication Date: 2001

You left your car at sunrise and headed out for a daylong hike along a marked trail to a scenic mountaintop. But somwhere along the way you missed a turn. It's getting dark and you're sitting in a high-country meadow infested with thistles, and very hungry. You know you'll sleep here tonight. Consider yourself lucky: thistles are edible.

 

 

 

 

Perennial Weeds by Wood Powell Anderson

Publication Date: 1999

As ready reference for the student, instructor, and those practitioners that deal with perennial weeds on a daily basis, this book uses 28 weed species to illustrate the ways in which perennial weeds propagate vegetatively. The author has taken care to use examples of perennial weeds that are troublesome on a national scale, or representative of principal agricultural regions within the United States and Canada. This organised and well-written one-of-a-kind text uses both tables and text to assist the reader in identifying each weed species. The text also includes 67 illustrations that highlight reproduction, over-wintering, and perennating parts. Perennial Weeds also corrects some misconceptions in the weed science literature as to whether the perennating organ is a root or a rhizome. Not just another identification guidebook, Perennial Weeds takes the reader through root systems and rhizome anatomy to discuss exactly how perennial weeds propagate, so that eradication can be achieved in the most environmentally sound ways. This book provides the reader with a wealth of information concerning the propagation of perennial grass-like and broadleaf weeds. It emphasises why perennial weeds are so difficult to control and offers suggestions for their control.

 

Edible Wild Plants by John Kallas

Publication Date: 2010

Imagine what you could do with eighteen delicious new greens in your dining arsenal including purslane, chickweed, curly dock, wild spinach, sorrel, and wild mustard. John Kallas makes it fun and easy to learn about foods you've unknowingly passed by all your life. Through gorgeous photographs, playful, but authoritative text, and ground-breaking design he gives you the knowledge and confidence to finally begin eating and enjoying edible wild plants. Edible Wild Plants divides plants into four flavor categories -- foundation, tart, pungent, and bitter. Categorizing by flavor helps readers use these greens in pleasing and predictable ways. According to the author, combining elements from these different categories makes the best salads.

 

Handbook of Edible Weeds by James A. Duke

Publication Date: 1992

"If you can't beat it, eat it." Words of wisdom from the author of this portable guide that emphasizes finding practical uses for weeds rather than waging pesticidal war on them. CRC Handbook of Edible Weeds contains detailed descriptions and illustrations of 100 edible weeds, representing 100 genera of higher plant species. Some of the species are strictly American, but many are cosmopolitan weeds. Each account includes common names recognized by the Weed Science Society of America, standard Latin scientific names, uses, and distribution (geographic and ecological). Cautionary notes are included regarding the potential allergenic or other harmful properties of many of the weeds. CRC Handbook of Edible Weeds is an excellent volume for botanists, plant scientists, horticulturalists, herbalists, and others interested in the edibility and practical uses of weeds.

 

 

Dandelion Hunter by Rebecca Lerner

Publication Date: 2013

In this engaging and eye-opening read, forager-journalist Becky Lerner sets out on a quest to find her inner hunter-gatherer in the city of Portland, Oregon. After a disheartening week trying to live off wild plants from the streets and parks near her home, she learns the ways of the first people who lived there and, along with a quirky cast of characters, discovers an array of useful wild plants hiding in plain sight. As she harvests them for food, medicine, and just-in-case apocalypse insurance, Lerner delves into anthropology, urban ecology and sustainability, and finds herself looking at Nature in a very different way. Humorous, philosophical, and informative, Dandelion Hunter has something for everyone, from the curious neophyte to the seasoned forager.

 

 

Green Inheritance by Anthony Huxley; David Attenborough (Foreword by)

Publication Date: 1993

A prominent botanist warns against further damaging the already fragile ecosystem.

 

Attend Dr. Margaret Lowman's convocation on

February 9, 2017, 3:00pm

Phelps-Stokes Auditorium

If you liked Dr Margaret Lowman's presentation, then you'll love these books that we have available for check-out, on display near the cafe! 

The Most Beautiful Roof in the World by Kathryn Lasky; Christopher G. Knight (Photographer)

Call Number: 574.526 L345m

Publication Date: 1997

Journey along with Dr. Meg Lowman, a scientist who, with the help of slings, suspended walkways, and mountain-climbing equipment, has managed to ascend into one of our planet’s least accessible and most fascinating ecosystems--the rain-forest canopy. “Fresh in outlook and intriguing in details, this book will strengthen any library collection on the rainforest.”

 

Life in the Treetops by Margaret D. Lowman; Robert D. Ballard 

Call Number: 577.3409 L918L 1999

Publication Date: 1999

A description of the mysteries of the treetops - their inhabitants, flowers and fruits, growth and mortality, and patterns of diversity. Margaret Lowman discusses different canopy access techniques. She also portrays the life of a field biologist from a woman's perspective.

 

 

It's a Jungle up There by Margaret D. Lowman; James Burgess; Edward Burgess;

Call Number: Ebook

Publication Date: 2008

Drawn to the mysteries of tropical rain forests and fascinated by life in the treetops, Meg Lowman has pursued a life of scientific exploration while raising her two sons, Edward and James Burgess. This book recounts their family adventures in remote parts of the world (Samoa, West Africa, Peru, Panama, India, Biosphere 2, and others), from the perspectives of both kids and parent. Together they explore tropical rain forests, encounter anacondas and piranhas, eat crickets as hors d’oeuvres, discover new species, and nurture a family ethic for conservation. The chapters of the book focus on field biology questions, the canopy access methods developed to answer the questions, and conservation or education components of each expedition. Lowman enumerates the challenges and joys of juggling parenthood and career, and the children reflect on how their mom’s work has affected their lives. A rollicking, inspiring book, It’s a Jungle Up There is an upbeat portrayal of how a parent’s career can imprint children, and how children in turn can influence the success and trajectory of their parent’s career.