|
|
Daniel B. Botkin ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2 |
Daniel B. Botkin Our Natural History
E Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S.A. Putnam Adult 1995 0399140484 / 9780399140488 Cloth Fine Very Good +
0399140484 0399140484 Amazon.com Daniel Botkin sets out to cover the same ground Meriwether Lewis and William Clark did in their 1804-1806 survey of the Missouri River. He maintains that their careful observations on the native species, landscapes, and human residents of that great stretch of country should serve as models for avoiding "a glamorized utopian vision of nature" and seeing the landscape for what it really is. "One of the ways our knowledge of nature has changed since the time of Lewis and Clark," he writes, "is that the field of statistics has developed, and we can state our errors quantitatively." Not so much exploring as following old paths, we can also gather data more thoroughly than did our ecologist predecessors, knowing a little better what it is we are looking for. Botkin does just that in long discussions of salmon ecology and the mismanagement of natural resources. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly This intriguing volume begins with Lewis and Clark's search for a pass in the Rocky Mountain wilderness; it ends with the author's search for original prairie in Omaha, Nebraska. Botkin (Discordant Harmony: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century) describes the American West as seen by Lewis and Clark in 1804-06 and compares it with today's West as shaped by industrial civilization. It is a unique picture of frontier wilderness, interwoven with Botkin's own perspective on nature. He maintains that our present approach to environmental issues is based on faulty beliefs, mythologies and religious convictions. The records of Lewis and Clark are valuable for helping us understand what nature was like before we changed it. Botkin notes that we rarely approach conservation with the methodical intensity found in the explorers' journals. He has given us a fresh and welcome perspective on that historic expedition. BOMC selection. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Botkin, president of the Center for the Study of the Environment and director of the Program on Global Change at George Mason University, examines the journals of Lewis and Clark to understand change in nature. His question is "What was nature like before modern, technological civilization?" For people to have a better, more secure future, Botkin asserts that they must understand their relationship with the environment. They must know not only their own history but the history of nature as well. Addressing timeless topics, Botkin blends the historic past with the newsworthy present to offer solutions for the future. Recommended for all libraries. Patricia Owens, Wabash Valley Coll., Mt. Carmel, Ill. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Botkin, a distinguished biologist, naturalist, and prolific author, believes that our limited and outmoded conception of nature is at the root of our environmental problems. We have all the science and technology we need for coping with such dire situations as the destruction of forests and the extinction of species, but we lack the kind of perspectives and ideas that would enable us to use this knowledge productively. Botkin's quest for a viable natural history led him to the exhaustive chronicles of the remarkable Lewis and Clark expedition. Lewis, Clark, and company conducted a 7,000-mile odyssey and methodically observed, collected, measured, and mapped under the most demanding and exhausting of circumstances. Botkin puts their precious and amazingly detailed information to brilliant use as he compares their world with ours. His discussions of the fate of rivers, grizzlies, buffaloes, wolves, salmon, forests, prairies, and the people who called this "wilderness" home for centuries are hard hitting and provocative. We can only hope that books like this will steer us toward a more respectful and environmentally sound way of life. Donna Seaman Book Description Often referred to as America's national epic of exploration, the 28-month Lewis and Clark expedition was certainly America's greatest odyssey. Commissioned in 1804 by Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set off on the greatest wilderness trip ever recorded. Beginning in St. Louis, they navigated up the Missouri River and through the prairies, enduring a winter with the Mandan Indians in North Dakota, reaching the summit of the Rocky Mountains and then following the Columbia River to their final destination, the Pacific Ocean. Trained in natural history and in the methods of collecting plant and animal samples, Lewis and Clark carefully and meticulously recorded the conditions of the rivers, prairies, forests, mountains, and wildlife of pre-industrial America. Now, in this new edition of Our Natural History, Daniel B. Botkin, a distinguished botanist and naturalist, re-creates the grand journey--taking us on an exciting ecological adventure back to the landscape of the great American West. In retracing their steps, Botkin reveals what this western landscape actually looked like and how much it's been changed by modern civilization and technology. With fresh insight, Botkin shows us that from the explorers' observations, we can learn much about the environment of our past, our environment today, and what our environment might be in the future. Now with a new Afterword marking the 200th anniversary of the expedition, this timely and thought-provoking book captures our imagination and stimulates our sentiment with lessons about our environment and our place within it. Our Natural History offers a stunning and rare portrait of the rugged, beautiful, disappearing wilderness of the American West. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Condition: ex-library with usual markings, otherwise clean and tight with library protective sleeve on dustjacket.
Price:
1.69 USD
|
|
Add to Shopping Cart |
|
|
|
|
|
|
3 |
Daniel B. Botkin Strange Encounters: Adventures of a Renegade Naturalist
Tarcher 2004 1585423734 / 9781585423736 First Trade Trade Paperback New New
1585423734 1585423734 From Publishers Weekly A skilled essayist as well as an ecologist, Botkin (Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century) combines science, wit and a gift for characterization to craft these consistently engaging essays. Many deal with contradictions and uncertainties that may never be resolved by research alone. In "Winds of a Condor's Wings," he describes a 1980 project that he was engaged in as a member of a committee to advise the State of California how to save the condor, whose population had declined to only 22. Three sets of so-called experts were unable to agree on what factor was chiefly responsible for the condor's decline or whether captive breeding or reintroduction to the wild should be pursued to sustain the species. "The Ecology of Cancer" is a touching account of his late wife's illness and how the questions she raised about chemotherapy motivated Botkin to establish an experimental workshop, as a memorial to her, composed of both biologists and cancer researchers who are learning from one another. In another piece, "How Many Bowhead Whales Ever Lived on the Earth," Botkin recounts his collaboration with John Bockstoce, an anthropologist studying Yankee whaling, whose complex personality springs to life on the page. There are many humorous inclusions, like "Is It Okay to Let Your Dog Drink from the Toilet?" a witty reflection on a study about the good-guy bacteria in toilet bowls. In all, this is a refreshing, open-minded collection about nature, ecology and science. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Book Description The warm, witty anecdotal adventures of a world-renowned scientist, spanning thirty years and dozens of countries. Most people only dream of having the life Daniel B. Botkin has led. He has studied whales and elephants, tramped over high mountain passes and through rain forests, worked with NASA, and spent substantial time walking in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark, and Henry David Thoreau. In Strange Encounters, Botkin does for the natural world what Richard Feynman did for physics and Oliver Sacks for human behavior. Whether rebuilding an old mill in New Hampshire while ruminating on notions of "progress," researching the most weight-efficient high-protein food for space travel, or working in a radioactive forest on an early Cold War research project, Botkin experiences the kind of adventures that illuminate the complex and ever-changing relationship between human beings and their environment. How many hours does a whale sleep? How many leaves are on a tree? Is it okay to let your dog drink from the toilet? In the delightful new book Strange Encounters: Adventures of a Renegade Naturalist (a Tarcher/Penguin hardcover; September 15, 2003), these seemingly simple, almost childlike questions lead to a series of rich meditations on science, nature, and human nature. Renowned environmental scientist Daniel B. Botkin sits us down (imagine a pub, a roaring fire, and a couple of pints) and tells us all his best globe-trotting, rain-forest-exploring, bullet-dodging anecdotes ? about whales, trees, elephants, radiation, old New England mills, space food, Thoreau, and other seemingly disparate, but ultimately connected, aspects of our natural world. The result is a fascinating look at how he (and we) think about nature and ourselves. Spanning thirty years and dozens of locales from the Serengeti Plains to the Douglas fir forests of the Pacific Northwest, in a style at once gentle and probing, Botkin?s stories are hilarious, heart-wrenching, enlightening, and mind-boggling. A sample of the stories in Strange Encounters CHAPTER 14 TRIMMING ELM TREES Daniel B. Botkin Copyright ? Daniel B. Botkin 2007 all rights reserved. Bob Nickel and Harry Chains were short of money. They were students at the Yale School of Forestry, and their courses had convinced them that they knew enough about this subject to act as professionals. They went into the business of tree-trimming. They were vigorous, outdoor young men, hardworking, earnest, and with good senses of humor. Bob was about six feet tall, with black hair and a thick black beard and pleasing manner. Harry was a wiry Australian, about 5? 10?, with a narrow face and a determined manner. Bob and Harry had worked for me on research projects in the forests of New Hampshire. By this time I had figured out, I thought, a way to combine the two worlds I had been living in, the nineteenth century self-contained world of Alstead, New Hampshire and the growing hi-tech world of modern science and its technology. The computer model that grew trees had to be compared with real data. I spent one summer getting some of that information and hired Bob and Harry to do the main field work. We worked in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where Tom Siccama had followed the cigarette-smoking woman botanist to the summit of Mount Washington. I got U S geological survey maps of the mountains, making use of skills I had learned from Heman Chase about map reading as well as map making. And on these maps I selected points at random, so there could be no bias in what we chose. Bob, Harry and I then went to those plots and made measurements that I hoped we could use to test the forecasts of the computer program. We found our way with a map and compass, doing what later became known as ?orienteering,? an enjoyable outdoor challenge. With this work I was able to hike through the forests and study them, follow the ideas that had developed when I had helped Heman Chase survey the old farms in southern New Hampshire. During that summer, I came to know Bob and Harry well. Bob brought along his pet dog, a large retriever whom he named ?Henri? and pronounced it in French, as a joke. Once we climbed Mount Moosilocki, and overnight trip, as we made measurements on the way up and the way down. Henri was impatient and always eager to go ahead of us, returning after a while as fast as he could run and dashing past us, then turning around, visiting with us for a short while as if to say, ?what?s taking you so long? and then headed up the mountain again. By the end of the day when we reached the summit and cooked our dinner over a camping stove, Bob realized he had forgotten any food for his dog, who stood and watched us eat. Bob fed him some of the beef-stroganoff that came in a dried form and we had mixed with water, and he gave the dog water to drink. Most of the time Bob was completely competent and well-organized, but once he a while, as in this situation, he was like most of us, and would forget to bring something. We petted ?Henri? and tried to make him as happy as possible on his limited food, and he did not seem to mind too much. Bob and Harry had plenty of vigor and could out-hike me anytime. They were enthusiastic, full of good humor and fun to work with. I thought they could succeed at almost anything they wanted to do. But then their reach exceeded their abilities. Their first job as tree-trimmers back in New Haven in the fall was to trim a big elm tree near the curb on a busy New Haven Street. The tree belonged to the owners of a gracious white-clapboarded home, a classic New England house, except that the front of the house was dominated by an ostentatious porch with Greek-style columns holding up the overhanging roof. Bob and Harry arrived with a few saw and axes and some long ropes. The American elm was distinctively graceful and was once the dominant street tree in many towns and cities. Because of the Dutch Elm disease, an introduced fungal disease probably of Asian origin, few American elms remain today and their graceful shape is now unfamiliar. Typically, a elm?s main trunk split 20 or 30 feet above the ground into two to four arching limbs that spread out in what people referred to as a vase-like shape. The result was a beautiful tree whose leaves, hanging down from the high arched limbs, shaded the street below without limbs and branches sticking out into the traffic. These limbs were thick and strong, usually more than a foot in diameter. Elm wood is extremely tough, in part because the grain spirals upward, making the trees difficult to split with an ax and wedge and difficult to cut when the wood is green. Bob and Hedley?s elm was probably beginning to suffer from Dutch elm disease. One of the limbs hanging out over the street was dying. It was this limb that posed a hazard and the home-owner had asked Bob and Harry to cut. They started in earnest, one of them climbing up the tree and the other putting ropes on the limb. They were trying to keep the limb from falling onto the street ? possibly onto a passing car. Their plan was to tie the rope near to the end of the limb, loop the rope around the trunk of the tree, using the loop as a break. One of them would hold onto the end of the rope, pulling it against the loop. Friction would stop the limb from falling. Then they could ease the limb over to the lawn. The limb was much heavier and stronger than they had guessed. As Bob sawed through the base on the limb, Harry held on to the end of the rope, standing near the porch to keep as far from the limb as he could. When the limb began to bend, Harry realized that the loop they had made around the tree trunk was not enough to hold back the weight. The rope began to pull him to the tree. Holding onto the rope, he rushed up on the porch and looped the end of the rope around one of the porch columns, expecting this to be made of solid wood and capable of holding the weight of the limb. But the column was a hollow facade. As Harry pulled on the end of the rope, now twisted around the column, the column groaned and started to rise into the air, the weight of the elm limb pulling it out of its base. Harry rushed closer to the column. He pulled with all his might, but the limb was stronger than he was and weighed a lot more. In a moment, Tim, watching from the tree, saw the column and Harry pulled up into the air, neither one grounded. Only the overhanging roof was preventing the limb from crashing into the street and yanking the column and Harry in a flying arch toward the street. Bob wasn?t sure what to do first. If the limb fell, it was in danger of damaging a passing or parked car, possibly causing serious injury to passengers. The rope was threatening to destroy the column and possibly the entire porch, and perhaps injure Hedley. A crowd gathered to watch Hedley?s acrobatics with wonder and amusement. For a few more moments, Harry and the column swung like pendulums, suspended from the air by a rope. Bob climbed down from the tree, joined Harry to help pull on the rope. Their combined weight was just enough to bring the column back down to the ground and keep the limb in the air. But what to do next? If Bob let go, Harry would spring back into the air. But Bob couldn?t stay on the porch forever. Eventually, a few men in the crowd joined in to help. One took Tim?s place holding the rope and the other helped Bob finish cutting through the limb. As the crowd cheered, Bob pushed the cut limb, still suspended by the rope, over to the lawn. Harry and the helpful stranger slowly eased off the rope, lowering the limb to the lawn. So ended Bob and Hedley?s career as tree experts. It was a lesson in homilies: the limits of academic education; the danger of a little knowledge; the limits of the enthusiasm of youth; the value of experience. They had plenty of experience out in the woods, studying forests, as when they helped me during the summer in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. When we seek to find practical solutions to the conservation of our forests, and when we do this from a distance, with little learning and less experience, we should remember Bob and Harry trimming the elm tree in New Haven. It?s not a bad thing to think about in confronting life in general. Other stories include: * Maggie?s Bend: the tale of how the U.S. Forest Service came up with a way to compensate Whorehouse Jack, the owner of a brothel on Idaho?s Clearwater River, so the land on which it was situated could become part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers system. * The Ecology of Splitting Wood: what chopping wood can tell about life in a forest ? and why, for insects, oaks are the Baskin-Robbins and Ben and Jerry?s of trees. * The Radioactive Forest: how the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York, irradiated an entire forest as an experiment, and what a hunter-gatherer might have thought about it. * The Monkey?s Dilemma: a story of bats, palm trees, risks, and uncertainties in the rain forest of Costa Rica, and its application to absolutely everything. * Tepairing the Mill: a return to a place of certainty, where energy is visible. * How the Fox Caught the Squirrel and why the moose kicked at the shore: a tale of true wilderness. ?Chance is part of Mother Nature?s kit of tools to make studying her difficult,? Botkin writes. ?It places a limit on what we can know. Life, it seems, is a series of events that are best thought of as, well, the monkey?s dilemma.? With such observations, Botkin shares his hard-earned wisdom about people and nature and the strange things done in the name of science to ?save? nature and ourselves. He shows us that our solutions to environmental problems are sometimes crystal-clear, sometimes contradictory, sometimes works-in-progress verging on the unanswerable. For fans of the works of Oliver Sachs and Richard Feynman, Strange Encounters will be a welcome addition to the immensely popular literature of ?armchair science.? For those who have yet to discover this intriguing genre, Strange Encounters is a compelling, imaginative, and thought-provoking book about issues central to our times. About the author: Daniel B. Botkin?s most influential book, Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century, helped change the way citizens, governments, and corporations view environmental issues, bringing the concept of ?sustainability? to center stage. Botkin is a research professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the president of the Center for the Study of the Environment. He has taught at George Mason University and Yale. He currently divides his time between New York City and California. Review: Publishers Weekly - August 18, 2003 A skilled essayist as well as an ecologist, Botkin (Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century) combines science, wit and a gift for characterization to craft these consistently engaging essays. Many deal with contradictions and uncertainties that may never be resolved by research alone. In ?Winds of a Condor?s Wings,? he describes a 1980 project that he was engaged in as a member of a committee to advise the State of California how to save the condor, whose population had declined to 22. Three sets of so-called experts were unable to agree on what factors was chiefly responsible for the condor?s decline or whether captive breeding or reintroduction to the wild should be pursued to sustain the species. ?The Ecology of Cancer? is a touching account of his late wife?s illness and how the questions she raised about chemotherapy motivated Botkin to establish an experimental workshop, as a memorial to her, composed of both biologists and cancer researchers who are learning from one another. In another piece, ?How Many Bowhead Whales Ever Lived on the Earth,? Botkin recounts his collaboration with John Bockstoce, an anthropologist studying Yankee whaling, whose complex personality springs to life on the page. There are many humorous inclusions, like ?Is It Okay to Let Your Dog Drink from the Toilet?? a witty reflection on a study about the good-guy bacteria in toilet bowls. In all, this is a refreshing, open-minded collection about nature, ecology and science. Strange encounters: Adventures of a renegade naturalist Ecologist Daniel B. Botkin searches for answers to the simple questions in his most recent book By alex nixon The simplest of questions are often the most difficult to answer. Daniel B. Botkin explores this particular irony in his most recent book while giving the reader a firsthand view of the development of ecology from its infancy as a renegade discipline to the legitimate science it is today. As a young forester on the leading edge of an emerging field, Botkin worked in a Long Island forest slowly being killed from the inside-out by cesium 137 radiation. He created computer models to predict forest growth while at the famous Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And he studied elephants in Kenya. In each of these activities, he uncovered incorrect assumptions held by scientists about the way the world works. The more than 20 short essays that comprise this book ? his fourth following works on Lewis and Clark and Henry David Thoreau ? reflect on a career as varied as the ecology field is today. Botkin asks the first of several simple questions while at Woods Hole: how many hours does a whale sleep? Along his career path, it was simple but never before posed questions like this one that would come to undermine what other scientists thought they knew about the world. As the Japanese government was requesting permission to increase their yearly harvest of whales for ?research purposes,? Botkin received a grant to model whale social behavior. Its purpose was to determine the effect of removing a certain number of whales from a population. He relied on a whale expert for the behavioral aspects of the model only to find out that the expert?s knowledge of whales was based on assumptions from gazelle behavior. Botkin voiced his frustration at his ill-defined path of study. ?Sometime in the future, I thought, this field of whale biology would grow up and people would be able to create useful theory well-connected to legitimate observations. Perhaps I really had gone into the wrong field. Where was the science in ecological science?? Despite this heavy tone, Botkin also effectively uses dry, self-deprecating humor. This helps keep the prose light, as it often teeters on the edge of the overly serious. The humorous dabbling offsets the reader?s impression of a scolding older relative to one taking the time to pass on the wisdom accrued over a lifetime. One of the funnier essays points out that we humans are not always the highest link in the ?great chain of being,? as Botkin calls it. He observes that raccoons raiding his trash cans aren?t deterred when he steps to the back door and switches on an outdoor light. After several attempts the outdoor light shines on a cat that?s been attracted to the scene by the commotion. The raccoons quickly disperse and don?t return. The most profound chapter of the book questions the paradigms under which most of science operates. After losing his wife to a form of non-Hodgkin?s lymphoma a year after being told the cancer was gone, Botkin reconsiders the way doctors approach its treatment. He is talking with a colleague who tells him that the ?organic soup theory of life? is implausible because it violates the second law of thermodynamics. Yet, this colleague says, scientists continue approving each other?s grants and papers rather than question the basis for their research. This sparks an epiphany relating cancer to population ecology: ?The way I understand it, the underlying idea about chemotherapy is that it is like hunting all the individuals of a species to try to kill them and cause extinction of the species that way,? he says. ?A much easier way is to damage or destroy the habitat.? This leads Botkin to organize cancer workshops to get researchers to rethink their paradigms. Strange Encounters isn?t as offbeat as the title suggests and the prose often suffers in its simplicity. But where Botkin shines is in his observations, advice and wisdom. While retracing one of Thoreau?s canoe trips through Maine, Botkin questions our technological world and what it?s causing us to miss: ?Maybe it was because he had that deeper feeling about nature and sought to experience directly, inner and outer, rather than treat it as a political issue viewed from afar, or an administrative task to be completed as part of a bureaucrat?s assignment.? The lesson here is that even those most concerned with understanding and protecting the earth can forget why they?ve dedicated their lives to the science. That is, until a canoe trip or a walk in the woods reminds them. Sometimes the simple answers are difficult to find.Daniel B. Botkin. 2003. ?Strange Encounters: Adventures of a Renegade Naturalist?. New York: Tarcher/Penguin. About the Author Daniel B. Botkin is a research professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the president of the Center for the Study of the Environment.
Price:
4.60 USD
|
|
Add to Shopping Cart |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
