Beacon Press Books for UUMFE Readers
UU Ministry for Earth is an affiliate of Beacon Press. When you shop for any and all Beacon Press books, simply enter your code, UUMFE, on the checkout screen at www.beacon.org and you will receive a 10% discount plus and free shipping. In addition, 4% of the order will be contributed to UUMFE! Below are just a few of the books that might be of interest to UUMFE readers; however our affiliate discount is applicable to all Beacon Press books.
Please scroll down to see some of the books in these categories:
• Food
• Environmental action
• Growth, economics, new paradigms
• Living sustainably
• Climate change
• Conserving and healing the earth
• Inspired by nature
Food
The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans
Author: Patricia Klindienst
$26.95
"Patricia Klindienst provides an intimate portrait of an immigrant nation and some of the remarkable individuals whose traditions are being kept alive through their work on the land. Klindienst's stories demonstrate the cultural and spiritual imperative that keeps us growing familiar plants and foods, and they reveal the power of the garden in maintaining our connection to our homelands and to the natural world." -Michael Ableman, farmer and author of Fields of Plenty: A Farmer's Journey in Search of Real Food and the People Who Grow It
Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds
Author: Claire Hope Cummings
$24.95 hardcover, $16.00 paperback
Explores how genetic engineering threatens seeds. The plight of seeds is a less visible but no less fundamental threat to our survival. Seeds are at the heart of the planet's life-support systems. Their power to regenerate and adapt are essential to maintaining our food supply and our ability to cope with a changing climate.
Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty
Author: Mark Winne
$23.95 hardcover, $16.00 paper
In Closing the Food Gap, food activist and journalist Mark Winne poses questions too often overlooked in our current conversations around food: What about those people who are not financially able to make conscientious choices about where and how to get food? And in a time of rising rates of both diabetes and obesity, what can we do to make healthier foods available for everyone? From the War on Poverty to new farmers' markets, a food expert tackles America's dangerous dietary split.
"It's heartening to find a book that successfully blends a passion for sustainable living with compassion for the poor." --Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, author of Harvest for Hope
Environmental Action
Beyond Backyard Environmentalism
Series editors: Joshua Cohen, Joel Rogers Authors: Archon Fung, Bradley Karkkainen, Charles Sabel. Foreword by: Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins.
Price: $13.00
When we think of environmental action, we draw upon images from the disaster of Love Canal or from A Civil Action-stories of lone activists fighting the government or some corporation against all odds. In their provocative essay, Sabel, Fung, and Karkkainen demonstrate that an effective alternative is emerging. Before environmental disasters occur, citizen groups are collaborating with experts, business leaders, and local and federal governments to figure out what is best for their own neighborhoods. These examples point to more than successful environmental action; they represent a model of grassroots democracy that can be applied to the needs of any community.
The New Democracy Forum is a series of short paperback originals exploring creative solutions to our most urgent national concerns.
Growth, Economics, and New Paradigms
Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development
Author: Herman E. Daly
$21.00
"Considered by most to be the dean of ecological economics, Herman E. Daly elegantly topples many shibboleths in Beyond Growth. Daly challenges the conventional notion that growth is always good, and he bucks environmentalist orthodoxy, arguing that the current focus on 'sustainable development' is misguided and that the phrase itself has become meaningless."
--Mother Jones
"In Beyond Growth, . . . [Daly] derides the concept of 'sustainable growth' as an oxymoron. . . . Calling Mr. Daly 'an unsung hero,' Robert Goodland, the World Bank's top environmental adviser, says, 'He has been a voice crying in the wilderness.'"
--G. Pascal Zachary, The Wall Street Journal
For The Common Good (Revised): Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable FutureWinner of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order 1992, Named New Options Best Political Book
Economist Herman Daly and theologian John Cobb, Jr., demonstrate how conventional economics and a growth-oriented industrial economy have led us to the brink of environmental disaster, and show the possibility of a different future.
Mortgaging The Earth
Author: Bruce Rich
$22.00
"A detailed and thought-provoking look at an important subject from the viewpoint of a passionate advocate."
--New York Times Book Review
On Private Property: Finding Common Ground on the Ownership of Land
Author: Eric T. Freyfogle
$24.95
In On Private Property, Eric Freyfogle explores this critical issue, recounting the surprising history of private landownership, probing its complex links to liberty, and ultimately showing why a new understanding is needed if private property is to fulfill its key functions. He concludes with a provocative new vision of landownership, at once respectful of private interests, responsive to communal needs, and tailored to today's realities.
Living Sustainably
Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff
Author: Fred Pearce
Price: $24.95
In Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, Fred Pearce shows us the hidden worlds that sustain a Western lifestyle, and he does it by examining the sources of everything in his own life; as an ordinary citizen of the Western world, he, like all of us, is an "eco-sinner."
"In tracing the lineage of his "stuff," Fred Pearce's graceful and engaging book illuminates the invisible ways in which our ordinary possessions connect us to workers we will never know and forests we will never explore. Starting at the intersection of environmental threats, excessive consumption and exploited workers, Confessions points us toward a far more nurturing, meaningful and humane future."
--Ross Gelbspan, author of The Heat Is On and A November 2008 Indie Next Pick Boiling Point
When the Rivers Run Dry: Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century
Author: Fred Pearce
$26.95 hardcover, $16.00 paper
In this groundbreaking book, veteran science correspondent Fred Pearce travels to more than thirty countries to examine the current state of crucial water sources. Deftly weaving together the complicated scientific, economic, and historic dimensions of the world water crisis, he provides our most complete portrait yet of this growing danger and its ramifications for us all.
"A strong-and scary-case that a worldwide water shortage is the most fearful looming environmental crisis. With a drumbeat of facts both horrific (thousands of wells in India and Bangladesh are poisoned by fluoride and arsenic) and fascinating (it takes 20 tons of water to make one pound of coffee), the former New Scientist news editor documents a 'kind of cataclysm' already affecting many of the world's great rivers." -Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Oil we can replace. Water we can't-which is why this book is both so ominous and so important." -Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the Twenty-first Century
Editor: Juliet Schor Coeditor: Betsy Taylor
$19.00
"Can we find ways of living that are sustainable and deeply satisfying, that ensure economic and political democracy, and are passionate about beauty, elegant design, and the wildness of nature? The contributors to Sustainable Planet say we can, and offer 16 remarkable visions of how to get from here to there, including:
- Specific proposals from citizen and labor coalitions that articulate a positive alternative to the free-trade model of globalization
- The emergence of local food systems that allow us to eat fresher, better tasting food while protecting family farms and conserving the environment
- New thinking about industrial design and engineering that is leading to production systems generate no waste
- How we might create a fashion industry that weds aesthetic pleasure with social justice
- Five economic policy recommendations that could move us toward a sustainable economy
- What you can do to create a real sense of community where you live
- A road map for building the political will to change the system before it's too late.
This anthology grew out of the work of the Center for a New American Dream (CNAD), a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping Americans change the way they consume to improve quality of life, protect the environment, and promote social justice.
Climate Change
With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change
Author: Fred Pearce
Price: $24.95 hardcover, $15.00 paper
"If you want to quickly get up to date on climate change and its consequences, I recommend With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change. If you can read only one book on climate change, this is it." -Lester Brown, president, Earth Policy Institute
"He has a talent for explaining science in terms understandable to the nonscientist . . . This enjoyable read was difficult to put down. A superb educational resource, it will make an excellent addition to any public library and is recommended as an essential purchase for high school, college, and university libraries." - Library Journal, starred review - January 15, 2007
Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World
Author: Amy Seidl Foreword by: Bill McKibben
Price: $24.95 Available March 2009
As Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver examine food issues through their own families' meals, Amy Seidl looks at climate change through family walks in the woods, work in her garden, and seasonal community events throughout the year. She brings home the reality of global warming by considering how it has altered her life, her daughters' experiences outdoors, and the traditions of her quintessential small New England town-the iconic landscape celebrated by Robert Frost, Norman Rockwell, and many others.
Greenhouse Trap: What We're Doing to the Atmosphere and How We Can Slow Global Warming
Author: World Resources Institute
Price: $15.00
Excellent primer on the topic of global warming for all ages. Helps explain some of the technical details put forth in the Al Gore movie, "An Inconvenient Truth."
Conserving and Healing the Earth
In Service of The Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Land
Author: Stephanie Mills
Price: $20.00
'An instruction manual, a field guide to a sustainable lifestyle, and a glimmer of hope in a damaged world.'
-Katie Hennessey,Utne Reader
"What restoration could and should be for in us is the transformation of our souls. In addition to what this work may accomplish in the land, I yearn for it as the yoga that will cause us to evolve spiritually, that will restore to us a feeling of awe in something besides our own conceits."
Paul Winternitz -Whole Earth Review, Fall, 1995
The Future of the Wild: Radical Conservation for a Crowded World
Author: Jonathan S. Adams
Price: $27.95 hardcover, $17.00 paper
The grizzly bear, the northern spotted owl, the mountain lion, the sea otter-these are just a few of the species that, however large or small, tell us so much about how to conserve what's left of North America's wilderness.
In The Future of the Wild, conservationist Jonathan S. Adams uses stories about these species and others to show us how to think big. Only by saving large tracts of land and the wildlife corridors that connect them can we hope to save the widest variety of species in any ecosystem. And only by saving whole ecosystems, including human communities, can we hope to make significant strides in conservation. Individual parcels of land, acquired piecemeal, simply will not provide an adequate safeguard against endangerment-or worse, extinction. Even large national parks will not suffice, unless they are connected to the larger landscape.
"Our fragmented, piecemeal approach to conservation is broken, but Jonathan Adams knows how to fix it. In The Future of the Wild, this respected conservationist ranges from the dusty mountains of Arizona to the marshes of south Florida, laying out a bold road map for how to bind together the scattered remnants of this continent's wild places-and for knitting up the mingled fates of the wild and human communities that inhabit them, envisioning a better, more sustainable future for both." - Scott Weidensaul, Author of Return to Wild America
Nature's Second Chance: Restoring the Ecology of Stone Prairie Farm
Author: Steven I. Apfelbaum Foreword by: Nina Leopold Bradley
$25.95 Available February 1, 2009
Nature's Second Chance breathes with a refreshing air of ecological possibility, drawing from the author's personal story of how he has, with help, succeeded in turning back the clock on development to give nature and humanity a second chance at sustaining healthy ecosystems. Apfelbaum's story demonstrates how humans might play a starring role in healing the planet by implementing Leopold's land
ethic, one farm, lot, or brownfield at a time.
Trees of Life: Saving Tropical Forests and Their Biological Wealth
Author: World Resources Institute
$15.00
"Trees of Life addresses the most urgent environmental issue of our time with up-to-date information and a set of practical recommendations for both governments and individual citizens." --Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University
Inspired By Nature
Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond
Author: David Gessner
Price: $24.95 hardcover, $15.00 paper
One September, after writing about ospreys on Cape Cod for years, David Gessner impulsively decided to follow the birds on their annual migration. Each fall these graceful raptors, with wingspans of up to six feet, cruise over the eastern United States, then soar over Cuba and winter in South America, returning north with the spring. In 2004, Gessner went along for the ride, traveling illegally into the mountains of Cuba and deep into Venezuela as he competed with the crew of a BBC documentary to be the first to follow the full migration, trailing the birds by car, boat, foot, and plane. He called his favorite osprey Fidel. Soaring with Fidel is about the exhilaration of migration, but it is also a deeper meditation on the nature of human happiness. In describing the thrill of travel, the antics of these swashbuckling birds, and the cast of characters he meets (and drinks with) along the way including scientists, students, tour guides, and an online group of birders Gessner gives us a profound lesson in the importance of following what you love.
The Prophet of Dry Hill: Lessons From a Life in Nature
Author: David Gessner
$19.95
David Gessner had always known of John Hay. A nature writing legend, Hay was a hero to the younger writer. But it wasn't until Gessner returned to his childhood home on Cape Cod that he befriended the older man. The Prophet of Dry Hill is the compelling story of two men and the year they spent together. But more than a book about friendship, it's a lyrical primer on the importance of living a life connected to the wild. John Hay has lived deeply on one piece of land for sixty years. As a consequence, he has much to tell Gessner-and us-about the importance of creating a strong relationship with the land we live on. His words speak to our forgotten need for space and for reaching beyond ourselves to the world outside. Seeing is the great discipline that nature teaches, Hay proclaims. Nature, not psychology, is the path to our true selves.
Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Headaches?: And Other Bird Questions You Know You Want to Ask
Author: Mike O'Connor
$9.95.
Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Headaches? is the solution for the beginning birder who already has a book that explains the slight variation between Common Ground-Doves and Ruddy Ground-Doves but who is really much more interested in why birds sing at 4:30 A.M. instead of 7:00 A.M., or whether it's okay to feed bread to birds, or how birds rediscover your feeders so quickly when you've just filled them after a long vacation. Or, for that matter, whether flamingos are really real.
"The avian equivalent in tone and expertise to NPR's Car Talk Magliozzi brothers, O'Connor should net a wider audience with this amusing collection.? - Publishers Weekly - February 12, 2007
Poetry
A Dream of Summer: Poems for the Sensuous Season
Selected by: Robert Atwan Introduction by: Mary Oliver
Price: $15.00 In stock.
A Mind of Winter: Poems for a Snowy Season
Selected by: Robert Atwan Introduction by: Donald Hall
Price: $10.00 In stock.
The Heart of Autumn: Poems for the Season of Reflection
Selected by: Robert Atwan Introduction by: Rosanna Warren
$15.00
The Language of Spring: Poems for the Season of Renewal
Selected by: Robert Atwan
$15.00
All of The Above
Author: Dorothy Barresi
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00T
Price: $15.00 In stock.
Ash
Author: Sharan Strange
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $14.00 In stock.
Author: Mary Oliver
Binding Information: Audio
Trade Code: 00A
Price: $19.95 In stock.
"Mary Oliver has published fifteen volumes of poetry and five books of prose in the span of four decades, but she rarely performs her poetry in live readings. Now, with the arrival of At Blackwater Pond, Mary Oliver has given her audience what they've longed to hear: the poet's voice reading her own work. In this beautifully produced compact disc, Mary Oliver has recorded forty of her favorite poems, nearly spanning the length of her career, from Dream Work through her newest volume, New and Selected Poems, Volume Two.
Aunt Carmen's Book of Practical Saints
Author: Pat Mora
Binding Information: Paperback
Trad e Code: 00P
Price: $17.50 In stock.
Blue Iris: Poems and Essays
Author: Mary Oliver
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $14.00 In stock.
Channel
Contributor: Barbara Jordan
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00T
Price: $14.00 In stock.
Christmas Show
Author: Harriet Levin
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00T
Price: $15.00 In stock.
Claiming The Spirit Within: A Sourcebook of Women's Poetry
Editor: Marilyn Sewell
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $24.00 In stock.
Author: Joan Murray
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $15.00 In stock.
Dark Sky Question
Author: Larissa Szporluk
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $14.00 In stock.
Does Your House Have Lions?
Author: Sonia Sanchez
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $16.00 In stock.
Evidence: Poems
Author: Mary Oliver
Binding Information: Cloth
Trade Code: 00C
Price: $23.00 Out of stock. Backorder policy Not Yet Published
In this new volume of forty-six poems, Mary Oliver delves even deeper than she has in the past into the mysteries of life, love, and death. Never afraid to shed the pretense of academic poetry, never shy of letting the power of an image lie in unadorned language, Oliver's work here reflects on the power of love and the great gifts of the natural world.
Gather Round Me: The Best of Irish Popular Poetry
Editor: Christopher Cahill
Binding Information: Cloth
Trade Code: 00C
Price: $15.00 In stock.
Gather Round Me: The Best of Irish Popular Poetry
Editor: Christopher Cahill
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $12.00 Out of stock. Backorder policy
Author: Mary Oliver
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $14.00 In stock.
Kabir: Ecstatic Poems
Translated by: Robert Bly Afterword by: John Stratton Hawley
Binding Information: Cloth
Trade Code: 00C
Price: $16.00 In stock.
Kabir: Ecstatic Poems
Translator: Robert Bly Introduction by: John Stratton Hawley
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $12.00 In stock.
Like the Singing Coming off the Drums: Love Poems
Author: Sonia Sanchez
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $14.00 In stock.
Lorca & Jimenez: Selected Poems
Translator: Robert Bly
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $16.00 In stock.
Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs
Editor: Suzanne Kamata Contributors: Michael Bérubé, Clare Dunsford, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Bret Lott, Carol Zapata-Whelan
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $16.00 In stock.
Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems
Translators: Robert Bly, Jane Hirshfield
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $12.00 Out of stock. Backorder policy Not Yet Published
Born in India in 1498, Mirabai celebrated both the body and the spirit in her work. By her death in 1550 she was a well-known and well-loved poet throughout her country. Now, Bly and Hirshfield brilliantly translate this sage's work, so full of drama, passion, and yearning.
Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems
Series editor: Robert Bly Translator: Jane Hirshfield
Binding Information: Cloth
Trade Code: 00C
Price: $16.00 In stock.
Musca Domestica
Author: Christine Hume Introduction by: Heather McHugh
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $15.00 In stock.
Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems
Translator: Robert Bly
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $18.00 In stock.
New and Selected Poems, Volume Two
Author: Mary Oliver
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $16.00 In stock.
New and Selected Poems, Volume One
Author: Mary Oliver
Binding Information: Cloth
Trade Code: 00C
Price: $28.50 In stock.
Our World
Author: Mary Oliver Photographs by: Molly Malone Cook
Binding Information: Cloth
Trade Code: 00C
Price: $24.95 In stock.
Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
Author: Mary Oliver
Binding Information: Cloth
Trade Code: 00C
Price: $23.00 In stock.
Poems to Live By in Troubling Times
Editor: Joan Murray
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $12.00 In stock.
In this all-new sequel to the Beacon bestseller Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times, editor Joan Murray has once again gathered an astonishing group of poems that speak to our personal and shared concerns in a troubled time. This volume makes an excellent stocking stuffer for the holiday season.
Poems To Live By in Uncertain Times
Editor: Joan Murray
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $12.00 In stock.
Principal Products of Portugal
Author: Donald Hall
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $14.00 In stock.
Queen of The Mist: The Forgotten Heroine of Niagara
Author: Joan Murray
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $15.00 In stock.
Red Bird: Poems
Author: Mary Oliver
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $14.00 Out of stock. Backorder policy Not Yet Published
This collection of sixty-one new poems, the most ever in a single volume of Oliver's work, includes an entirely new direction for the poet's work: a cycle of eleven linked love poems-a dazzling achievement. As in all of Mary Oliver's work, the pages overflow with her keen observation of the natural world and her gratitude for its gifts, for the many people she has loved in her seventy years, as well as for her disobedient dog, Percy.
Red Bird: Poems
Author: Mary Oliver
Binding Information: Cloth
Trade Code: 00C
Price: $23.00 In stock.
This collection of sixty-one new poems, the most ever in a single volume of Oliver's work, includes an entirely new direction in the poet's work: a cycle of eleven linked love poems-a dazzling achievement. As in all of Mary Oliver's work, the pages overflow with her keen observation of the natural world and her gratitude for its gifts, for the many people she has loved in her seventy years, as well as for her disobedient dog, Percy.
Renaissance
Author: Ruth Forman
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $15.00 In stock.
Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems
Author: Sonia Sanchez
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $14.00 In stock.
Song For Anninho
Author: Gayl Jones
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00T
Price: $14.00 In stock.
Author: Frances McCue
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00T
Price: $15.00 In stock.
That Kind of Danger
Author: Donna Masini
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00T
Price: $15.00 In stock.
The Character
Author: Jena Osman
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $15.00 In stock.
The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays
Author: Mary Oliver
Binding Information: Cloth
Trade Code: 00C
Price: $23.00 In stock.
In The Truro Bear and Other Adventures, Mary Oliver brings together ten new poems, thirty-five of her classic poems, and two essays, all about mammals, insects, and reptiles. The award-winning poet considers beasts of all kinds: bears, snakes, spiders, porcupines, humpback whales, hermit crabs, and, of course, her beloved and disobedient little dog, Percy, who appears and even speaks in thirteen poems, the closing section of this volume.
Thirst: Poems
Author: Mary Oliver
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $14.00 In stock.
Waiting For The Paraclete
Author: Lise Goett
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $15.00 Out of stock. Backorder policy
White Elephants
Author: Reetika Vazirani
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00T
Price: $15.00 In stock.
Author: Mary Oliver
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $14.00 In stock.
Winged Serpent: American Indian Prose and Poetry
Editor: Margot Astrov
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00T
Price: $22.00 In stock.
Wounded in the House of A Friend
Author: Sonia Sanchez
Binding Information: Paperback
Trade Code: 00P
Price: $16.00 In stock.