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Author: Wes Jackson
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 158243848X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
Locavore leaders such as Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, and Barbara Kingsolver all speak of the need for sweeping changes in how we get our food. A longtime leader of this movement is Wes Jackson, who for decades has taken it upon himself to speak for the land, to speak for the soil itself. Here, he offers a manifesto toward a conceptual revolution: Jackson asks us to look to natural ecosystems—or, if one prefers, nature in general—as the measure against which we judge all of our agricultural practices. Jackson believes the time is right to do away with annual monoculture grains, which are vulnerable to national security threats and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs. Soil erosion and the poisons polluting our water and air—all associated with agriculture from its beginnings—foretell a population with its natural fertility greatly destroyed. In this eloquent and timely volume, Jackson argues we must look to nature itself to lead us out of the mess we've made. The natural ecosystems will tell us, if we listen, what should happen to the future of food.
Author: Wes Jackson
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 158243848X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 202
Get Book Here
Book Description
Locavore leaders such as Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, and Barbara Kingsolver all speak of the need for sweeping changes in how we get our food. A longtime leader of this movement is Wes Jackson, who for decades has taken it upon himself to speak for the land, to speak for the soil itself. Here, he offers a manifesto toward a conceptual revolution: Jackson asks us to look to natural ecosystems—or, if one prefers, nature in general—as the measure against which we judge all of our agricultural practices. Jackson believes the time is right to do away with annual monoculture grains, which are vulnerable to national security threats and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs. Soil erosion and the poisons polluting our water and air—all associated with agriculture from its beginnings—foretell a population with its natural fertility greatly destroyed. In this eloquent and timely volume, Jackson argues we must look to nature itself to lead us out of the mess we've made. The natural ecosystems will tell us, if we listen, what should happen to the future of food.
Author: Wes Jackson
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 9780813128672
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 148
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Book Description
" The New World -- this empty land dazzlingly rich in forests, soils, rainfall, and mineral wealth -- was to represent a new beginning for civilized humanity. Unfortunately, even the best of the European settlers had a stronger eye for conquest than for justice. Natives were in the way -- surplus people who must be literally displaced. Now, as ecologist West Jackson points out, descendants of those early beneficiaries of conquest find themselves the displaced persons, forced to vacate the family farmsteads and small towns of our heartland, leaving vacant the schools, churches, hardware stores, and barber shops. In a ringing cry for a changed relation to the land, Jackson urges modern Americans to become truly native to this place -- to base our culture and agriculture on nature's principles, to recycle as natural ecosystems have for millions of years. The task is more difficult now, he argues, because so much cultural information has been lost and because the ecological capital necessary to grow food in a sustainable way has been seriously eroded. Where to begin? Jackson suggests we start with those thousands of small towns and rural communities literally falling down or apart. We have no money to pay for the process and little cultural awareness to support it, but here are the places where a new generation of homecomers -- people who want to go to a place and dig in -- can become the new pioneers, operating on a set of assumptions and aspirations different from those of their ancestors. These new pioneers will have to "set up the books" for ecological community accounting. If they dig deep enough and long enough, urges Jackson, a new kind of economy will emerge. So will a rich culture with its own art and artifacts.
Author: Wes Jackson
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1582438935
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
An essential and timely collection of wise and compelling essays from one of the longtime leaders of the sustainable agriculture movement in America. Wes Jackson, “a well–known and admired advocate for sustainability especially as it relates to agriculture, has the rare ability to transform his convictions into captivating prose . . . Jackson’s thoughts are still as significant and profound as they were nearly 20 years ago” (Publishers Weekly) and can teach us many things about the land, soil, and conservation, but what most resonates is this: The ecosphere is self–regulating, and as often as we attempt to understand it, we are not its builders, and our manuals will often be faulty. The only responsible way to learn the nuances of the land is to study the soil and vegetation in their natural state and pass this knowledge on to future generations. “[A] small book rich in ideas” (The New York Times Book Review), Nature as Measure collects Jackson’s essays from Altars of Unhewn Stone and Becoming Native to This Place, presenting ideas of land conservation and education that are written from the point of view of a man who has practiced what he’s preached and proven that it is possible to partially restore much of the land that we’ve ravaged. Wes Jackson lays the foundation for a new farming economy, grounded in nature’s principles and located in dying small towns and rural communities. Exploding the tenets of industrial agriculture, Jackson seeks to integrate food production with nature in a way that sustains both. His longtime friend Wendell Berry provides an informative, contextual Introduction. “For those concerned about what will be left and how many billion will be starving in twenty years, this is a must read.” —Register of the Kentucky Historical Society “A good introduction to a thinker whose ideas on agriculture are radical both in their technical approach to food production as well as in terms of the economic, social, and cultural context within which it is practiced.” —Review of Radical Political Economics
Author: Robert Jensen
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700636803
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 152
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Book Description
In more than four decades as president of The Land Institute, Wes Jackson became widely known as one of the founders of the sustainable agriculture movement for his work on perennial grains and Natural Systems Agriculture. But Jackson’s contribution to contemporary intellectual and political life goes well beyond plant breeding. Ever since he created one of the first university environmental studies programs in the early 1970s, Jackson has been exploring the human predicaments around sustainability and justice, asking questions that pull not only on agriculture and ecology but also on politics, economics, and culture. That work has appeared in four sole-authored books by Jackson, but nowhere is there an accessible summary of his key ideas. Robert Jensen provides a short, elegant introduction to Jackson’s ideas on ways to provide humanity with a truly sustainable foundation in grain agriculture, presented in a way that connects to the growing concern about climate change and other ecological crises. Jackson’s strength has been in generating new ideas and pushing the envelope not only on sustainable agriculture but also on the other dramatic changes necessary if we are to create a sustainable and just society. This volume helps the reader to organize those exciting ideas in a way that can expand the horizons of students and lay readers as well as challenge specialists in these fields. In a time when critical thinking and clear understanding are desperately needed if we are to face the multiple, cascading ecological and social crises, The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson presents Jackson’s crucial insights about the natural world and human societies that can help provide a framework for understanding the tough decisions we will have to make. But just as important is the book’s glimpse into the curiosity that drives Jackson and the creativity that distinguishes his intellectual and activist work.
Author: Robert Root-Bernstein
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547525893
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 410
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Book Description
Discover the cognitive tools that lead to creative thinking and problem-solving with this “well-written and easy-to-follow” guide (Library Journal). Explore the “thinking tools” of extraordinary people, from Albert Einstein and Jane Goodall to Mozart and Virginia Woolf, and learn how you can practice the same imaginative skills to become your creative best. With engaging narratives and examples, Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein investigate cognitive tools such as observing, recognizing patterns, modeling, playing, and more. Sparks of Genius is “a clever, detailed and demanding fitness program for the creative mind” and a groundbreaking guidebook for anyone interested in imaginative thinking, lifelong learning, and transdisciplinary education (Kirkus Reviews). “How different the painter at the easel and the physicist in the laboratory! Yet the Root-Bernsteins recognize the deep-down similarity of all creative thinking, whether in art or science. They demonstrate this similarity by comparing the accounts that various pioneers and inventors have left of their own creative processes: for Picasso just as for Einstein, for Klee just as for Feynman, the creative impulse always begins in vision, in emotion, in intuition. . . . With a lavishly illustrated chapter devoted to each tool, readers quickly realize just how far the imagination can stretch.” —Booklist “A powerful book . . . Sparks of Genius presents radically different ways of approaching problems.” —American Scientist
Author: Patrick M. Lencioni
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118266102
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 253
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Book Description
There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are. In this book, Lencioni brings together his vast experience and many of the themes cultivated in his other best-selling books and delivers a first: a cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage organizational health provides. Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent and complete, when its management, operations and culture are unified. Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave. Lencioni’s first non-fiction book provides leaders with a groundbreaking, approachable model for achieving organizational health—complete with stories, tips and anecdotes from his experiences consulting to some of the nation’s leading organizations. In this age of informational ubiquity and nano-second change, it is no longer enough to build a competitive advantage based on intelligence alone. The Advantage provides a foundational construct for conducting business in a new way—one that maximizes human potential and aligns the organization around a common set of principles.
Author: Wayne Weiseman
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603584978
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Permaculture is a movement that is coming into its own, and the concept of creating plant guilds in permaculture is at the forefront of every farmer's and gardener's practice. One of the essential practices of permaculture is to develop perennial agricultural systems that thrive over several decades without expensive and harmful inputs: perennial plant guilds, food forests, agroforestry, and mixed animal and woody species polycultures. The massive degradation of conventional agriculture and the environmental havoc it creates has never been as all pervasive in terms of scale, so it has become a global necessity to further the understanding of a comprehensive design and planning system such as permaculture that works with nature, not against it. The guild concept often used is one of a "functional relationship" between plants-beneficial groupings of plants that share functions in order to bring health and stability to a plant regime and create an abundant yield for our utilization. In other words, it is the integration of species that creates a balanced, healthy, and thriving ecosystem. But it goes beyond integration. A guild is a metaphor for all walks of life, most importantly a group of people working together to craft works of balance, beauty, and utility. This book is the first, and most comprehensive, guide about plant guilds ever written, and covers in detail both what guilds are and how to design and construct them, complete with extensive color photography and design illustrations. Included is information on: - What we can observe about natural plant guilds in the wild and the importance of observation; - Detailed research on the structure of plant guilds, and a portrait of an oak tree (a guild unto itself); - Animal interactions with plant guilds; - Steps to guild design, construction, and dynamics: from assessment to design to implementation; - Fifteen detailed plant guilds, five each from the three authors based on their unique perspectives; - Guild project management: budgets, implementation, management, and maintenance. Readers of any scale will benefit from this book, from permaculture designers and professional growers, to backyard growers new to the concept of permaculture. Books on permaculture cover this topic, but never in enough depth to be replicable in a serious way. Finally, it's here!
Author: Patrick M. Lencioni
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0787976393
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
Another extraordinary business fable from the New York Times bestselling author Patrick Lencioni Written in the same dynamic style as his previous bestsellers including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni illustrates the principles of inspiring client loyalty through a fascinating business fable. He explains the theory of vulnerability in depth and presents concrete steps for putting it to work in any organization. The story follows a small consulting firm, Lighthouse Partners, which often beats out big-name competitors for top clients. One such competitor buys out Lighthouse and learns important lessons about what it means to provide value to its clients. Offers a key resource for gaining competitive advantage in tough times Shows why the quality of vulnerability is so important in business Includes ideas for inspiring customer and client loyalty Written by the highly successful consultant and business writer Patrick Lencioni This new book in the popular Lencioni series shows what it takes to gain a real and lasting competitive edge.
Author: William A. Cohen
Publisher: Lid Publishing
ISBN: 9781911498674
Category : Management
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Peter Drucker is known worldwide as ' The Father of Modern Management' . But he was also the world's most famous and successful independent consultant. The methods developed by Drucker remain highly relevant and continue to be used in organizations today. This book, written by the first executive PhD graduate of the program Drucker developed, is the first book to reveal in detail Drucker's methods and ideas as a consultant. Jack Welch noted that his success at GE was based on Drucker's consulting advice. Bill Bartmann, who became the 25th wealthiest man in America at one point, also credits Drucker's advice in helping with his success. This book is an encyclopaedia of Drucker's consulting approaches and how and when to apply them. It will enable executives and managers to gain new insight into Drucker's thinking and methods, and why they continue to have such tremendous influence over today's organizations.
Author: Andrew Pek
Publisher: Stimulated!
ISBN: 1929774508
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 105
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Book Description
With the pace of competition, innovation, and change in today's world, creativity isn't a luxury -- it is a survival skill. But even the most creative people can end up stuck, stressed out, and stale, worn down by the daily grind. "Stimulated!" is an energetic exploration of five habits that can help you release your creativity and expand your innovative thinking. The method is playful, fun, enriching, and mind-expanding, but most important, it's a step-by-step process for getting unstuck. With this book you learn: how to draw inspiration and fresh insights from the world around you; how to make the most of your surroundings and develop an environment that will get the creative juices flowing; how to turn work into play; how to take the leap of faith and commit to big, bold ideas; and how to reap the benefits of your success and failures to contribute to the next creative effort.
