Forces of Change: A New View of Nature

Bought a set of these and used them in my high school science class - colorful with great photos, student loved discussing the topics!

The joy of this book is the variety of views presented. Daniel Botkin starts with an exposition on the rate of change, and what would be considered benign. Stephen Jay Gould made a career at promoting a view of "quirky, punctuated change" of evolution that is not a gentle process. Sometimes the long view present a different view on our environmental problems as William Meson essay on Global Synergies, and the coming together of continents of Pangaea, are warnings to us of the role of exotic species. The human role in the change on earth is also discussed and perhaps the article on the Masia on Kenya's wildlife highlighted the need to not always take a western view. Some of the articles border on the profane, and perhaps the study of change is the purview of Buddhist, and the essay on learning from the Ladahk people of Tibetan plateau may be the most explicit of that. The photographs are striking, and not always beautiful (as a burying beetle on the chest of a dead mourning dove). . The stone carving of the giraffe in the Sahara recall a distant lush past. The photographs of ritual of earth, are some of the most touching.

I received this book as a gift. I loved it & recognized that others could benefit from reading it. So I am requiring my university environmental students to use the book. The photos are great, the writing insightful & thought-provoking, and content is great. It will warn you of some environmental problems, but will also give you hope for our future.

Georgeous photos! It's a collection of really very thought provoking essays. Cutler's, Overpecks, and Quammens were especially interesting. The sum total of the intelligence here is astounding. If tomorrow's leaders could take the time to even glance at this collection we'd all benefit. Not necessarily because solutions are offered but because one can't read these essays without taking the planets past, present and future much more seriously.