A "New York Times" Editors' Choice

Most readers think they know Henry David Thoreau: the solitary curmudgeon with the shack out in the woods. In this delightfully engaging book, Robert Sullivan gives us the Thoreau we "don't" know: the gregarious adventurer, the guy who liked to go camping with friends (even if they sometimes accidentally burned the woods down). Here is no lonely eccentric but a man who danced and sang, who worked throughout his short life at the family pencil-making business, who moved into his parents' house after leaving Walden Pond and always paid his father rent. Passionate yet whimsical, "The Thoreau You Don't Know" asks us to cast off our misconceptions as we reexamine our everyday relationship with the natural world and one another.

Crime control has risen rapidly up the social and political agendas to become a central feature of western societies. As inequalities in society have increased, so the actual and perceived risks of crime and other social ills have grown rapidly for all sections of society. Crime has become a central issue to governments, and no longer just a technical operation of law enforcement and adjudication. This book is concerned with issues arising from these developments. Top criminologists from Britain, the USA and Australia explore the links between crime and risk through a range of themes, from the depiction of crime in the media to the dilemmas of policing, to the new punitiveness of criminal justice systems and the custodial warehousing of the poor and excluded. Crime, Risk and Justice will be of interest to students, academics and practitioners with an interest in crime and crime control and the place they have in modern society.

Winner of the 2017 EDRA Great Places Award (Research Category) Winner of the 2017 VT ASLA Chapter Award of Excellence (Communications Category) The Renewable Energy Landscape is a definitive guide to understanding, assessing, avoiding, and minimizing scenic impacts as we transition to a more renewable energy future. It focuses attention, for the first time, on the unique challenges solar, wind, and geothermal energy will create for landscape protection, planning, design, and management. Topics addressed include: Policies aimed at managing scenic impacts from renewable energy development and their social acceptance within North America, Europe and Australia Visual characteristics of energy facilities, including the design and planning techniques for avoiding or mitigating impacts or improving visual fit Methods of assessing visual impacts or energy projects and the best practices for creating and using visual simulations Policy recommendations for political and regulatory bodies. A comprehensive and practical book, The Renewable Energy Landscape is an essential resource for those engaged in planning, designing, or regulating the impacts of these new, critical energy sources, as well as a resource for communities that may be facing the prospect of development in their local landscape.

The photographs in Nicholas Pollack's new book Meadow were made between 2015-2020 in and around Secaucus, New Jersey, U.S. Inspired by the landscape of the New Jersey Meadowlands, Meadow is a body of work about a small plot of land and the friendships and interactions between a group of truck drivers who forge a transcendent relationship with the place. Nicholas Pollack's Meadow is tied to place - specifically, a place that is neglected by society. Meadow tells the story of a group of truck drivers who made a piece of overlooked salt marsh their own. Operating in the tradition of documentary style photography, Pollack shows both the social and the physical landscapes of America in Meadow. This book is Nicholas Pollack's ode to a small portion of the sprawling New Jersey Meadowlands, to its people and its landscape, and to the humanity enveloped in a post-industrial landscape.

Winner of the first John Newberry Medal, Hendrik Willem van Loon s The Story of Mankind, originally written for the author s grandchildren, has charmed generations with its warmth and wisdom. Beginning with the origins of human life and sweeping forward to illuminate all of history, van Loon s incomparable prose and illustrations presented a lively rendering of the people and events that have shaped world history. This new edition, updated by best-selling historian Robert Sullivan, continues van Loon s personable style and incorporates the most important developments of the early twenty-first century, including the war on terrorism, global warming, and the explosion of social media. The result remains extremely valid in broad outline if not detail and, as ever, a grand and thought-provoking read (Kirkus Reviews)."

This collection of 100 poems by a Maori writer shows a variety of subject and tone but is unified by recurring motifs and a persistent Maori perspective.

At first encounter, North Brother Island is among the most unexpected of places: an uninhabited island of ruins in New York City that hardly anyone knows, existing today almost in secret. But in some fundamental sense it is also quite ordinary, for just as they have in other parts of the city, people have lived, worked, studied, healed, and died here for centuries. The island has been bought and sold, used and re-used many times over. For a while, though, it was famous: In 1885, it became the home of the Riverside Hospital, which had been established to isolate and treat people with infectious diseases. By 1895, the hospital had grown to such an extent that the social reformer Jacob Riis wrote that there was nothing like it in the world. Later, the island's reputation grew mostly in infamy: In 1904, the passenger steamship General Slocum caught fire in the East River, leaving more than a thousand souls dead on the shores of North Brother Island, the single greatest loss of life in New York City to that time; in 1908, the hospital received as a patient Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, who would die on North Brother in 1938.
North Brother Island is both part of the City of New York and a world apart from it. Its twenty acres sit low in the East River, just north of Hell Gate, with twenty-five or so buildings in various states of decay. As there is no public access, it's most easily seen as you lift off the tarmac at LaGuardia. Look to the west for a brown smudge stuck in the blue-gray East River, close up against Rikers Island and not far from the Bronx shoreline. That's NBI.
Photographer Christopher Payne, renowned for his work at abandoned state mental hospitals, received permission to visit and photograph the island over a period of years, and this book, North Brother Island, is the result of that work. His collaborator and co-author is Randall F. Mason, Chair of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania, who has studied the island and its history as a unique example in the annals of urban planning and policy.
North Brother Island features an essay and more than 80 large-scale color images by Christopher Payne and a highly illustrated study by Professor Mason, including images from throughout the island's history, official documents, and other supporting graphics.

Originally written in 1921 for the author s grandchildren, Hendrik Willem van Loon s The Story of Mankind has charmed generations with its warmth, simplicity, and wisdom. Rather than the dry recitation of events so common in school textbooks, van Loon s witty, amiable tone animates the story of human history as a grand and perpetually unfolding adventure. Beginning with the origins of human life and sweeping forward to illuminate all of history, van Loon s incomparable prose and original illustrations present a lively rendering of the people and events that have shaped the world we live in today. This new version has been brought up to date by best-selling historian Robert Sullivan, who continues van Loon s personable style, incorporating the most important developments of the early twenty-first century, including the war on terrorism, global warming, and the election of Barack Obama. Engagingly written, delightfully informative, and always entertaining, this is the necessary classic of all ages, for all ages."