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Elemental : How Five Elements Changed Earth's Past and Will Shape Our Future

Elemental : How Five Elements Changed Earth's Past and Will Shape Our Future

Elemental : How Five Elements Changed Earth's Past and Will Shape Our
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Elemental : How Five Elements Changed Earth's Past and Will Shape Our Future Hardback - 2023

by Porder, Stephen

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Princeton University Press. Used - Very Good. Former library copy. Pages intact with possible writing/highlighting. Binding strong with minor wear. Dust jackets/supplements may not be included. Includes library markings. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good.
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Details

  • Title Elemental : How Five Elements Changed Earth's Past and Will Shape Our Future
  • Author Porder, Stephen
  • Binding Hardback
  • Condition Used - Very good
  • Pages 240
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Princeton University Press
  • Publication date 2023-09-12
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Bibliography, Illustrated, Index
  • Bookseller's Inventory # 55035944-6
  • ISBN 9780691177298 / 0691177295
  • Weight 1.01 lbs (0.46 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.58 x 5.67 x 1.1 in (21.79 x 14.40 x 2.79 cm)
  • Themes
    • Topical: Ecology
  • Category Environmental Studies
  • Library of Congress subjects Civilization, Ecology
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 2022042744
  • Dewey Decimal Code 576.8
  • Quantity available 2

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From the publisher

An ecologist explores how life itself shapes Earth using the elemental constituents we all share

It is rare for life to change Earth, yet three organisms have profoundly transformed our planet over the long course of its history. Elemental reveals how microbes, plants, and people used the fundamental building blocks of life to alter the climate, and with it, the trajectory of life on Earth in the past, present, and future.

Taking readers from the deep geologic past to our current era of human dominance, Stephen Porder focuses on five of life's essential elements--hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. He describes how single-celled cyanobacteria and plants harnessed them to wildly proliferate across the oceans and the land, only to eventually precipitate environmental catastrophes. He then brings us to the present, and shows how these elements underpin the success of human civilization, and how their mismanagement threatens similarly catastrophic unintended consequences. But, Porder argues, if we can learn from our world-changing predecessors, we can construct a more sustainable future.

Blending conversational storytelling with the latest science, Porder takes us deep into the Amazon, across fresh lava flows in Hawaii, and to the cornfields of the American Midwest to illuminate a potential path to sustainability, informed by the constraints imposed by life's essential elements and the four-billion-year history of life on Earth.

Media reviews

Citations

  • Booklist, 09/01/2023, Page 29
  • Choice, 02/01/2024, Page 0
  • Foreword, 08/27/2023, Page 0
  • Publishers Weekly, 07/10/2023, Page 0

About the author

Stephen Porder is the Associate Provost for Sustainability and the Acacia Professor of Ecology, Evolutionary and Organismal Biology, and Environment and Society at Brown University. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Time magazine, the American Scientist, and other leading publications. He is cofounder of Possibly, which airs on The Public's Radio and provides practical advice on sustainability to a general audience.

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