Island Press began with a simple idea: knowledge is power—the power to imagine a better future and find ways for getting us there. Founded in 1984, Island Press’ mission is to provide the best ideas and information to those seeking to understand and protect the environment and create solutions to its complex problems.
We elevate voices of change, shine a spotlight on crucial issues, and focus attention on sustainable solutions.
Our network of authors includes E.O. Wilson, Paul Ehrlich, Sylvia Earle, Gretchen Daily, Jan Gehl, Daniel Pauly, and many others. By working closely with experts like these, Island Press has developed a comprehensive and growing body of knowledge—vital resources for all those working to protect the environment and create healthy communities.
Picture a beautiful, green neighborhood where most of your needs could be met by walking, rolling, or accessing transit. There is a diversity of housing types with abundant affordable and middle-income options. Schools, services, and pedestrianized streets make the neighborhood family friendly. A
In car-clogged urban areas across the world, the humble bicycle is enjoying a second life as a legitimate form of transportation. City officials are rediscovering it as a multi-pronged (or -spoked) solution to acute, 21st-century problems, including affordability, obesity, congestion, climate change, inequity, and social isolation. As the ......
Coexisting with and Conserving North America's Predators
What would it be like to live in a world with no predators roaming our landscapes? Would their elimination, which humans have sought with ever greater urgency in recent times, bring about a pastoral, peaceful human civilization? Or in fact is their existence critical to our own, and do we need to be doing more to assure their health ......
Urban renewal plans need to respond to new conditions and requirements, caused by changes in the population and in social structure.
Changing Contexts in Urban Regeneration presents a comprehensive overview of relevant theory, including the socio-spatial characteristics of neighbourhoods and cities; the place of ......
Urbanity, Citizenship, and Ideology in the New European Neighbourhoods
This book investigates the process of change in European neighbourhoods over the last twenty years, both newly and purposely built neighbourhoods and redeveloped ones. It shows that change takes many varied and complex paths, rather than the mainstream simplified model of general urban evolution. Changing Places collects a series of case ......
Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry
Each day, headlines warn that baby bottles are leaching dangerous chemicals, nonstick pans are causing infertility, and plastic containers are making us fat. What if green chemistry could change all that? What if rather than toxics, our economy ran on harmless, environmentally-friendly materials?
In 1987, zoologist Alan Rabinowitz was invited by the Thai government to study leopards, tigers, and other wildlife in the Huai Kha Khaeng valley, one of Southeast Asia's largest and most prized forests. It was hoped his research would help protect the many species that live in that fragile reserve, which was being slowly depleted by poachers, ......
The Evolutionary Race Between Agricultural Pests and Poisons
In the race to feed the world's seven billion people, we are at a standstill. Over the past century, we have developed increasingly potent and sophisticated pesticides, yet in 2014, the average percentage of U.S. crops lost to agricultural pests was no less than in 1944. To use a metaphor the field of evolutionary biology borrowed from ......
A Guide for Moving from Scarcity to Sustainability
Water scarcity is spreading and intensifying in many regions of the world, with dire consequences for local communities, economies, and freshwater ecosystems. Current approaches tend to rely on policies crafted at the state or national level, which on their own have proved insufficient to arrest water scarcity. To be durable and effective, ......
