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.
Originally published in 1997, and continually sought after ever since, this 2011 edition includes a new introduction by distinguished urban scholar Mary Rowe. The book is a unique combination of Jacobs' own writing (including previously unpublished speeches, letters, and articles), biography, and analysis by other scholars. ......
Getting Past Our Hang-ups to Effective Climate Policy
There's a simple, straightforward way to cut carbon emissions and prevent the most disastrous effects of climate change-and we're rejecting it because of irrational political fears. That's the central argument of The Case for a Carbon Tax, a clear-eyed, sophisticated analysis of climate change policy.
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 ......
Shifting Baselines explores the real-world implications of a groundbreaking idea: we must understand the oceans of the past to protect the oceans of the future. In 1995, acclaimed marine biologist Daniel Pauly coined the term ""shifting baselines"" to describe a phenomenon of lowered expectations, in which each generation regards a ......
Designing and Building for Health, Well-being, and Sustainability
The environment that we construct affects both humans and our natural world in myriad ways. There is a pressing need to create healthy places and to reduce the health threats inherent in places already built. However, there has been little awareness of the adverse effects of what we have constructed-or the positive benefits ......
Robert J. Cabin uses the restoration of tropical dry forestland in Hawaii as an in-depth case study to investigate the scientific, practical, and philosophical issues associated with performing ecological restoration in the messy real world.
Interweaving entertaining narratives of his own on-the-ground experiences as a ......
Shifting Baselines explores the real-world implications of a groundbreaking idea: we must understand the oceans of the past to protect the oceans of the future. In 1995, acclaimed marine biologist Daniel Pauly coined the term ""shifting baselines"" to describe a phenomenon of lowered expectations, in which each generation regards a ......
""Wicked"" problems are large-scale, long-term policy dilemmas in which multiple and compounding risks and uncertainties combine with sharply divergent public values to generate contentious political stalemates; wicked problems in the environmental arena typically emerge from entrenched conflicts over natural resource management and ......
Making Nature Whole is a seminal volume that presents an in-depth history of the field of ecological restoration as it has developed in the United States over the last three decades. The authors draw from both published and unpublished sources, including archival materials and oral histories from early practitioners, to explore the ......