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.
""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 ......
""Sustainability"" is more than the latest ""green"" buzzword. It represents a new way of viewing the interactions of human society and the natural world. Sustainability in America's Cities highlights how America's largest cities are acting to develop sustainable solutions to conflicts between development and ......
Lawyers, Swamps, and Money is an accessible, engaging guide to the complex set of laws governing America's wetlands. After explaining the importance of these critical natural areas, the book examines the evolution of federal law, principally the Clean Water Act, designed to protect them.
""Sustainability"" is more than the latest ""green"" buzzword. It represents a new way of viewing the interactions of human society and the natural world. Sustainability in America's Cities highlights how America's largest cities are acting to develop sustainable solutions to conflicts between development and ......
Leon Krier is one of the best-knownand most provocativearchitects and urban theoreticians in the world. Until now, however, his ideas have circulated mostly among a professional audience of architects, city planners, and academics. In The Architecture of Community, Krier has reconsidered and expanded writing from his 1998 book Architecture: ......
The future of our food depends on tiny seeds in orchards and fields the world over. In 1943, one of the first to recognize this fact, the great botanist Nikolay Vavilov, lay dying of starvation in a Soviet prison. But in the years before Stalin jailed him as a scapegoat for the country's famines, Vavilov had traveled over five ......
Taking Back Eden is the gripping tale of an idea—that ordinary people have the right to go to court to defend their environment—told through the stories of lawsuits brought in eight countries around the world. Starting in the United States in the l960’s, this idea is now traveling the planet, with impacts not ......
Nature and Power in the People's Republic of China
China's meteoric rise to economic powerhouse might be charted with dams. Every river in the country has been tapped to power exploding cities and factories'every river but one. Running through one of the richest natural areas in the world, the Nujiang's raging waters were on the verge of being dammed when a 2004 government moratorium halted ......
Energy Development and Wildlife Conservation in Western North America offers a road map for securing our energy future while safeguarding our heritage.
Contributors show how science can help craft solutions to conflicts between wildlife and energy development by delineating core areas, identifying landscapes that support ......
