Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability: Overviews, Future Views, and Review Essays

by Anderson et al

Overview

The Future of Sustainability, the tenth and final volume of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability, brings together essays from a group of renowned scholars and well-known environmentalist thinkers. Crucial topics are considered in terms of the future of humanity and its relationship with the natural world, from the outlook for nuclear energy, cities, energy, agriculture, water, food security, mobility, and migration; the role of higher education; and the concept of collective learning. The volume concludes with a resource guide for teaching materials at several levels, a directory of leading undergraduate- and graduate-level programs in sustainability, and a combined index of the 10-volume set.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781933782638
Publisher:	Berkshire Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/01/2010
Series:	Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 1.06(d)

Editorial Reviews

These works complete a ten-volume set dedicated to Rachel Carson, which was launched in 2009 as a "project about solutions." (See previous reviews in LJ 3/15/10 and LJ 8/1/12.) In keeping with the set's ethos of contributing to real-world solutions, contributors and editors are scholars and practitioners. The geographic volumes follow the same format as their predecessors—an introductory summary, preceding topical entries of two to eight pages in length each, on, for instance, environmental issues in the Balkans. These end with the outlook for the issue, cross references, and a further-reading list. A combined list of the ten volumes' entries, a list of all contributors, most-cited references, a master index, and a directory of sustainability programs are provided in Volume 10. Although that volume is not a summary of the other material in the encyclopedia, it puts many of the work's ideas and theories in perspective and makes further points about useful action. Some illustrations are decorative only, and the color maps, though of quality, are not numerous enough. Entries are judicious, current, well written and understandable. VERDICT Greenwood's three-volume Encyclopedia of Sustainability can't match Berkshire's scope. Other comparable volumes concentrate on the problems, not the solutions, and Berkshire's own three-volume Encyclopedia of World Environmental History (2003) is a precursor. College students and the general public will profit from studying sustainability geographically in these volumes.—Janice Dunham, John Jay Coll. Lib., CUNY

Library Journal