A new model for urban development is emerging in cities to aggressively tackle the realities of climate change. It transforms the way cities design and use physical space, generate economic wealth, consume and dispose of resources, exploit and sustain the natural ecosystems, and prepare for the future. In Life after carbon, urban sustainability consultants Pete Plastrik and John Cleveland assemble this global pattern of urban reinvention from the...

Cities are the world's future. Today, more than half of the global population lives in urban areas, and that number is expected to double by 2050. There is no question that cities are growing; the only debate is over how they will grow. Will we invest in the physical and social infrastructure necessary for livable, equitable, and sustainable cities? In the latest edition of State of the World, the flagship publication of the Worldwatch Institute,...

As human population centers sprawl out into once open lands, and as conservation efforts help devastated wildlife populations recover, humans are having more frequent interactions with large and often dangerous wild animals. This book examines the reasons for and often violent consequences of these encounters; it might have you rethinking your decision to buy a home in that convenient new subdivision.

This work of narrative nonfiction tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities. In it, based on three years of reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. The events recounted are real, as are all the names. Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India...

Nicholas Kristof grew up, in rural Yamhill, Oregon, an area that prospered for much of the twentieth century but has been devastated in the last few decades as blue-collar jobs disappeared. About one-quarter of the children on Kristof's old school bus died in adulthood from drugs, alcohol, suicide, or reckless accidents. And while these particular stories unfolded in one corner of the country, they are representative of many places the authors write...

Unchallenged Mind provides a bittersweet account of my personal tribulations growing up as an intellectually gifted, but poor African-American kid in New Jersey. Part One describes my often-painful quest to understand why I failed to fulfill the intellectual promise I had shown as a child prodigy. Part Two documents my decades-long struggle to recover, but never quite successfully recapturing, the intellectual prowess I once possessed and enjoyed....