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Living in the Environment: Principles, Connections, and Solutions (with CD-ROM and InfoTrac) |
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Living in the Environment: Principles, Connections, and Solutions (with CD-ROM and InfoTrac)
List Price: $120.95
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Manufacturer: Brooks Cole
Author: Jr., G. Tyler Miller
Binding: Hardcover
Publication Date: 2003-01-02
Publisher: Brooks Cole
Label: Brooks Cole
Number Of Pages: 864
Features:
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Editorial Review:
Miller's LIVING IN THE ENVIRONMENT, 13th Edition is a science-based book designed for introductory courses in environmental science. Tyler Miller is the most successful author in environmental science instruction because of his attention to currency, trend-setting presentation, outstanding student and instructor supplements, and his ability to retain and refine the pedagological hallmarks on which instructors have come to depend. In this edition Miller has added an on-line Web- based resource, entitled the Resource Integration Guide, which is updated quarterly with CNN® Today video clips, animations, and articles from InfoTrac® College Edition. Instructors can seamlessly incorporate current news articles and research findings to support classroom instruction. And, for the first time ever, students will receive a complementary CD-ROM entitled Interactive Concepts in Environmental Science. This groundbreaking addition integrates nearly 100 engaging animations and interactions with chapter summaries, flashcards, and Web-based quizzes. Organized by chapter, students will find links to relevant resources, narrated animations, interactive figures and prompts to review material and test themselves. The content in the Thirteenth Edition of LIVING IN THE ENVIRONMENT is everything you have come to expect and more. There is more information on ecology and basic science than ever before. Instructors can continue to expect high quality end-of-chapter questions, an orientation toward solutions and prevention rather than clean-up, the integration of Web resources, and balanced presentation of controversial ideas that are supported through Pro/Con diagrams and discussions.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
appearance great, content okay 2008-03-29
the book arrived in a better condition than i expected, and there was no trouble with delivery. however, i use this book for my ap environmental science class and find it lacking in details. in my opinion, it offers only a cursory overview of the concepts. to its credit, it is very easy to understand, but if you want something with more information, this may not be the best book to choose.
made me angry  2007-09-23
I have not read the whole book yet, and I have the 2004 edition (#13). I truly hope the newer editions are better. This is a review of Chapter 1 only.
The chapter annoyed me. It even made me angry. It is milquetoast, unable to just say we, the human population, is depleting too many resources to be sustainable. Adding the statement "other analysts do not believe we are living unsustainably" to an Environmental Science textbook is like saying "some people believe the earth is flat," in a geography textbook, or, something that unfortunately seems to happen in some biology textbooks these days, "evolution is just one theory, there are other theories as well, some experts believe god created all life on earth as it is today." A similar statement was made in part 1-6, "Is our Present Course Sustainable?." "Are things getting better or worse? Experts disagree..." Experts paid by huge resource exploiting corporations? Experts who like to bury their heads in the sand?
There were a number of interesting facts in the text that the general statements did not reflect. These inconsistencies really got to me. It seemed as if it were trying to write about what was outside the box but writing from inside the box. I particularly disliked the sentence that included: "... how much more we need to do to help make the earth more sustainable..." Wait a second, if you were writing from a viewpoint that "Nature does not exist just for us and we only think we are in charge. We need the earth, but the earth does not need us," how can you talk about "making the earth more sustainable?" The earth is what it is and is bountiful, it is our resource exploitation and pollution that are not sustainable for human survival.
I found the first part of the side bar "Free-Access Resources and the Tragedy of the Commons" quite interesting, but the second part on solutions seemed to missing a lot. The first of the two listed solutions was: "Use free-access resources at rates well below their estimated sustainable yields or overload limits by reducing population, regulating access, or both." It then went on to say how this is rarely used since it means we would have to establish and enforce rules and regulations, and it is hard to figure out a sustained yield. But it doesn't mention that educating people about these resources that they take for granted could go along way. Also not mentioned is that regulating the devices that allow people to exploit these resources (such as clean air, the atmosphere, water and wildlife) so easily and unthinkingly would be much easier than regulating their actual use. A lot of the resources mentioned are being depleted by pollution not use in a strict sense. The other solution listed is: "Convert free-access resources to private ownership," since if someone owns something they will protect it, has so many problems which are not addressed. The books lists the problem with this solution as being that "it is not practical for global common resources (such as the atmosphere, the open ocean, most wildlife species, and migratory birds) that can not be divided up and converted to private property." What about the fact that people do exploit the resources that they do own, and the fact that it would no doubt cause even more problems with poverty, and sharing things in common is what brings people together as a community (e.g. they all go to the park and see each other), and so many other problems that I get overwhelmed just thinking about them.
There was a lot of talk about overpopulation as a major problem, but not so much talk about overconsumption by certain parts of the population, even though there were sections on this. There was a section on ecological foot print and how the people in the USA have such a large one, but this didn't seem to get integrated into the text. There was also the statement: "Thus poor parents in a developing country would need 70 - 200 children to have the same lifetime resource consumption as 2 children in a typical U.S. family," but there was a lot of emphasis on population as a major problem and how in underdeveloped countries populations are growing as such a fast rate, when slight rises in US middle/upper class populations can make so much more difference. It felt to me like too much blame poor people in poor countries when it is people in the US and corporations based in the US enriching people in the US who are causing so much of the problems, even exporting our TV and advertisements to other countries which makes people want our unsustainable lifestyle.
There was also no mention of empowering women as a major tool to deal with high birthrates. There is overwhelming evidence that when you empower women to choses when they want to get pregnant and give them education and job skills birthrates do down. The paragraph on why poor people have so many children basically says the reason is to have their labor, with no mention of lack of birth control or power of women to make choices. It also seemed racist and disrespectful.
While we are on the subject of racist and disrespectful, what is with the developed and developing labels? The societies in all countries are developed, it is just industrial manufacturing and certain kinds of resource exploitation that are not as developed.
One last perhaps picky complaint. Figure 1-13 mentions "Traditional decision making" and "traditional societies" but it really does not mean traditional, it means modern industrialized hierarchical societies. This may seem picky but I feel it really does matter, we need to keep remembering that these societies we are living in are new, not traditional. True traditional societies did merge social, economic and environmental issues when making decisions, in fact, they did so in all aspects of living their lives. What we need to do is get back to them.
Policical retoric and not science 2007-04-29
The state of Washington mails each registered voter a "Voter's Pamphlet" with statements for and against each initiative and candidate.
This book has the same format as a page for initiative X complete with rebuttals, but no page against initiative X.
This is completely one sided political rhetoric.
Why are high school students being given 815 pages of brainwashing?
I can understand some political extremest writing this book, but why would the Mercer Island school district buy this book?
I know science.
This ain't science.
Maybe political science.
Good Practical Book  2007-04-19
Being a chemistry student, I've read this book as part of my classes. I've got to say, it's an excellent book, definitely worth reading by itself. It offers concrete, pragmatic solutions and an unbiased collection of scientificly supported descriptions of environmental problems and how to deal with them. It's also almost completely devoid of gloom and doom, as opposed to some of today's green movements. Very much recommended.
Schoolbook review 2007-01-03
I found this book to be fairly well written with only a little bias toward evolution, an unproven scientific theory.
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