Desert Edens

How technological advances and colonial fears inspired utopian geoengineering projects during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries From the 1870s to the mid-twentieth century, European explorers, climatologists, colonial officials, and planners were avidly interested in large-scale projects that might actively alter the climate. Uncovering this history, Desert Edens looks at how arid environments and an increasing anxiety about climate in the colonial world shaped this upsurge in ideas about climate engineering. From notions about the transformation of deserts into forests to Nazi plans to influence the climates of war-torn areas, Philipp Lehmann puts the early climate change debate in its environmental, intellectual, and political context, and considers the ways this legacy reverberates in the present climate crisis. Lehmann examines some of the most ambitious climate-engineering projects to emerge in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Confronted with the Sahara in the 1870s, the French developed concepts for a flooding project that would lead to the creation of a man-made Sahara Sea. In the 1920s, German architect Herman Sörgel proposed damming the Mediterranean in order to geoengineer an Afro-European continent called “Atlantropa,” which would fit the needs of European settlers. Nazi designs were formulated to counteract the desertification of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Despite ideological and technical differences, these projects all incorporated and developed climate change theories and vocabulary. They also combined expressions of an extreme environmental pessimism with a powerful technological optimism that continue to shape the contemporary moment. Focusing on the intellectual roots, intended effects, and impact of early measures to modify the climate, Desert Edens investigates how the technological imagination can be inspired by pressing fears about the environment and civilization.

How technological advances and colonial fears inspired utopian geoengineering projects during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries From the 1870s to the mid-twentieth century, European explorers, climatologists, colonial officials, and planners were avidly interested in large-scale projects that might actively alter the climate. Uncovering this history, Desert Edens looks at how arid environments and an increasing anxiety about climate in the colonial world shaped this upsurge in ideas about climate engineering. From notions about the transformation of deserts into forests to Nazi plans to influence the climates of war-torn areas, Philipp Lehmann puts the early climate change debate in its environmental, intellectual, and political context, and considers the ways this legacy reverberates in the present climate crisis. Lehmann examines some of the most ambitious climate-engineering projects to emerge in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Confronted with the Sahara in the 1870s, the French developed concepts for a flooding project that would lead to the creation of a man-made Sahara Sea. In the 1920s, German architect Herman Sörgel proposed damming the Mediterranean in order to geoengineer an Afro-European continent called “Atlantropa,” which would fit the needs of European settlers. Nazi designs were formulated to counteract the desertification of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Despite ideological and technical differences, these projects all incorporated and developed climate change theories and vocabulary. They also combined expressions of an extreme environmental pessimism with a powerful technological optimism that continue to shape the contemporary moment. Focusing on the intellectual roots, intended effects, and impact of early measures to modify the climate, Desert Edens investigates how the technological imagination can be inspired by pressing fears about the environment and civilization.

The life and vision of the infamous leader of a grassroots land rights group in Northern New Mexico.

A naturalist captures an intimate photographic study of the marsh habitat and its unique flora and fauna in an exploration of marshes throughout North America and in all seasons of the year.

Visionary quests to return to the Garden of Eden have shaped Western culture from Columbus' voyages to today's tropical island retreats. Few narratives are so powerful - and, as Carolyn Merchant shows, so misguided and destructive - as the dream of recapturing a lost paradise. A sweeping account of these quixotic endeavors by one of America's leading environmentalists, Reinventing Eden traces the idea of rebuilding the primeval garden from its origins to its latest incarnations in shopping malls, theme parks and gated communities. With eloquence and insight, Merchant shows how the drive to conquer nature and to explore and settle the globe, springs from this utopian pastoral impulse throughout Western history. Time and again, human manipulation of the environment is our downfall: Eden is achieved by fencing off pristine beauty in national parks and wildlife preserves, while leaving the majority of the earth in ruins. Challenging both narratives, Merchant argues that the green veneer of city-park conservation has become a cover for the corruption of the earth and the neglect of its environment. Reinventing Eden is a bold new way to think about the earth that includes green political parties, sustainable development and a partnership between humans and earth that is nothing short of an ecological revolution.

A bold new account of European imperialism told through the history of water In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a handful of powerful European states controlled more than a third of the land surface of the planet. These sprawling empires encompassed not only rainforests, deserts, and savannahs but also some of the world’s most magnificent rivers, lakes, marshes, and seas. Liquid Empire tells the story of how the waters of the colonial world shaped the history of imperialism, and how this imperial past still haunts us today. Spanning the major European empires of the period, Corey Ross describes how new ideas, technologies, and institutions transformed human engagements with water and how the natural world was reshaped in the process. Water was a realm of imperial power whose control and distribution were closely bound up with colonial hierarchies and inequalities—but this vital natural resource could never be fully tamed. Ross vividly portrays the efforts of officials, engineers, fisherfolk, and farmers to exploit water, and highlights its crucial role in the making and unmaking of the colonial order. Revealing how the legacies of empire have persisted long after colonialism ebbed away, Liquid Empire provides needed historical perspective on the crises engulfing the world’s waters, particularly in the Global South, where billions of people are faced with mounting water shortages, rising flood risks, and the relentless depletion of sea life.

On a strange night of falling stars, Aria is called to learn who she is and why. Coerced by a grandmother to leave her desert home in California, Aria embarks on an adventure of discovery. Guided and transported by the most colorful of curiosities, back (and back) in time she travels, and along the way, comes face to face with those who forged her family. She goes to the Beginning of Things—not the Beginning of Time, but the Beginning of Things, as they exist in Aria’s world. Her beliefs and assumptions are crushed beneath her wandering pilgrim feet as she leaves the modern era behind in search of something she didn’t even know she needed. Escorted and cajoled by kings, outlaws, druids, and damsels, Aria is made aware of truths long hidden. Lost in a land of myth, she is made fully dependent on a long line of grandparents, both kind and diabolical, who ensure her safe passage back to California after sojourns in France, Scotland, England, and Ireland, where the Beginning of Things takes place. People who share Aria’s rare Rh-negative blood populate these ancient lands. These are people who the Watchers watch. “The Silver Branch is an imaginative ride through history written with engaging wit. Aria is an enchanting character that takes us on an exciting journey through many different modes of travel to a magical, satisfying end, which is really the beginning.” —Carla Harrower Landscape Contractor “In the Silver Branch, Aria is called to learn who she is...and why. And on a strange night of falling stars, her journey begins. Guided and transported by the most colorful of curiosities, back (and back) in time she travels and along the way comes face to face with those who forged her family...and herself. Historical and mythical, Aria’s story will compel readers to want to hear the tales and see the faces etched along the branches of their own family tree.” —Maria Pritchard Author and Retired Educator The story is a journey through intimate glimpses painting a history of cultures subtly told in generational sequences and family tales. It never lets go of being in the present, skeptical while knowing that reality and magic might both exist. The reader is taken along it all, as if told a magical story, which despite historical connections between the mysteries, it really is. The Silver Branch tells a story in changing layers more parallel than mixing, and as far-away magical as the nearness of home. —Jonathan Beck M.D.