Wildfire Loose

In October 1947, Maine experienced the worst fire disaster in its history. Wildfire Loose describes how the fires started and spread so quickly through rural villages, down Millionaire’s Row in Bar Harbor, and across southern Maine beach resorts. Originally published in 1979, it remains the definitive account of “The Week Maine Burned.”

When the leptin gene was discovered in 1994, news articles predicted that there might soon be an easy, pharmaceutical solution to the growing public health crisis of obesity. Yet this scientific breakthrough merely proved once again how difficult the fight against fat really is. Despite the many appetite-suppressants, diet pills, and weight-loss programs available today, approximately 30 percent of Americans are obese. And that number is expanding rapidly. Fat is the engaging story of the scientific quest to understand and control body weight. Covering the entire twentieth century, Robert Pool chronicles the evolving blame-game for fat--from being a result of undisciplined behavior to subconscious conflicts, physiological disease, and environmental excess. Readers in today's weight-conscious society will be surprised to learn that being overweight was actually encouraged by doctors and popular health magazines up until the 1930s, when the health risks associated with being overweight were publicly recognized. Thus began decades of research and experiments that subsequently explained appetite, metabolism, and the development of fat cells. Pool effectively reanimates the colorful characters, curious experiments, brilliant insights and wrong turns that led to contemporary scientific understanding of America's epidemic. While he acknowledges the advances in the pharmacological fight against flab, he underscores that the real problem of obesity is not losing the weight but keeping it off. Drugs offer a quick fix, but they aren't the ultimate answer. American society must remedy the unhealthy daily environments of its cities and towns, and those who have struggled with their weight and have experienced the "yo-yo" cycle of dieting must understand the underlying science of body weight that makes their struggle more than a question of willpower.

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Take your students on a learning-packed trip across the U.S. with books they ll love! This resource includes background information, activity ideas, reproducibles, and Internet connections to help you use 35 great novels as springboards to social studies learning. A great way to get your kids to read more deeplyand learn about the seven U.S. regions. For use with Grades 4-8."

A critical appraisal of why environmental policies fail and succeed, Environmental Policymaking and Stakeholder Collaboration provides policy makers with the keys to navigating complicated environmental issues and stakeholder negotiations. It covers theories in environmental policy making and stakeholder management, compares and contrasts failed an

The First Americans Saga continues... As the retreating ice age scars the land, old rivalries between the survivors threaten the first Americans. As the Age of Ice ends, the People must follow a new path for survival. Led by their powerful headman Tôrnârssuk, they begin a treacherous journey to the Great River of the White Whales, where they hope to hunt, trade, and reunite with friendly tribes. But a young shaman has foreseen a sign of doom. Tôrnârssuk is filled with grave doubts. A fierce wildfire, a blood-red moon, and rumors of a great white mammoth could foretell the death of the People. Tôrnârssuk also faces treachery from both within and without his clan. There are those who believe he has lost his ability as headman. Even as he leads his people through danger, an enemy is waiting for him with a plan that could break not only Tôrnârssuk but the uneasy truce that exists between the northern Inuits and the forest dwellers. Soon clan could turn against clan, and brother against brother, in the bitterest struggle for survival. Bestselling author William Sarabande has once again captured the fierce and savage splendor of a prehistoric continent--and at the same time painted a vivid and unforgettable portrait of our first American ancestors in a bold and magnificent novel filled with adventure, treachery, discovery, and courage.

Repeatedly, if paradoxically, the Northeast has led national developments in fire. Its intellectuals argued for model preserves in the Adirondacks and at Yellowstone, oversaw the first mapping of the American fire scene for the 1880 census, staffed the 1896 National Academy of Sciences forest commission that laid down guidelines for the national forests, and spearheaded legislation that allowed those reserves to expand by purchase. It trained the leaders who staffed those protected areas and produced most of America’s first environmentalists. The Northeast has its roster of great fires, beginning with dark days in the late 18th century, followed by a chronicle of conflagrations continuing as late as 1903 and 1908, with a shocking after-tremor in 1947. It hosted the nation’s first forestry schools. It organized the first interstate (and international) fire compact. And it was the Northeast that pioneered the transition to the true Big Burn—industrial combustion—as America went from burning living landscapes to burning lithic ones. In this new book in the To the Last Smoke series, renowned fire expert Stephen J. Pyne narrates this history and explains how fire is returning to a place not usually thought of in America’s fire scene. He examines what changes in climate and land use mean for wildfire, what fire ecology means for cultural landscapes, and what experiments are underway to reintroduce fire to habitats that need it. The region’s great fires have gone; its influence on the national scene has not. The Northeast: A Fire Survey samples the historic and contemporary significance of the region and explains how it fits into a national cartography and narrative of fire. Included in this volume: How the region shaped America’s understanding of and policy toward fire How fire fits into the region today What fire in the region means for the rest of the country What changes in climate, land use, and institutions may mean for the region