Strange Encounters: Adventures of a Renegade Naturalist - Couverture souple

An internationally renowned scientist Daniel B. Botkin has lived the kind of life that other people only dream about. He has studied whales and elephants tramped over high mountain passes and through rainforests worked with NASA and walked in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau and Lewis and Clark. STRANGE ENCOUNTERS is Botkin's warm witty account of his adventures spanning thirty years and dozens of countries infused with insights and observations on how people and the institutions they build interact with the natural world. In this delightful narrative Botkin does for the science of the natural world what Oliver Sacks has done for the science of human behaviour: he enlightens while he entertains. Whether he is rebuilding an old mill in New Hampshire and ruminating on notions of progress researching the most weight-efficient food for space travel or working in a radioactive forest on an early Cold War research project Botkin's exploits illuminate the complex and evolving relationship between humans and their environment. STRANGE ENCOUNTERS is the most personal and accessible work in Daniel Botkin's long career as a writer. His most influential book Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century helped change the way citizens governments and corporations view environmental issues bringing the concept of sustainability to centre stage.