Books about Downstream from Amazon.com

With this eloquent and impassioned book, biologist and poet Sandra Steingraber shoulders the legacy of Rachel Carson, producing a work about people and land, cancer and the environment, that is as accessible and invaluable as Silent Spring--and potentially as historic.

In her early twenties, Steingraber was afflicted with cancer, a disease that has afflicted other members of her adoptive family. Writing from the twin perspectives of a survivor and a concerned scientist, she traces the high incidence of cancer and the terrifying concentrations of environmental toxins in her native rural Illinois. She goes on to show similar correlation in other communities, such as Boston and Long Island, and throughout the United States, where cancer rates have risen alarmingly since mid-century. At once a deeply moving personal document and a groundbreaking work of scientific detection, Living Downstream will be a touchstone for generations, reminding us of the intimate connection between the health of our bodies and the integrity of our air, land, and water.

"By skillfully weaving a strong personal drama with thorough scientific research, Steingraber tells a compelling story....Well worth reading."--Washington Post.
Price: $8.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Sandra Steingraber, a poet and biologist, writes with extraordinary grace and clarity about that most depressing of subjects: cancer, a disease that sends you into an unfamiliar territory where all the rules of human conduct are alien. That territory, she suggests, is expanding as chemically poisoned environments begin to take their toll on their human inhabitants. This interaction between the disease and compromised natural zones takes her text into fascinating arguments. Along the way, Steingraber looks at community efforts to reverse the effects of carcinogenic toxins, such as an Iowa farming group's decision to replace chemical herbicides with natural methods of pest control, following the principle of the least toxic alternative. She also suggests that with proper foresight we can do much to make our environments less dangerous..
Price: $10.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

These original essays explore non-reciprocated relationships with regard to the environment The contributors—philosophers who are known for their writing on environmental concerns—discuss moral issues that arise when decisions by individuals, corporations, or governments cause changes in the environment that affect those who do not participate in the decisions. Among the topics addressed are population expansion, accumulation of toxic wastes, pollution of air and water, as well as the effects of actions by the "upstream," current generation on "downstream," future generations..
Price: $28.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Downstream, the shortest and most autobiographical of Huysmans' novels, is the perfect example of what the French naturalists wanted a novel to be. This dark and mordantly comic masterpiece of everyday pessimism about a Parisian clerk seeking spiritual contentment is the perfect introduction to the pleasures of Joris Karl Huysmans (18481907), whose exquisite style is ironically the most perfect remedy for any reader's taedium vitae.

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Price: $5.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Downstream is an arresting vision of the Colorado River by renowned landscape photographer Karen Halverson The Colorado, crucial to development in the West, is at once wilderness, natural resource, recreation area, and wasteland. In seventy large-format color photographs, Halverson captures the river's natural majesty as well as the strange and unexpected beauty of its altered state. The images take us on an intimate exploration of the Colorado's entire length--from its rugged upstream canyons, to its dams and reservoirs, to where it disappears into the desert, entirely consumed. In an insightful, personal introduction to the photographs, Halverson tells how she explored the Colorado--accessing it by car, on foot, and by raft--while learning about its transformation into a complex water delivery system. In a lyrical foreword, historian William Deverell sets the photographs in the illuminating context of Colorado River history and discovery. In both images and prose, the book gives an extraordinary view of the Colorado's great and enduring splendor and a clear-eyed look at the many ironies contained in its waters..
Price: $16.74 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Upriver and Downstream gathers seventy columns about fishing—from freshwater to saltwater, from small ponds to the Great Lakes, from the Pacific Northwest to post-Soviet Russia—written for the “Outdoors” column of the New York Times.

Contributors include such celebrated names as Nick Lyons, Thomas McGuane, Nelson Bryant, Peter Kaminsky, Ernest Schweibert, and Robert H. Boyle. Short, evocative, informative, and entertaining, here are pieces about fly-fishing for wild brook trout, bait-fishing for striped bass, casting into tailwaters, or angling in midwinter. The settings range from Hudson River piers to the Florida Everglades, from Iceland to the Amazon, and the fish include everything from the common sunfish to the esoteric paddlefish. These engaging essays remind us of what fishing is all about: companionship and solitude, challenge and relaxation, nature and technology, from coast-to-coast to around the globe.

Rich with the particulars of water, light, and air, as well as a keen awareness of, as Verlyn Klinkenborg puts it in his introduction, “what is happening out there—in the deep, in the shallows, at the end of the line,” these reflections and recollections beautifully capture the natural world and one of life’s most challenging, perennial pursuits..
Price: $11.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Offers a concise introduction to the separation and purification of biochemicals. Bridges two scientific cultures, providing an introduction to bioseparations for scientists with no background in engineering and for engineers with little grounding in biology. The authors supplement the ideas by simple worked examples, making the techniques of bioseparations easy to learn. Discusses removal of insolubles, product isolation, purification and polishing..
Price: $90.35 [Notify me when price goes down.]