Research Catalog

Details

Description

1. x, 321 pages, 20 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps; 23 cm

Summary

1. "As the crucible of life, the source and final resting place of everything that grows, soil inspires reverence not only in the peasant who derives his daily bread from it, but also in the scientist who contemplates its meaning as the place where life and death meet and exchange vital energies. Out of the Earth is the culmination of the author's long career in conservation. This history of man's use and misuse of soil and water combines a description of the complex inner processes that form soil with a lyrical assertion of its powers and significance."--Publisher's description.

Alternative title

1. Civilization and the life of the soil

Subject

1. Soils
2. Soil and civilization
3. Water and civilization
4. Water-supply
5. Agriculture
6. farming (activity or system)
7. agriculture (discipline)
8. Agriculture
9. Soil and civilization
10. Soils
11. Water and civilization
12. Water-supply
13. Boden
14. Mensch
15. Wasser
16. Bodemgesteldheid
17. Waterhuishouding
18. Cultuur
19. Landbouw

Contents

1. Prologue -- Man's role on God's earth -- The fertile substrate -- The vital fluid -- The dynamic cycle -- The primary producers -- The tenuous balance -- Human origins -- The agricultural transformation -- Early farming in the Near East -- Silt and salt in Mesopotamia -- The gifts of the Nile -- Husbandry of the rain-fed uplands -- The desert rejoiced -- Tapping the underground waters -- Farming the wetlands of Mesoamerica -- The advent of chemical fertilizers -- Saline seeps in Australia and North America -- The promise and peril of irrigation -- Accelerated erosion -- The "sorrow of China" -- Deforesting the Earth -- Man-made deserts -- The plight of Africa -- Endangered wetlands -- Sweet water and bitter -- Water management in Israel -- Abusing the living filter -- A global accounting -- A case for conditional optimism.

Owning institution

1. Princeton University Library

Note

1. Originally published: New York : Free Press ; Toronto : Collier Macmillan Canada ; New York : Maxwell Macmillan International, c1991.

Bibliography (note)

1. Includes bibliographical references (p. 301-310) and index.