Ambitious in its scope and scale, this environmental history of World War II ranges over rear bases and operational fronts from Bora Bora to New Guinea, providing a lucid analysis of resource exploitation, entangled wartime politics, and human perceptions of the vast Oceanic environment. Although the war’s physical impact proved significant and oftentimes enduring, this study shows that the tropical environment offered its own challenges: Unfamiliar tides left landing craft stranded; unseen microbes carrying endemic diseases disabled thousands of troops. Weather, terrain, plants, animals—all played an active role as enemy or ally. At the heart of Natives and Exotics is the author’s analysis of the changing visions and perceptions of the environment, not only among the millions of combatants, but also among the Islands’ peoples and their colonial administrations in wartime and beyond. Judith Bennett reveals how prewar notions of a paradisiacal Pacific set up millions of Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, and Japanese for grave disappointment when they encountered the reality. She shows that objects usually considered distinct from environmental concerns (souvenirs, cemeteries, war memorials) warrant further examination as the emotional quintessence of events in a particular place. Among native people, wartime experiences and resource utilization induced a shift in environmental perceptions just as the postwar colonial agenda demanded increased diversification of the resource base. Bennett’s ability to reappraise such human perceptions and productions with an environmental lens is one of the unique qualities of this study. Impeccably researched, Natives and Exotics is essential reading for those interested in environmental history, Pacific studies, and a different kind of war story that has surprising relevance for today’s concerns with global warming.

Three generations of one Australian family become "exotics" in foreign lands as nine-year-old Alice moves to Ecuador with her parents, while her grandmother makes a home in the hinterlands of Australia.

All over the planet, organisms of many species are appearing outside of their natural habitatsÑoften carried by that particularly peripatetic species Homo sapiens. This book marks the first comprehensive attempt to address problems posed by expanding populations of exotic plant and animal species in the Sonoran Desert and adjacent grasslands and riparian areas. It describes the arrival and spread of non-native species as diverse as rats and saltcedar, covering both their impacts and the management of those impacts. It is estimated that as much as 60 percent of the vegetative cover of the Sonoita Creek-Patagonia Reserve, the first Nature Conservancy area designated in Arizona, is dominated by exotic plants, and that introduced fish pose a recurrent threat to the native fish of that area. Meanwhile at the Grand Canyon, invasives such as tamarisk, red brome, carp, and catfish are pervasive either in the Colorado River or in the patches of desert scrub along its shores. Throughout the Sonoran Desert and adjacent areas, from islands in the Sea of CortŽs to desert grasslands, some six hundred species of non-native plants and animals have become established, with bullfrogs and Mediterranean grasses now common where they once never existed. The book brings together contributors from academia, government, and nonprofit organizations, including such experts as Gary Paul Nabhan, Richard Mack, and Alberto Bœrquez-Montijo. They review historic and even prehistoric origins of non-native speciesÑnot only exotic plants, amphibians, and mammals but also insects, fish, and birds. They then examine significant problems in each major subregion and ecosystem and discuss control efforts. The volume contains the first compiled list of more than 500 naturalized exotic species in the Sonoran region. Invasive species issues are rapidly emerging as major environmental concerns both locally and worldwide. This book will assist professionalsÑecologists, conservation biologists, and policy makersÑinvolved in invasive species control in the Southwest and will be a rich resource for all concerned with protecting native species and their habitats.

As alluring as The Love-Artist, a contemporary tale of love and ambition, betrayal and revenge, set in two gloriously watery cities In a damp Venetian palace, Oswaldo contemplates the ravages of time to his body and his beloved city, and dreams up a way to hold mortality at bay. In New York, Lach steps out into the crisp, clear night to savor his new freedom, having just dropped Vera to join his new love, Francesca, in Venice. In rainy London, Max packs for a precipitous move to New Orleans, in pursuit of Lucinde, a woman he barely knows. From New Orleans, Lucinde flies to the aid and comfort of Vera, who, betrayal or no, has accepted a grant to go paint in . . . Venice. And elsewhere in the Crescent City, Anton, leaving to seek his big break in that other renowned city of water—Venice, of course—sketches a good-bye upon the slumbering body of his wife, Josephine. With wit, sympathy, and surpassing deftness, Jane Alison choreographs an intricate minuet among these characters, whom love and loneliness, aspiration and desperation, have drawn to two famously romantic, venal, and elusive cities of water.

A darkly brilliant first novel that imagines a missing chapter in the life of Ovid. Why was Ovid, the most popular author of his day, banished to the edges of the Roman Empire? Why do only two lines survive of his play Medea, reputedly his most passionate work and perhaps his most Accomplished? Between the known details of the poet's life and these enigmas, Jane Alison has Interpolated a haunting drama of passion and psychological manipulation. On holiday at the Black Sea, on the fringes of the Empire, Ovid encounters an almost otherworldly woman who seems to embody the fictitious creations of his soon-to-be-published Metamorphoses. Part healer, part witch, she seems myth come to life. Enchanted and obsessed -- and, for the first time in a long while, flush with inspiration -- Ovid takes her back with him to Rome. But the inexorable pull of ambition leads him to make a Faustian bargain with fate that will betray his newfound muse. As the two of them become entangled in its snares, the reader is drawn deep into an ingeniously enacted meditation on love, art, and the desire for immortality.

In Alien Species and Evolution, biologist George W. Cox reviews and synthesizes emerging information on the evolutionary changes that occur in plants, animals, and microbial organisms when they colonize new geographical areas, and on the evolutionary responses of the native species with which alien species interact. The book is broad in scope, exploring information across a wide variety of taxonomic groups, trophic levels, and geographic areas. It examines theoretical topics related to rapid evolutionary change and supports the emerging concept that species introduced to new physical and biotic environments are particularly prone to rapid evolution. The author draws on examples from all parts of the world and all major ecosystem types, and the variety of examples used gives considerable insight into the patterns of evolution that are likely to result from the massive introduction of species to new geographic regions that is currently occurring around the globe. Alien Species and Evolution is the only state-of-the-art review and synthesis available of this critically important topic, and is an essential work for anyone concerned with the new science of invasion biology or the threats posed by invasive species.

A bewitching look at nonnative species in American ecosystems, by the heir apparent to McKibben and Quammen.