Island Press began with a simple idea: knowledge is power—the power to imagine a better future and find ways for getting us there. Founded in 1984, Island Press’ mission is to provide the best ideas and information to those seeking to understand and protect the environment and create solutions to its complex problems.
Soft City
Building Density for Everyday Life
Soft City offers inspiration, ideas, and guidance in a highly visual package, for anyone interested in city building. Sim shows how to make any city more efficient, more livable, and better connected to the environment.
My Kind of City
Collected Essays of Hank Dittmar
The range of topics covered in My Kind of City reflects the breadth of Dittmar’s experience in working for better cities for people. Common themes emerge in the engaging prose including Dittmar’s belief that improving our cities should not be left to the “experts”; his appreciation for the beautiful and the messy; and his rare combination of deep expertise and modesty. As Lynn Richards, CEO of Congress for the New Urbanism expresses in the preface, “Hank’s writing is smart without being elitist, witty and poetic, succinct and often surprising.”
My Kind of City captures a visionary planner’s spirit, eye for beauty, and love for the places where we live.
Climate Action Planning
A Guide to Creating Low-Carbon, Resilient Communities
Climate Action Planning is the most comprehensive book on the state of the art, science, and practice of local climate action planning. It should be a first stop for any local government interested in addressing climate change.
True Roots
What Quitting Hair Dye Taught Me about Health and Beauty
So Ronnie decided to ditch the dye and go in search of answers. What are the risks of hair dye? Are there safer alternatives? Will I still feel like me when I have gray hair?
True Roots follows her journey from dark dyes to a silver crown of glory, from fear of aging to embracing natural beauty. Along the way, women of all ages can learn to protect themselves from dangerous products and discover a new hair story—one built on individuality, health, and truth.
The Heart of the City
Creating Vibrant Downtowns for a New Century
This book will help public officials, civic organizations, downtown business property owners, and people who care about cities learn from successful recent actions in downtowns across the country, and expand opportunities facing their downtown. Garvin provides recommendations for continuing actions to help any downtown thrive, ensuring a prosperous and thrilling future for the 21st-century American city.
Vacant to Vibrant
Creating Successful Green Infrastructure Networks
Landscape architects and other professionals whose work involves urban greening will learn new approaches for creating infrastructure networks and facilitating more equitable access to green space.
Corridor Ecology, Second Edition
Linking Landscapes for Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Adaptation
This second edition of Corridor Ecology: Linking Landscapes for Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Adaptation captures advances in the field over the past ten years. It features a new chapter on marine corridors and the effects of climate change on habitat, as well as a discussion of corridors in the air for migrating flying species. Practitioners, land managers, and scholars of ecology will find it an indispensable resource.
Protecting Pollinators
How to Save the Creatures that Feed Our World
Protecting Pollinators breaks down the latest science on environmental threats and takes readers inside the most promising conservation efforts. Efforts range from cities creating butterfly highways to citizen scientists monitoring migration.
Along with inspiring stories of revival and lessons from failed projects, readers will find practical tips to get involved. And they will be reminded of the magic of pollinators—the iconic monarchs, dainty hummingbirds, and homely bats alike who bring food to our tables.
Holistic Management Handbook, Third Edition
Regenerating Your Land and Growing Your Profits
This new edition, thoroughly revised, updated, and streamlined offers step-by-step instructions for running a ranch or farm using a holistic management approach. Ranchers, farmers, and anyone working to address global environmental degradation will find this comprehensive handbook an indispensable guide to putting the holistic management concept into action with tangible results.
The Grand Food Bargain
and the Mindless Drive for More
Through beautifully-told stories from around the world, Kevin Walker reveals the unintended consequences of our myopic focus on quantity over quality. By the end of the journey, we not only understand how the drive to produce ever more food became hardwired into the American psyche, but why shifting our mindset is essential.
Water is for Fighting Over
and Other Myths about Water in the West
"Illuminating." —New York Times
WIRED's Required Science Reading 2016
When we think of water in the West, we think of conflict and crisis. Yet despite decades of headlines warning of mega-droughts, the death of agriculture, and the collapse of cities, the Colorado River basin has thrived in the face of water scarcity. John Fleck shows how western communities, whether farmers and city-dwellers or U.S. environmentalists and Mexican water managers, actually have a promising record of conservation and cooperation. Rather than perpetuate the myth “Whiskey's for drinkin', water's for fightin' over," Fleck urges readers to embrace a new, more optimistic narrative—a future where the Colorado continues to flow.
Naturalist 25th Anniversary Edition
At once practical and lyric, Naturalist provides fascinating insights into the making of a scientist, and a valuable look at some of the most thought-provoking ideas of our time. As relevant today as when it was first published twenty-five years ago, Naturalist is a poignant reminder of the human side of science and an inspiring call to celebrate the little things of the world.
Grain by Grain
A Quest to Revive Ancient Wheat, Rural Jobs, and Healthy Food
When Bob Quinn was a kid, a stranger at a county fair gave him a few kernels of an unusual grain. Years later, it would become the centerpiece of his multimillion dollar heirloom grain company, Kamut International. How Bob went from being a true believer in better farming through chemistry to a leading proponent of organics is the unlikely story of Grain by Grain. Along the way, readers will learn how ancient wheat can lower inflammation, how regenerative agriculture can bring back rural jobs, and how combining time-tested farming practices with modern science can point the way for the future of food.
Urbanism Without Effort
Reconnecting with First Principles of the City
A whirlwind global tour, Urbanism Without Effort offers readers inspiration, historical context, and a better understanding of how an inviting urban environment is created.
The Farm Bill
A Citizen's Guide
Life After Carbon
The Next Global Transformation of Cities
Life After Carbon presents the new ideas that are replacing the pillars of the modern-city model, converting climate disaster into urban opportunity, and shaping the next transformation of cities worldwide. It will inspire anyone who cares about the future of our cities, and help them to map a sustainable path forward.
Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise
Green and Gray Strategies
Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise, by infrastructure expert Stefan Al, introduces design responses to sea-level rise, drawing from examples around the globe. Going against standard engineering solutions, Al argues for approaches that are integrated with the public realm, nature-based, and sensitive to local conditions and the community. He features design responses to building resilience that creates new civic assets for cities.
With the right solution, Al shows, sea-level rise can become an opportunity to improve our urban areas and landscapes, rather than a threat to our communities.
The Food Sharing Revolution
How Start-Ups, Pop-Ups, and Co-Ops are Changing the Way We Eat
Ecology and Recovery of Eastern Old-Growth Forests
The Great Lakes Water Wars
With three new chapters and significant revisions that bring the story up to date over the past decade, this is the definitive behind-the-scenes account of the people and stories behind hard-fought battles to protect this precious resource that makes the region so special for the millions who call it home.
Designing Climate Solutions
A Policy Guide for Low-Carbon Energy
Trains, Buses, People
An Opinionated Atlas of US Transit
In Trains, Buses, People: An Opinionated Atlas of US Transit, transportation expert Christof Spieler shows how cities can build successful transit.
He profiles the 47 metropolitan areas in the US that have rail transit or BRT, using data, photos, and maps for easy comparison. The best and worst systems are ranked and Spieler offers analysis of how geography, politics, and history complicate transit planning. In this fun and accessible guide, he shows how the unique circumstances of every city have resulted in very different transit systems. In the end, Trains, Buses, People shows that it is possible with the right tools to build good transit.
The Intergalactic Design Guide
Harnessing the Creative Potential of Social Design
The most innovative leaders in the world have instinctively practiced social design for decades. Heller has worked with many of these pioneers, observing patterns in their methods and translating them into an approach that can bring new creative energy to any organization. The Intergalactic Design Guide explains 11 common principles, a step-by-step process, and the essential skills for successful social design. Nine in-depth examples—from the CEO of the largest carpet manufacturer in the world to an entrepreneur with a passion for reducing food waste—illustrate the social design process in action.
Whether you are launching a start-up or managing a global NGO, The Intergalactic Design Guide provides both inspiration and practical steps for designing a more resilient and fulfilling future.
Brilliant Green
The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence
Financial support for the translation of this book has been provided by SEPS: Segretariato Europeo Per Le Pubblicazioni Scientifiche.
Walkable City Rules
101 Steps to Making Better Places
The 101 rules are practical yet engaging—worded for arguments at the planning commission, illustrated for clarity, and packed with specifications as well as data. For ease of use, the rules are grouped into 19 chapters that cover everything from selling walkability, to getting the parking right, escaping automobilism, making comfortable spaces and interesting places, and doing it now!
Food from the Radical Center
Healing Our Land and Communities
America has never felt more divided. But in the midst of the acrimony comes one of the most promising movements in our country’s history. In Food from the Radical Center, Gary Nabhan tells the stories of diverse communities who are bringing back North America's unique fare: bison, sturgeon, camas lilies, ancient grains, turkeys, and more. These restoration efforts have united people from the left and right, rural and urban, in game-changing collaborations. As a leading thinker and seasoned practitioner in biocultural conservation, Nabhan offers a key perspective on the movement. His most enduring legacy may be his message of hope: a vision of a new environmentalism that is just and inclusive, allowing former adversaries to commune over delicious foods.
Vaquita
Science, Politics, and Crime in the Sea of Cortez
"A lucid, informed, and gripping account...a must-read." —Science
"Passionate...a heartfelt and alarming tale." —Publishers Weekly
"Gripping...a well-told and moving tale of environmentalism and conservation." —Kirkus
"Compelling." —Library Journal
In 2006, vaquita, a diminutive porpoise making its home in the Upper Gulf of California, inherited the dubious title of world’s most endangered marine mammal. Vaquita have been in decline for decades, dying in illegal gillnets intended for a giant fish, totoaba. Author Brooke Bessesen takes us to the Upper Gulf region in search of answers to a heart-wrenching dilemma. When diplomatic efforts to save the porpoise failed, Bessesen followed a scientific team in a binational effort to capture remaining vaquita and breed them in captivity—the only hope for their survival. In this fast-paced, soul-searing tale, she learned that there are no easy answers when extinction is profitable.
Building the Cycling City
The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality
Chris and Melissa Bruntlett share the incredible success of the Netherlands through engaging interviews with local experts and stories of their own delightful experiences riding in five Dutch cities. Building the Cycling City examines the triumphs and challenges of the Dutch while also presenting stories of North American cities already implementing lessons from across the Atlantic. Discover how Dutch cities inspired Atlanta to look at its transit-bike connection in a new way and showed Seattle how to teach its residents to realize the freedom of biking, along with other encouraging examples.
Energy for Sustainability, Second Edition
Foundations for Technology, Planning, and Policy
Throughout the book, analytical methods for energy and economic analysis and design give users a quantitative appreciation for and understanding of energy systems. Randolph and Masters use case studies extensively to demonstrate current experience and illustrate possibilities.