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.
Tech to Table
25 Innovators Reimagining Food
Tech to Table introduces readers to twenty-five of the most creative entrepreneurs innovating these solutions. They come from various places and professions, identities and backgrounds. But they share an outsider’s perspective and an idealistic, often disruptive, ambition to reinvent the food system.
The pace and breadth of change is astonishing, as investors pump billions of dollars into ag-tech. Not every innovator will prosper long-term, but each marks a fundamental change in our approach to feeding a growing population—sustainably.
- Copyright year: 2021
A Good Drink
In Pursuit of Sustainable Spirits
“Insightful tour de force… Farrell’s writing is as informative as it is intoxicating” -- Publishers Weekly
As a bartender, Shanna Farrell not only poured spirits, but learned their stories—who made them and how. In A Good Drink, Farrell goes in search of the bars, distillers, and farmers who are driving a transformation to sustainable spirits. She meets mezcaleros in Guadalajara who are working to preserve traditional ways of producing mezcal; a London bar owner who has eliminated individual bottles and ice; and distillers in South Carolina who are bringing a rare variety of corn back from near extinction, among many others.
For readers who have ever wondered who grew the pears that went into their brandy or why their cocktail is an unnatural shade of red, A Good Drink will be an eye-opening tour of the spirits industry. For anyone who cares about the future of the planet, it offers a hopeful vision of change, one pour at a time.
- Copyright year: 2021
Trains, Buses, People, Second Edition
An Opinionated Atlas of US and Canadian Transit
In Trains, Buses, People, Second Edition: An Opinionated Atlas of US and Canadian Transit, Spieler profiles the 49 metropolitan areas in the US and eight metropolitan areas in Canada 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.
Trains, Buses, People, Second Edition will help any citizen, professional, or policymaker with a vested interest evaluate a transit proposal and understand what makes transit effective and how to make it inclusive.
- Copyright year: 2021
The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom
Essential Lessons for Collective Action
In The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom, author Erik Nordman brings to life Ostrom’s brilliant mind. Ostrom’s research proved that people can and do act in collective interest, and her ideas about common resources have played out around the world, from Maine lobster fisheries to taxicab use in Nairobi. Ostrom broke barriers at a time when women were regularly excluded from academia. Her message of shared collective action is more relevant than ever for solving today’s most pressing environmental problems.
- Copyright year: 2021
Curbing Traffic
The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives
Their insights will help decision makers and advocates to better understand and communicate the human impacts of low-car cities: lower anxiety and stress, increased independence, social autonomy, inclusion, and improved mental and physical wellbeing.
Curbing Traffic provides relatable, emotional, and personal reasons why it matters and inspiration for exporting the low-car city.
- Copyright year: 2021
Recast Your City
How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing
Preuss draws from her experience working with local governments, large and small, from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Columbia, Missouri, to Fremont, California. She provides tools, such as her five-step method for recasting your city, that local leaders in government, business, and real estate as well as entrepreneurs and advocates in every community can use.
- Copyright year: 2021
New Mobilities
Smart Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies
Public policies around New Mobilities can either help create heaven, a well-planned transportation system that uses new technologies intelligently, or hell, a poorly planned transportation system that is overwhelmed by conflicting and costly, unhealthy, and inequitable modes. His expert analysis will help planners, local policymakers, and concerned citizens to make informed choices about the New Mobility revolution.
- Copyright year: 2021
The Economics of Sustainable Food
Smart Policies for Health and the Planet
The Economics of Sustainable Food details the true cost of food for people and the planet. It illustrates how to transform our broken system, alleviating its severe financial and human burden. The key is smart macroeconomic policy that moves us toward methods that protect the environment like regenerative land and sea farming, low-impact urban farming, and alternative protein farming, and toward healthy diets. The book’s multidisciplinary team of authors lay out detailed fiscal and trade policies, as well as structural reforms, to achieve those goals.
- Copyright year: 2021
Schools That Heal
Design with Mental Health in Mind
- Copyright year: 2021
Overtourism
Lessons for a Better Future
Overtourism: Lessons for a Better Future charts a path toward tourism that is truly sustainable, focusing on the triple bottom line of people, planet, and prosperity. This practical book examines the causes and effects of overtourism before turning to emerging management strategies. Visitor education, traffic planning, and redirection to lesser known sites are among the measures that can protect the economic benefit of tourism without overwhelming local communities.
As tourism revives around the world, these innovations will guide government agencies, parks officials, site managers, civic groups, environmental NGOs, tourism operators, and others with a stake in protecting our most iconic places.
- Copyright year: 2021
A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation
Uniting Design, Economics, and Policy
- Copyright year: 2021
Getting to the Heart of Science Communication
A Guide to Effective Engagement
In Getting to the Heart of Science Communication, Faith Kearns has penned a succinct guide for navigating the human relationships critical to the success of practice-based science. This meticulously researched volume takes science communication to the next level, helping scientists to see the value of listening as well as talking, understanding power dynamics in relationships, and addressing the roles of trauma, loss, grief, and healing.
- Copyright year: 2021
Building Community Food Webs
Network-building takes a variety of forms and arises out of multiple activities. Farmers and researchers may convene to improve farming practices collaboratively. Food banks engage their clients to challenge the root causes of poverty. Municipalities invest large sums to protect farmland from development.
Building Community Food Webs captures the essence of these efforts, and offers pragmatic insights for community food leaders anywhere.
- Copyright year: 2021
Flames of Extinction
The Race to Save Australia's Threatened Wildlife
- Copyright year: 2021
Rewilding Agricultural Landscapes
A California Study in Rebalancing the Needs of People and Nature
This accessibly written, groundbreaking contributed volume is the first to examine in detail what it would take to retire eligible farmland and restore functioning natural ecosystems. The lessons in Rewilding Agricultural Landscapes will be useful to conservation leaders, policymakers, groundwater agencies, and water managers looking for inspiration and practical advice for solving the complicated issues of agricultural sustainability and water management.
- Copyright year: 2021
Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries
New Tools to End Hunger
- Copyright year: 2021
The Monsanto Papers
Deadly Secrets, Corporate Corruption, and One Man’s Search for Justice
- Copyright year: 2021
Gray to Green Communities
A Call to Action on the Housing and Climate Crises
Bourland draws from her experience leading the Green Communities Program at Enterprise Community Partners, which resulted in the first standard for green affordable housing.
The book opens with the potential of green affordable housing, followed by the problems that it is helping to solve, challenges in the approach that need to be overcome, and recommendations for the future of green affordable housing. Gray to Green Communities brings together stories from the people and projects of the Green Communities’ program.
Gray to Green Communities will empower and inspire anyone interested in the future of housing and our planet.
- Copyright year: 2020
Revolutionary Power
An Activist's Guide to the Energy Transition
Baker provides a playbook for the energy transformation complete with a step-by-step analysis of the key energy policy areas that are ripe for intervention. She tells the stories of those who are working to be architects of a more just system and draws from her own experience as an energy-justice advocate, a lawyer, and a queer woman of color.
Revolutionary Power is the guide to a just energy transformation.
- Copyright year: 2020
Leadership for Sustainability
Strategies for Tackling Wicked Problems
Leadership for Sustainability gives readers perspective and skills for promoting creative and collaborative solutions. Blending systems thinking approaches with leadership techniques, it offers dozens of strategies and specific practices, illustrated by inspiring case studies. Readers will come away with a holistic understanding of how to lead from where they are by applying leadership principles and practices to a wide range of wicked situations.
- Copyright year: 2020