Sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose, humans have transported plants and animals to new habitats around the world. Arriving in ever-increasing numbers to American soil, recent invaders have competed with, preyed on, hybridized with, and carried diseases to native species, transforming our ecosystems and creating anxiety among environmentalists and the general public. But is American anxiety over this crisis of ecological identity a recent phenomenon? Charting shifting attitudes to alien species since the 1850s, Peter Coates brings to light the rich cultural and historical aspects of...

Nature is a deceptively simple and ahistorical term, suggesting intrinsic, unchanging reality. Yet nature has a history too, both in terms of human attitudes and human impacts. This text outlines the major understandings of nature in the western world since classical times, from nature as higher authority to its more recent meaning of threatened physical space and life forms. It places the history of attitudes to nature within the story of human-induced changes in the material environment. A distinctive unifying theme is Coates's interest in how green writers over the last thirty years have...

Authored by two highly respected experts in this specialist area, The Fundamentals of Radiation Thermometers is an essential resource for anyone intending to measure the temperature of an object using the radiated energy from that object. This readable, user-friendly book gives important background knowledge for anyone working in the field of non-contact thermometry.

The book begins with an accessible account of how temperature scales are set up and defined, and explores the historic development of temperature scales and Planck s radiation law. Through explaining the...

The influence of human economies and cultures on ecosystems is particularly striking in the new worlds into which Europeans have expanded over the past five hundred years. Using a comparative and multidisciplinary approach, Beinart and Coates examine this neglected aspect of the history of settler incursion and dominance in two frontier nations, the USA and South Africa. They also seek to explain change in indigenous ideas and practices towards the environment, and discuss the rise of popular environmentalism up to the present day.