A multispecies history of the globalized United States, Bellwether Histories reveals how animals have been ensnared in colonialism, capitalism, and environmental destruction as human decisions created and perpetuated untenable and unequal interspecies relationships. The collection's authors explore how people misunderstood or ignored animal crises precipitated by habitat destruction and population declines, sudden dependence on human aid, shifts from freedom to captivity, or subjection to overextended management systems.Chapters address a range of themes, including the links between antislavery and anti-animal-cruelty advocacy; how cattle, horse, and pig behavior shaped human life and technology; and the politics of caring for and trafficking wild animals. This volume interrogates the history of animal disposability and its ideological twin in US history, human exceptionalism—the anthropocentric myth that people could harm animals without harming themselves.Today's mass extinctions and ecological breakdowns ensure deadly zoonotic pandemics and global warming will harass us far into the future. Bellwether Histories looks back at how animals have been warning us of our collective fate and asks why they were so seldom heard.

This innovative Handbook provides a comprehensive treatment of the complex relationship between inequality and the environment and illustrates the myriad ways in which they intersect. Featuring over 30 contributions from leading experts in the field, it explores the ways in which inequality impacts three of the most pressing contemporary environmental issues: climate change, natural resource extraction, and food insecurity.

Twice declared extinct, North America's most endangered mammal species, the black-footed ferret (BFF), is making a comeback thanks to an evolving conservation regimen at more than thirty reintroduction sites across the continent. Lawrence Lenhart lingers at one such site in his proverbial backyard, the Aubrey Valley in northern Arizona. He clocks hundreds of hours behind the wheel, rolling over ranch ruts as he shines a spotlight over dusky sage steppe in the hopes of catching a fleck of emerald eyeshine.

The beguiling weasel at the center of this book is more than a charismatic minifauna; it is the covert ambassador of a critical ecosystem that has dwindled to 1 percent of its former size. In a landscape menaced by habitat fragmentation, bacterial plague, settler colonialism, and soil death, a ferret must be resilient. Lenhart investigates the human efforts to sustain the species through monitoring, vaccination, captive breeding, and even cloning.

Lenhart balances this lens of environmental witness with personal essaying that captures the parallel story of his wife's pregnancy as he realizes the ferret's conservation story is dramatically synchronized with her trimesters. In preparing to raise a child in the Anthropocene, Lenhart takes stock of his own ecosystem and finds something is amiss. Through an ethic of "deeper ecology," Lenhart must hone his ecological interest in the black-footed ferret to assure it isn't overshadowed by his own paternal interests.

There is significant debate regarding the quality of the national health system of the United States relative to those of other countries. The U.S. healthcare system has been heavily criticized as a highly inefficient, disorganized, fragmented, and under-resourced primary care system that contributes to high healthcare costs, high rates of uninsured individuals, and a number of health problems in comparison to the situation in other Western nations. Further, the United States is currently the only wealthy industrialized country that has not achieved universal health coverage. Together, these reasons help explain why important health indicators have been deteriorating recently. Assessing the Need for a Comprehensive National Health System in the United States seeks to thoroughly examine several key aspects related to the U.S. health system and presents different perspectives, provides facts and data-based assessment, and offers alternative strategies, policies, and realistic options towards a better and healthier U.S. society. Covering key topics such as telehealth, social justice, and healthcare workers, this reference work is ideal for health professionals, nurses, government officials, policymakers, researchers, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.

The development of health across an individual’s life depends on many factors, but social determinants play a vital role. This timely Handbook simultaneously uses theoretical, descriptive, explanatory and policy approaches to explore health inequalities related to income, education, occupational status, social capital, and also biological and genetic factors.

There are various factors that influence the quality and quantity of agricultural products; among them, weather conditions play the most significant role in agriculture. More reliable weather forecasting enables farmers to make important planting and harvesting decisions that can enhance agricultural yield. Thus, there is a dire need to combine all available modern technologies and agricultural science for economic and environmentally sustainable crop production. In this direction, artificial intelligence (AI) serves as a budding solution in the domain of agriculture practices. Artificial Intelligence Tools and Technologies for Smart Farming and Agriculture Practices discusses various tools and technologies that can be used in smart farming and agriculture practice and explores the role of different emerging technologies like the internet of things, big data, machine learning, deep learning, and AI from agricultural prospects. Covering key topics such as farming, pests, soil, and weeds, this premier reference source is ideal for environmentalists, farmers, agriculturalists, industry professionals, researchers, academicians, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.

In 1583 the Italian botanist and physician Andrea Cesalpino (1524-1603) published De Plantis Libri XVI, made of 16 books (libri), considered to be the first treatise where botany is treated independently from medicine. In so doing, he broke with a long tradition inherited in Western science from Antiquity and perpetuated during the Middle Age through the early Renaissance. De Plantis lays the foundations of scientific systematics through a new focus on plant morphology and natural similarities and became a milestone in the history of Western botany. It is a precious testimony to the evolution of botanical and physiological knowledge in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and illustrates the role of Aristotelian philosophy in 16th-century knowledge. The volume includes an introductory essay about Cesalpino's philosophy and botany, a critical edition of the Latin text, a translation, a commentary, and indexes. It should interest scholars in Renaissance studies, historians, and philosophers of science and medicine, as well as botanists and plant scientists curious about the history of plant sciences.

How can we learn from our mistakes and pave a way for sustainable, nutritious, local meat?
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerabilities of our globalized food system and highlighted the desperate need for local and regional supplies of healthy meat. We must replace corn-based feedlots, which are responsible for significant climate emissions, nitrogen pollution, and animal suffering. Grass-Fed Beef for a Post-Pandemic World outlines a hopeful path out of our broken food system via regional networks of regeneratively produced meat.

Since its emergence, the COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the greatest global crises in perhaps a century and led to unimaginable human suffering. Although much coverage has been dedicated to exploring the different impacts of the crisis, such as its social, political, and economic consequences, comparatively little attention has been directed to examining the particular impact of the pandemic on women and girls. Past crises and outbreaks have powerfully demonstrated that men and women are differently affected, and preexisting inequalities and challenges for women and girls are often exacerbated. Comprising a rich collection of rigorous analyses that touch upon an extensive number of topics and an array of countries, this edited collection critically interrogates how the COVID-19 crisis has impacted women and girls around the world. With high-quality contributions from international scholars and experts from numerous fields and disciplines, and containing research based on a variety of methodologies and approaches, the present volume provides a wide-ranging, evidence-based exploration and nuanced perspective on this issue.

From the 16th century to the present, this work traces the interactions of disease and politics in the United States. Major pandemics, local outbreaks, and even presidential illnesses are all examined to see how political parties have seized upon their origins, spread, and treatment to promote their own ideologies. Immigration, civil rights, gender, war, economics, public health, modernization, and elections are all discussed in relation to the outbreaks. The book demonstrates how disease helped secure independence, led to the writing of the Constitution, brought America into the War of 1812 and the Spanish-American War, led to limits on immigration, kept the United States out of the League of Nations, led to women voting, produced two political parties--and more.