Out of the earth : civilization and the life of the soil / Daniel J. Hillel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hillel, Daniel.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Soils.

Soil and civilization.

Water and civilization.

Water-supply.

Agriculture.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Mitchell, Joseph, 1908-1996 (stamp) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

x, 321 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Free Press ; Toronto : Collier Macmillan Canada ; New York : Maxwell Macmillan International, [1991]

Contents:

Prologue

Man's role on God's earth

The fertile substrate

The vital fluid

The dynamic cycle

The primary producers

The tenuous balance

Human origins

The agricultural transformations

Early farming in the Near East

Silt and salt in Mesopotamia

The gifts of the Nile

Husbandry of the rain-fed uplands

The desert rejoiced

Tapping the underground waters

Farming the wetlands of Mesoamerica

The advent of chemical fertilizers

Saline seeps in Australia and North America

The promise and peril of irrigation

Accelerated erosion

The "sorrow of China"

Deforesting the earth

Man-made deserts

The plight of Africa

Endangered wetlands

Sweet water and bitter

Water management in Israel

Abusing the living filter

A global accounting

A case for conditional optimism.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-310) and index.

Association of American Publishers PROSE Award, 1991.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has press release for book laid in at front.

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has stamp "Joseph Mitchell His Book The New Yorker ... New York City" on front flyleaf.

ISBN:

0029150604

9780029150603

OCLC:

21764272