Overview

A MacArthur Genius and eminent scientist shows how an ordinary mammal manipulated nature to become a technologically sophisticated city-dweller--and why our history points to an optimistic future in the face of environmental crisis

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9781322549767

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Reviews

PRAISE FOR THE BIG RATCHET [A] lucid and intelligent book.... There is something satisfyingly stark and elemental about DeFries' focus on food, which, she notes, is 'our most fundamental connection with nature'. -- Financial Times Engaging and optimistic. -- Wall Street Journal DeFries unpicks the historical patterns to parse the uneasy equation of people and food -- our most powerful link with nature. -- Nature At its heart, The Big Ratchet is a food book, deserving a place on the shelf alongside work by the likes of Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, and Marion Nestle that criticize our modern system of industrial agriculture. -- Johns Hopkins Magazine An admirable history of human ingenuity that does not claim it will overcome such looming crises as overpopulation and global warming. -- Kirkus Reviews DeFries places her faith in human creativity as a primary means to our survival, an appealing point of view for the hopeful but concerned reader. -- PublishersWeekly Timely... Clearly demonstrates the role of science in converting calamities into opportunities. The Big Ratchet provides a message of hope in the midst of the sea of despair we see in the areas of sustainable development and environmental protection. Ruth DeFries has rendered an invaluable service. --M. S. Swaminathan, Founder and Chairman, M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation A page turner and an eye opener, clearly written and well told. If you are alive today, especially if you live in a city, this is the story of how you got here and why you eat what you eat. Defries deftly guides us through our species' unending quest to squeeze more food out of the earth, introducing us along the way to buffalo bone pickers, ancient plant breeders, guano wars, the extinction of the Rocky Mountain Locust, medieval human poop tradesmen, Arctic doomsday seed vaults and the Nobel Prizes awarded to the inventors of DDT and trans fats. A fascinating history of human innovation. --Emma Marris, author of Rambunctious Garden Is there a tale more astonishing and improbable than the human story? Lurching between triumph and catastrophe, humankind has transformed itself from a run-of-the-mill forager on the African savanna into a species that dominates every corner of the planet. Now, as our numbers surpass 7 billion, Ruth DeFries shows how our remarkable past can serve as a guide to thinking about our uncertain future. Neither a hymn to optimism nor an invocation of catastrophe, The Big Ratchet is an essential account of how we got to be where we are. --Charles C. Mann, author of 1491 [The Big Ratchet] survey[s] the technological innovations that transformed humans from nomadic hunter-gatherers threatened with starvation into farmers and then into urban-dwelling specialists whose sustenance is usually produced far away by a relative few.... DeFries sums up the cycle in the pithy catchphrase 'ratchet, hatchet, pivot.' -- Science News

Author Information

Ruth DeFries is Denning Family Professor of Sustainable Development and Chair of the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University. A recipient of the MacArthur Genius Fellowship, she lives in New York City.

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