Overview

Warren Dean chronicles the chaotic path to what could be one of the greatest natural disasters of modern times: the disappearance of the Atlantic Forest. A quarter the size of the Amazon Forest, and the most densely populated region in Brazil, the Atlantic Forest is now the most endangered in the world. It contains a great diversity of life forms, some of them found nowhere else, as well as the country's largest cities, plantations, mines, and industries. Continual clearing is ravaging most of the forested remnants. Dean opens his story with the hunter-gatherers of twelve thousand years ago and takes it up to the 1990s-through the invasion of Europeans in the sixteenth century; the ensuing devastation wrought by such developments as gold and diamond mining, slash-and-burn farming, coffee planting, and industrialization; and the desperate battles between conservationists and developers in the late twentieth century. Based on a great range of documentary and scientific resources,With Broadax and Firebrand is an enormously ambitious book. More than a history of a tropical forest, or of the relationship between forest and humans, it is also a history of Brazil told from an environmental perspective. Dean writes passionately and movingly, in the fierce hope that the story of the Atlantic Forest will serve as a warning of the terrible costs of destroying its great neighbor to the west, the Amazon Forest.

Full Product Details

Author:   Warren Dean ,  Stuart B. Schwartz
Publisher:   University of California Press
Imprint:   University of California Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.726kg
ISBN:  

9780520208865

ISBN 10:   0520208862
Pages:   504
Publication Date:   10 April 1997
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

List of Maps Foreword by Stuart B. Schwartz Acknowledgments 1 THE FOREST EVOLVES 2 HUMANS INVADE: THE FIRST WAVE 3 HUMANS INVADE: THE SECOND WAVE 4 ESTRANGEMENT: DEPOPULATION AND THE REGROWN FOREST 5 GOLD AND DIAMONDS, ANTS AND CATTLE 6 SCIENCE DISCOVERS THE FOREST 7 THE FOREST UNDER BRAZILIAN RULE 8 COFFEE DISPOSSESSES THE FOREST 9 INSTRUMENTS OF DEVASTATION 10 SPECULATION AND CONSERVATION 11 INDUSTRIAL NOMADISM, PREDATORY INDUSTRIALISM 12 THE DEVELOPMENT IMPERATIVE 13 UNSUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTS 14 GETTING IT OFF THE PAPER 15 THE VALUE OF BARE GROUND Notes Pronouncing Glossary Index

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Author Information

Warren Dean (1932-1994) was Professor of History at New York University. His books includeThe Industrialization of Sao Paulo (1969), Rio Claro: A Brazilian Plantation System (1976), and The Struggle for Rubber in Brazil (1987). Stuart B. Schwartz is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota.

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