The Carleton Library Series makes available once again Inventing Canada, Suzanne Zeller's classic history of science, land, and nation in Victorian Canada. Zeller argues that the middle decades of the nineteenth century that saw the British North American colonies attempting to establish a transcontinental nation also witnessed the rise of an analytical tradition in science that challenged older conceptions of humanity's relationship with nature and the land. Zeller taps a wide range of archival and published sources to document the prominent place of Victorian science in British North American thought and society. Her focus on the creative functions of Victorian geological, geophysical, and botanical sciences highlights the formation of a Canadian community of scientists, politicians, educators, journalists, businessmen, and others who promoted public support of scientific activities and institutions. By moving beyond the eighteenth-century mechanical ideals that had forged the United States, they reassessed the land and its possibilities to redefine the transcontinental future of a northern variant of the British nation. Inventing Canada is a must-read for anyone interested in the scientific background of Canada's history, including its environmental history.

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the North West and Hudson�s Bay companies extended their operations beyond the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. There they encountered a mild and forgiving climate and abundant natural resources and, with the aid of Native traders, branched out into farming, fishing, logging, and mining. Following its merger with the North West Company in 1821, the Hudson�s Bay Company set up its headquarters at Fort Vancouver on the lower Columbia River. From there, the company dominated much of the non-Native economy, sending out goods to markets in Hawaii, Sitka, and San Francisco. Trading Beyond the Mountains looks at the years of exploration between 1793 and 1843 leading to the commercial development of the Pacific coast and the Cordilleran interior of western North America. Mackie examines the first stages of economic diversification in this fur trade region and its transformation into a dynamic and distinctive regional economy. He also documents the Hudson�s Bay Company�s employment of Native slaves and labourers in the North West coast region.

A Financial Times Summer Book of 2019 Seasoned adventurer Alastair Humphreys pushes himself to his very limits – busking his way across Spain with a violin he can barely play.

Carl Linnaeus - Joseph Banks - Francis Masson - Carl Peter Thunberg - David Douglas - William Lobb - Thomas Lobb - Robert Fortune - Marianne North - Richard Spruce - Joseph Dalton Hooker.

"Scots trappers dominated the fur trade, often proving more loyal to clan than to trading company or nation. Relying on centuries of experience raising livestock for British markets, Scottish investors and managers became highly visible in the post-Civil War western cattle industry with thriving outfits such as the Swan Land and Cattle Company in Wyoming. They introduced new breeds to western ranching, such as the Aberdeen Angus, that remain popular today. Similarly, Scots herders dominated the western sheep industry, running herds of over 100,000 animals. Andrew Little's sheep ranch in Idaho was so famous that a letter addressed simply "Andy Little, USA" found its intended recipient.

From a mesmerizing storyteller, the gripping search for a missing World War II crew, their bomber plane, and their legacy. In the fall of 1944, a massive American bomber carrying eleven men vanished over the Pacific islands of Palau, leaving a trail of mysteries. According to mission reports from the Army Air Forces, the plane crashed in shallow water—but when investigators went to find it, the wreckage wasn’t there. Witnesses saw the crew parachute to safety, yet the airmen were never seen again. Some of their relatives whispered that they had returned to the United States in secret and lived in hiding. But they never explained why. For sixty years, the U.S. government, the children of the missing airmen, and a maverick team of scientists and scuba divers searched the islands for clues. With every clue they found, the mystery only deepened. Now, in a spellbinding narrative, Wil S. Hylton weaves together the true story of the missing men, their final mission, the families they left behind, and the real reason their disappearance remained shrouded in secrecy for so long. This is a story of love, loss, sacrifice, and faith—of the undying hope among the families of the missing, and the relentless determination of scientists, explorers, archaeologists, and deep-sea divers to solve one of the enduring mysteries of World War II.

Britain’s great cloak of natural forest disappeared mostly in prehistoric times. Over the passage of time and by the industrial revolution, Britain’s economy had become almost entirely dependent on timber imports from abroad. Shipping blockades in the First World War meant a frantic search for woodlands that could be cut down to make vital pit props and sawn wood for wartime construction. After the war, Britain’s tree cover was near to an all-time low. Only since 1919 have practical measures been taken to reverse the long history of forest decline, and a hundred years of tree planting has seen the forest cover of Britain more than double.Today, tree planting in Britain is motivated more by environmental and social concerns than purely timber production. In Woods and People, David Foot reveals the story of twentieth-century forest creation, and the eureka moment in the 1980s that challenged foresters and conservationists to work together on new ideas.

The world is on the verge of receiving new life forms that will profoundly and irrevocably change the global economy: the "gene hunters" who first cloned the gene in 1973 are now not only modifying existing species but also creating new plants and animals. Ready or not for such awesome power, the human race has put itself in a position to govern evolution. What will we do with the abilities we now command? asks this broad and stimulating book on the role of plant material in economic development. Writing in a style that is easily understandable even to those with no background in biotechnology, Calestous Juma begins by showing how the importation of plants strengthened the British Empire and brought the United States to global agricultural superiority. He goes on to explore the current international competition for genetic material and the potential impact of biotechnology on the relationship of the developed and developing world. Juma points out that biotechnology poses real dangers to the third world. Often one of the few exportable resources that a developing country possesses is an unusual or rare crop, but biotechnological techniques make possible the cultivation of many such crops outside their natural habitats, potentially eliminating the need to import the crops from the countries in which they grow indigenously. After discussing the threat of biotechnology, Juma comes full circle and points out that it does not have to be a threat. Actually, tremendous benefits could accrue to the third world from biotechnology--if and only if that new technology is adapted to its needs. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.