Oh, a post on Saturday. This is pretty rare but I wanted to write on the various books that I have to read for my personal needs and wants. I will only talk about the books that are related to sustainable development and energy as the other are not really interesting for the sake of this blog.
The first one is a book that I bought last year when I was finishing my studies in Nantes. “Après nous le déluge ?” (which could be translated by “After us the deluge ?”) is a book written by the Professor emeritus Mr. Jean-Marie Pelt and Mr. Gilles-Eric Séralini. On a personal note, Mr. Pelt taught my mom, Biology in Nancy, alongside with many other students. This is why this man is still quite talked about in my family. He is also the president of the European Institute of Ecology.
The book’s subject is off course very serious as it is handling the question of biodiversity and simply life as we know it on this planet. As you can surely imagine, I am waiting forward to reading this book as it sure is a fascinating one. Afterwards, I still be able to read Mr. Pelt’s new book called “C’est vert et ça marche” (It’s green and it works). The mere title is thrilling my mind.
Buy “Après nous le déluge ?” at Amazon.fr
Buy “C’est vert et ça marche” at Amazon.fr
Mr. Jean-Marie Pelt’s homepage
The second book I would like to read in the near and foreseeable future is “Collapse, How societies choose to fail or succeed” by Jared Diamond. This book received warm reviews worldwide. Mr. Diamond is a very busy man as he is Professor of Geography and has many other sources of interest including biology, physiology and many other scientific subjects… His previous book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel” won a Pulitzer Price.
The purpose of the book we are interested in today is as serious as Mr. Pelt’s one . Here is a quote from the book that will convince you in a blink of an eye :
“In the present book focusing on collapses rather than buildups, I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other “input” variables postulated to influence a society’s stability. The “output” variables that I examine are collapse or survival, and form of the collapse if collapse does occur. By relating output variables to input variables, I aim to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses.”
Page 18 of “Collapse“.
Well, in plain English these pages are about the various societies’ collapses that History witnessed, and the reasons of such collapses. A very interesting book that my grand-parents offered me for this Christmas. I take the opportunity here to heartily thank them.
Buy the French version of this book at Amazon.fr | Amazon.com
Mr. Diamond’s homepages at the Lavin Agency | at the UCLA Department of Geography.
Finally, there are several other books on sustainable development-related topics that I would like to read. These will be the subject of another article here. (Perhaps the title will be “Books that I would like to read one day”)
Needless to say that I will comment all these books here when I’ll have finished reading them. So stay tuned…
Ah, Mr Pelt… His books and opinions have been highly regarded in my family for 20 years, especially by my father… but I never read them myself
Thanks for your post. You decided me and I will borrow one of Mr Pelt’s books next weekend.
oh another fan of Mr. Pelt ! 😀
On my side, as soon as I have finished the book I am reading, I finish “après nous le déluge” and will post an article on it.
I begun reading it and so far it is great to understand how Earth is fragile, very fragile.
Once you read it, if you want to exchange comments on it, I will gladly share impressions…