
With Broadax and Firebrand by Warren Dean
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.
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.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780520208865 |
| ISBN 10 | 0520208862 |
| Title | With Broadax and Firebrand |
| Author | Warren Dean |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | University of California Press |
| Year published | 1997-04-10 |
| Number of pages | 504 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |