E. N. Anderson is Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, at the University of California, Riverside. He has done research on ethnobiology, cultural ecology, political ecology and medical anthropology in several areas, especially Hong Kong, British Columbia, California and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. His books include The Food of China (Yale University Press, 1988), Ecologies of the Heart (Oxford University Press, 1996), Political Ecology of a Yucatec Maya Community (University Press of Arizona Press, 2005) and The Pursuit of Ecotopia (Praeger, 2010). In 2013 he received the Distinguished Ethnobiology Award from the Society for Ethnobiology.

• Preface and Acknowledgments, Part I Representation, Part II Areas: Particular Cultures, Part III Broader Regions, References, Index, About the Author

"Anderson is deeply concerned with inadequate responses to ongoing global environmental degradation. Accordingly, he offers cases of traditional societies that survived over long time periods without destroying their environments. His focus is on ways humans think about plants, animals, and landscapes because of his conviction that stories about them are what make us care about their continued existence, rather than statistics about their plight. The goal is to learn lessons applicable for contemporary problems by observing ways that traditional people developed strategies to sustain environmental services and found ways to motivate others to do the same."— Susan Stevens Hummel, Agric Hum Values