Great Lakes: Fact or Fake?
Everybody who looks at the Great Lakes knows they’re big, but why are they so Great? This book explores just that question. From sea serpents to sunken ships, from lonely lighthouses to fish on Prozac, Great Lakes: Fact or Fake? engages the reader in a quest to discover what’s truly beneath the surface and features evocative illustrations by Heather Lee Shaw that bring the subject to life.
Find out more here. Order on Amazon here.
Half Wild: People, Dogs and Environmental Policy
Humans and canines have been bound for centuries, straddling a boundary that allows us to live together within and across our species. In this empathetic volume, author Dave Dempsey explores this life on the border, the overlapping planes between humans and the nonhuman world that lead to both magnificent creation and appalling destruction. Dempsey’s forty-year career as an environmentalist gives this book a nuanced context that could only be afforded by someone who has lived a half-wild existence himself, both defending and expanding the range of protections afforded to other species.
Gentle, profound. In Half Wild, we walk with Dave Dempsey and his beloved canine kin, through their joys exploring mysterious lands and waters of the Great Lakes, and through decades of environmental challenges and advocacy. Part memoir, part environmental studies, part profiles in courage and commitment, this volume by one of our most acclaimed Great Lakes advocates interweaves the lessons of history with deeper lessons of the heart.
—Lynne Heasley, author of The Accidental Reef and Other Ecological Odysseys in the Great Lakes
Find out more here. Order here. Order an audiobook version, narrated by Melissa Ingells, here or at many other sites offering audiobooks.
Great Lakes for Sale
The Great Lakes are the largest system of freshwater on the planet – and in an area of extreme drought, massive forest fires and shrinking water supplies in the West, they are also one of the fattest targets for exploitation on the continent. At the same time, Wall Street speculators are creating markets in water that could commercialize freshwaters like the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes are in danger of becoming privately exploited, and their management turned over to those who have other priorities than stewardship.
What can the people of the Great Lakes do about this? In Great Lakes for Sale, Dave Dempsey offers surprising, even controversial ideas. They include devising plans for limited sharing of the Great Lakes to forestall humanitarian disasters, and going beyond the existing, flawed Great Lakes Compact to attack water privatization. If the Great Lakes are to remain great, great new thinking and action will be required.
Last Summer on Lake Huron
The fifth largest lake in the world is often called the forgotten lake. But Huron is worth knowing. In this journal of a summer on its shores, the author explores its physical and spiritual dimensions, and comes to know it as a place worth caring — and fighting — for.
The Heart of the Lakes: Freshwater in the Past, Present and Future of Southeast Michigan
The water corridor that defines southeast Michigan sits at the heart of the world’s largest freshwater ecosystem, the Great Lakes. Over forty-three trillion gallons of water a year flow through the Detroit River, providing a natural conduit for everything from fish migration to the movement of cargo-bearing one thousand–foot freighters, and a defining sense of place. But in both government policies and individual practices, the freshwater at the heart of the lakes was long neglected and sometimes abused. Today southeast Michigan enjoys an opportunity to learn from that history and put freshwater at the center of a prosperous and sustainable future. Joining this journey downriver in place and time, from Port Huron to Monroe, from the 1600s to the present, provides insight and hope for the region’s water-based renaissance.
For a complete list of Dave’s books and ordering information, click here.