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Globally, the construction and maintenance of residential buildings account for a staggering portion of carbon emissions. In this timely and fascinating work, architect and urban-planning scholar Stefan Al deftly weaves together archaeology, engineering, social history, and environmental science to explain how our homes have developed through the ages and in turn shaped civilization and the planet itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom tiny pit-houses in the Levant and Mesoamerica thousands of years ago to soaring skyscrapers in Dubai, New York, and Shanghai today, \u003cem\u003eDwelling on Earth\u003c\/em\u003e takes readers on a swift and absorbing tour of the evolution of human habitation. Whisking readers from ancient Pompeii to contemporary Hong Kong, industrial-age Liverpool to postwar Levittown, Al shows how our choices in housing have both reflected and affected ideas about gender roles, privacy, and comfort. Discover how seemingly mundane elements--like door-knockers and corridors--have altered everyday interactions, and how material choices have remade the planet's surface. He also confronts the darker side of domesticity, exposing the unintended consequences of our architectural choices across millennia, including smoke-filled Neolithic dwellings, deadly fires in crowded Roman apartment buildings, and worsening social isolation in car-dependent suburbs. Finally, he examines the myths and reality of future housing, including 3D-printed homes and space architecture built by robots.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing from personal experiences across global cities and professional insights, Al illuminates how our choices in housing continue to influence everything from social relationships to climate change, ultimately arguing that understanding this rich history is crucial for building a more sustainable future. With billions more people needing housing in the coming decades, \u003cem\u003eDwelling on Earth\u003c\/em\u003e reveals how we might transform humanity's defining challenge into our greatest opportunity.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"W W NORTON \u0026 CO","offers":[{"title":"New","offer_id":52605231104290,"sku":"9781324065722-new","price":25.12,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0893\/4755\/5618\/files\/9781324065722.jpg?v=1790036572"},{"product_id":"muqaddimah-introduction-history-abridged-edition-9780691166285-new","title":"The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History - Abridged Edition","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Muqaddimah\u003c\/i\u003e, often translated as \"Introduction\" or \"Prolegomenon,\" is the most important Islamic history of the premodern world. 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Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future.\u003cbr\u003e The fiber-optic cables that weave the World Wide Web, the copper veins of our electric grid, the silicon chips and lithium batteries that power our phones and cars: though it can feel like we now live in a weightless world of information--what Ed Conway calls \"the ethereal world\"--our twenty-first-century lives are still very much rooted in the material.\u003cbr\u003e In fact, we dug more stuff out of the earth in 2017 than in all of human history before 1950. For every ton of fossil fuels, we extract six tons of other materials, from sand to stone to wood tometal. And in \u003ci\u003eMaterial World\u003c\/i\u003e, Conway embarks on an epic journey across continents, cultures and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth--traveling from the sweltering depths ofthe deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e Material World\u003c\/i\u003e is a celebration of the humans and the human networks, the miraculous processes and the little-known companies, that combine to turn raw materials into things of wonder. 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