Man and Nature

Rivers celebrated in history have dwindled to brooklets; their dry beds lie waiting for winter torrents. How did lands once rich enough to sustain empires become so barren?

In 1864, George P. Marsh looked from the former provinces of Rome to the wider Old World and found a landscape transformed: vanished forests, washed-away soil, failed canals and silted harbors. He argues that human choices—not nature alone—helped turn fertile, populous regions into places scarcely able to support their inhabitants. The warning is measured but grave: the same forces that stripped those lands could reshape others, while careful action might restore what has been damaged. How much of the earth’s decline is our doing—and what would it take to make the land flourish again?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.