At the close of the UN Summit on Climate Change, diplomats may have left Copenhagen frustrated by the slow pace of progress, but as Yale professor of environmental policy, risk analysis, and political science John Wargo writes in his new book, Green Intelligence, the keys to environmental safety often begin with the actions we take in our own homes.

As Wargo explains in this interview with WNYC's Leonard Lopate, potentially harmful man-made chemicals surround us, not only when we step out of doors, but often also inside our own homes. Who hasn't sprayed an aerosol can inside or called an exterminator to control indoor pests? Yet, in doing so, we are often inviting unknown toxins quite literally into our own homes. Plastics, though now more widely understood as a potential chemical danger, seem particularly difficult to avoid. Take, for instance, Wargo's near-impossible challenge to his students to avoid plastics for a full semester:

For more about Wargo's research and Green Intelligence, be sure to check out this excellent video produced by Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

The Schott's Vocab blog on the New York Times website has posted a fascinating interview with Claude Hagège, author of On the Death and Life of Languages, which YUP recently published in a new English translation.

When asked about languages challenging English's global dominance, Hagège makes two particularly fascinating points about the ways in which languages spread and retain their influence over time:

Hindi (the most spoken language in India) and Mandarin Chinese might replace English as dominant languages some day. But two reasons at least lead one to think that the process could be long:

(i) Hindi is not widespread outside Asia, and there is presently no special effort to promote it worldwide. As for Mandarin Chinese, it is true that a great number of Confucius Institutes are scheduled to be built by China in various countries, but we cannot know today the result of this decision;

(ii) The publications (books, internet, etc.) in English cover all domains of knowledge, let alone the presence of English in all other activities. These traces of the worldwide spread of English will not disappear.

To learn more about languages both dominant and endangered, check out this BBC interview with Hagège, and be sure to look out for David Crystal's Little Book of Language, which publishes this spring.

Since Yale University Press acquired the esteemed Anchor Bible series in 2007, our friends at Logos Bible Software have been hard at work keeping the series up-to-date for the 21st-century reader.

Having already integrated the 84-volume Anchor Yale Bible and its accompanying 6-volume Dictionary into their leading biblical software, the Logos team has recently moved on to the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library, the third major component of the series. Reference Library titles, including John P. Meier's acclaimed A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus series and Susan R. Garrett's No Ordinary Angel, are designed both to supplement the series' main texts as well as appeal to the general religious reader.

If you'd like to learn more about the Logos version of the Anchor Yale Bible, be sure to check out the video below and read more at the Logos blog.

Technology and writing have been inextricably linked since the days of the scribes; however, during the past year, the connections appeared to become more and more explicit. Plenty of ink—both e- and otherwise—was spilled this year over the Kindle, the Nook, and the rise of Twitter in an effort to understand how writing will survive in a digital world. The New Oxford American Dictionary even selected the very Web 2.0 term "unfriend" as its 2009 Word of the Year.

Technology undoubtedly changes the way we write, think, and interact with one another, and in The Best Technology Writing 2009, guest editor Steven Johnson has selected a number of fascinating pieces highlighting those effects. In the video below, the first of a 3-part panel, Johnson mentions a handful—Clive Thompson's piece on "Digital Intimacy" and Nicholas Carr's on Google among them. The discussion also features danah boyd, Berkman Center fellow and Social Media Researcher of Microsoft Research New England; Jack Balkin, Director of the Information Society Project, Yale Law School; and Julian Dibbell, Contributing Editor at Wired and guest editor for The Best Technology Writing 2010 collection.

Submissions are currently being accepted for the 2010 collection, so be sure to nominate your favorite writers on science, engineering, the web, and whatever new new thing the techies dream up next.

Last week's announcement that Dubai World, a corporation owned by the government of the Arab Emirate known for its palm tree-shaped housing developments, would restructure $26 billion in debt sent shockwaves through the financial world. Today, Dubai stocks continued to fall precipitously, indicating that the worst may not yet be over.

In little more than 20 years, Dubai has become an economic juggernaut of the Persian Gulf, positioning itself as a tourist destination and a leader in real estate development and financial services. Even so, most Western readers know relatively little about the machinations of Dubai's rise, let alone what day-to-day existence looks like in a desert country featuring two—two!—indoor skiing facilities.

NPR's Planet Money recently dedicated an entire show to Dubai, focusing mostly on the expatriate experience; however, in his new book, Dubai: Guilded Cage, Syed Ali looks beyond Dubai's glitz and glamor to uncover the untold stories behind the emirate's overhaul. Ali's book, which will be available in April, provides a panorama of Dubai's society including Western ex-pats living the high life abroad, native Emiratis who have benefited from an influx of investment, and workers from the developing world who provide the manual labor and domestic service needed to keep the emirate running, often at great personal cost. It's a nuanced look at a global hotspot—one that may guide our politics and our portfolios for years to come.

Earlier this week, Stephen Colbert tapped Yale professor and YUP author Dan Esty to discuss the latest international hot topic: global warming. As a professor of Environmental Law and Policy with appointments at both the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Esty offered a multi-faceted perspective on climate change leading up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference set to begin on Monday, December 7 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Fans of Esty's book Green to Gold and those unconvinced by the so-called "Climategate" scandal Colbert references at the top of the segment should also look out for Howard Friel's new book The Lomborg Deception, which is the first major response to the work of leading climate-change skeptic Bjørn Lomborg, known for his books The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It. Publishing in February, Friel's book is certain to keep the climate change debate embroiled in controversy long after the conference closes in Copenhagen.

Through his pioneering works on design, abstraction, and color, Joseph Albers influenced generations of modern artists. In 1963, Yale University Press published Albers’s highly influential Interaction of Color, which remains in print in paperback. Now, the Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Interaction of Color: New and Complete Edition, a lavishly produced new edition featuring a full set of 150 color plates alongside Albers’s revolutionary text in two slipcased volumes. With die-cut forms and movable flaps that illustrate Albers's techniques in a hands-on environment, this is without a doubt the most "interactive" edition of the work yet.

For an additional up-close experience with Albers’s artworks, the Museum of Modern Art will host a Josef Albers Color Workshop on December 9 in conjunction with its Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity exhibition, which runs through January 25, 2010. And whether or not you make it to the museum, be sure to check out the exhibition's beautifully designed website.

But to truly give the book its due, we'll need your help. Amazon has set up a poll to let readers separate out the best of the best. Click here to view the voting page and be sure to select Unpacking My Library's unique landscape design when you do. You'll need to sign in with your Amazon customer account, and winners will be announced in late December.

To sweeten the deal just a bit, the first reader to send us a direct message on Facebook or Twitter after voting will receive a free copy of Unpacking My Library. All the more reason to vote early and often!

[UPDATE: We have a free book winner! Thanks for your support, and best of luck in our next giveaway.]

Paul Goldberger more than held his own while discussing Why Architecture Matters with Stephen Colbert last night. The critic kept a cool head and even lent his expert opinion to the host's proposed "half Parthenon, half White House" design for the Colbert estate. In reference to his book, Goldberger also discussed how buildings can make us dream, think, and even cry. Fortunately, during his interview, we mostly just laughed: