Synopses & Reviews
Includes bibliographical references (p. 613-621) and index.
Review
"So vast is the undertaking, so broad the canvas, so great the clusters of words and images, so rapid the shifts from scene to scene, so many the characters who appear in the story, so impressionistic and personal the style, that the reader may very well give up the attempt to set the events cited in a useful historical context. Yet as a provocative and erudite commentary on different ways men have of looking at the natural world, and on the transformation of the landscape in the human imagination, there is much to be learned, and many lucious fruits to be gathered from Schama's tree." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
"Schama has produced an imaginative, provocative, and well-written study of how Western culture has imbued its natural surroundings with history and myth. Focusing on three particular parts of the natural environment, Schama convincingly illustrates how deeply they affect one's consciousness and how that, in turn, has determined what is landscape....His interpretation of Mt. Rushmore as the ultimate symbol of triumph, possession, and imperialism is particularly interesting."M.T. Scholz, Choice
About the Author
Simon Schama is Old Dominion Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the author of
Citizens, Dead Certainties and
An Embarrassment of Riches. Simon Schama lives in New York with his wife and their two children.
From the Hardcover edition.