Synopses & Reviews
For thousands of years, we have dreamed of going back to a time, to a place--Eden, Arcadia, the Golden Age--to a paradise that we ourselves have never known. The Ecology of Eden is at once an inquiry into this dream and a startling new vision of humankind's role in nature.
Images of paradise arise from the down-to-earth facts of our lives--of our relationship with land, water, air, other creatures, and other people. In turn, these images of paradise reshape our lives. Tracing this interplay, Eisenberg recasts Western history as a tragicomedy whose heroes--Gilgamesh and Henry Ford, Virgil and Louis XIV, Lorenzo the Magnificent and Frank Lloyd Wright--struggle to regain a paradise lost. With elegance and refreshing wit, he shows how dreams of an earthly paradise both reflect and disguise our actual dealings with nature.
He illustrates, too, the shifting nature of nature itself: how alliances of species--most recently, alliances led by humankind--have continually remade the planet. Ranging gracefully from myth to molecular biology, from the Bible to urban studies, from garden lore to evolution, Eisenberg explores the actual circumstances of our exile from Eden.
The Ecology of Eden sheds a bold new light on present-day environmental problems, showing how we can make peace with our exile not by going back but by looking forward: by learning from nature itself--with, perhaps, some help from Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker--how humans and nature can make tough, supple music together.
The profundity of this book's vision is made vivid by the richness of its scholarship, the surprise of its associations, the authority of its engaging voice. Weaving humor with urgency, compassion with insight, Eisenberg succeeds in the rarest of achievements: allowing us to see the world with fresh eyes.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 559-593) and index.
About the Author
Evan Eisenberg's first book, The Recording Angel, a pathbreaking study of the cultural impact of recorded music, has been translated into French, German, and Italian. His writings on nature, culture, and technology have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Village Voice, CoEvolution Quarterly, and other periodicals. He has been a music columnist for The Nation, a synagogue cantor, and a gardener for the New York City Parks Department. Born in New York City, Eisenberg studied philosophy and classics at Harvard and Princeton, and biology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He lives in rural western Massachusetts with his wife, a landscape architect and regional planner, and their daughter.