Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
An exploration of the ground beneath our feet. Is there an untrodden foot of ground left? That's Paul Bogard's mission in THE GROUND BENEATH US, and early on his quest he realizes something astounding: when we step outside and look down, most of us in the industrialized world see an unnatural surface, likely some version of asphalt or concrete. In fact, we have some 61,000 square miles of paved ground in the United States, an amount that together would be larger than any state east of the Mississippi.
Increasingly we live separated from the natural ground itself, concealing from us our profound relationship to the source not only of our food, water, and energy, but to the many majestic, poetic, and yes, very basic, ways the ground sustains our lives. In short, the ground holds the facts that define us, but most of us know almost nothing of the world beneath our feet. Paul Bogard tells these stories--of subsurface technologies like sewers to idyllic subterranean Edens, and from what we grow in the ground to how we bury our dead in it--beautifully, in the vein of Rebecca Solnit, Andrea Wulf, and Helen MacDonald.
Synopsis
Our most compelling resource just might be the ground beneath our feet.
When a teaspoon of soil contains millions of species, and when we pave over the earth on a daily basis, what does that mean for our future? What is the risk to our food supply, the planet's wildlife, the soil on which every life-form depends? How much undeveloped, untrodden ground do we even have left?
Paul Bogard set out to answer these questions in The Ground Beneath Us, and what he discovered is astounding.
From New York (where more than 118,000,000 tons of human development rest on top of Manhattan Island) to Mexico City (which sinks inches each year into the Aztec ruins beneath it), Bogard shows us the weight of our cities' footprints. And as we see hallowed ground coughing up bullets at a Civil War battlefield; long-hidden remains emerging from below the sites of concentration camps; the dangerous, alluring power of fracking; the fragility of the giant redwoods, our planet's oldest living things; the surprises hidden under a Major League ballpark's grass; and the sublime beauty of our few remaining wildest places, one truth becomes blazingly clear: The ground is the easiest resource to forget, and the last we should.
Bogard's The Ground Beneath Us is deeply transporting reading that introduces farmers, geologists, ecologists, cartographers, and others in a quest to understand the importance of something too many of us take for granted: dirt. From growth and life to death and loss, and from the subsurface technologies that run our cities to the dwindling number of idyllic Edens that remain, this is the fascinating story of the ground beneath our feet.
Synopsis
Our most compelling resource just might be the ground beneath our feet.
Finalist for the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award
When a teaspoon of soil contains millions of species, and when we pave over the earth on a daily basis, what does that mean for our future? What is the risk to our food supply, the planet's wildlife, the soil on which every life-form depends? How much undeveloped, untrodden ground do we even have left?
Paul Bogard set out to answer these questions in The Ground Beneath Us, and what he discovered is astounding.
From New York (where more than 118,000,000 tons of human development rest on top of Manhattan Island) to Mexico City (which sinks inches each year into the Aztec ruins beneath it), Bogard shows us the weight of our cities' footprints. And as we see hallowed ground coughing up bullets at a Civil War battlefield; long-hidden remains emerging from below the sites of concentration camps; the dangerous, alluring power of fracking; the fragility of the giant redwoods, our planet's oldest living things; the surprises hidden under a Major League ballpark's grass; and the sublime beauty of our few remaining wildest places, one truth becomes blazingly clear: The ground is the easiest resource to forget, and the last we should.
Bogard's The Ground Beneath Us is deeply transporting reading that introduces farmers, geologists, ecologists, cartographers, and others in a quest to understand the importance of something too many of us take for granted: dirt. From growth and life to death and loss, and from the subsurface technologies that run our cities to the dwindling number of idyllic Edens that remain, this is the fascinating story of the ground beneath our feet.