jaymike11's review against another edition
4.0
There's such a diverse amount of content, and I dig that! While some chapters were a little dry, others really made me think. Lopez writes beautifully throughout, and I enjoyed my time with this book.
lauren_endnotes's review against another edition
5.0
"One learns the landscape not by knowing the name or identity of everything in it, but by perceiving the relationships in it."
Caribou crossing - Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
I didn't really doubt it, but I was happy that Lopez's lyrical writing and mood continued into his essays, having only read his creative short fiction to date. There were many strong essays, but the one that stuck with me the most may have been "Landscape and Narrative", quoted here. Lopez shares stories from his travels and expeditions with scientists in the Arctic, archaeologists in the southwest, and shares memories of people who helped shape the person he is today.
The words in some of these essays have stayed with me over the days since I read it... and this may precipitate a purchase of my own copy, to come back to again and again.
mlindner's review against another edition
4.0
COCC
2020 DeschuteS Public Library Author! Author! author (Jan 2020).
2020 DeschuteS Public Library Author! Author! author (Jan 2020).
vincenthowland's review
3.0
Lopez writes beautifully, about rocks and birds. He doesn't have much to say about politics or philosophy, although he thinks he does. The collected essay format doesn't help; most of the pieces conclude with the same uninteresting "moral".
kerrianne's review
5.0
So many quality, game-changing books missing from high school and collegiate literature courses. This is one of those books, and is really a collection of nonfiction essays written over a decade (late '70s to late '80s), still as relevant today, and especially with regard to today's political landscape (trying its best to eradicate our natural landscape), and the precarious state of our wild places.
Rather than tell you how much I enjoyed this book, and how essential it (and books like it) could and should be for our national integrity and environmental policy, I'm going to leave you with two of my favorite passages and hope you'll read the rest:
"The insistence of government and industry, that wilderness values be rendered solely in economic terms, has led to an insidious presumption, that the recreational potential of wild land, not its biological integrity, should be the principal criterion of its worth."
"An argument for wilderness that reaches beyond the valid concerns of multiple-use—recreation, flood control, providing a source of pure water—is that wild lands preserve complex biological relationships that we are only dimly, or sometimes not at all, aware of. Wilderness represents a gene pool, vital for the resiliency of plants and animals. An argument for wilderness that goes deeper still is that we have an ethical obligation to provide animals with a place where they are free from the impingement of civilization. And, further, a historical responsibility to preserve the kind of landscapes from which modern man emerged."
[Five stars for passionate essays of worth and eye-opening importance, and for being, sadly, all too timeless.]
Rather than tell you how much I enjoyed this book, and how essential it (and books like it) could and should be for our national integrity and environmental policy, I'm going to leave you with two of my favorite passages and hope you'll read the rest:
"The insistence of government and industry, that wilderness values be rendered solely in economic terms, has led to an insidious presumption, that the recreational potential of wild land, not its biological integrity, should be the principal criterion of its worth."
"An argument for wilderness that reaches beyond the valid concerns of multiple-use—recreation, flood control, providing a source of pure water—is that wild lands preserve complex biological relationships that we are only dimly, or sometimes not at all, aware of. Wilderness represents a gene pool, vital for the resiliency of plants and animals. An argument for wilderness that goes deeper still is that we have an ethical obligation to provide animals with a place where they are free from the impingement of civilization. And, further, a historical responsibility to preserve the kind of landscapes from which modern man emerged."
[Five stars for passionate essays of worth and eye-opening importance, and for being, sadly, all too timeless.]
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