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A review by seclement
The Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World by Emma Marris
5.0
This is one of those rare books where the author discusses controversial and somewhat complex ecological ideas in a way that is clear but engaging, and neither overly technical or in an overly literary style. Novel ecosystems are one of my central research interests these days, and Marris manages to capture the main points of the concepts relating novelty, wilderness, nativeness, etc. with just the right the level of detail. In a fairly brief book, she manages enough history and science to provide a foundation and context for the general reader, while also providing many points to ponder for those of us who think about these issues fairly often. I hope people read this book and are challenged by it, and I think the book is written in just the right sort of tone and pitched at just the right level to encourage the reader to think about their assumptions.
The book is also organised well, with the narrative holding together across different topics and different geographies, with each chapter building on the last. This is exactly the sort of book that built the publisher's reputation (Bloomsbury) for publishing books with both rigour and interesting content.
I think this is a book for many different people: 1) academics working in ecology, environmental governance policy, and related fields, wanting to know more about how to manage ecosystems in a time when historical baselines are becoming increasingly difficult to achieve and out of reach for many places, 2) the nature lover who wants to understand more deeply the state of the places they love, and how those places can be managed as well as how they may look in the future, 3) students just starting to study environmental science (I could use this in both a class for my environment majors as well as a class with humanities students who take environmental science as an elective), and 4) the reader with a casual interest in the environment who has heard about this thing called "the Anthropocene" but wonders about what that actually means in practice.
The book is also organised well, with the narrative holding together across different topics and different geographies, with each chapter building on the last. This is exactly the sort of book that built the publisher's reputation (Bloomsbury) for publishing books with both rigour and interesting content.
I think this is a book for many different people: 1) academics working in ecology, environmental governance policy, and related fields, wanting to know more about how to manage ecosystems in a time when historical baselines are becoming increasingly difficult to achieve and out of reach for many places, 2) the nature lover who wants to understand more deeply the state of the places they love, and how those places can be managed as well as how they may look in the future, 3) students just starting to study environmental science (I could use this in both a class for my environment majors as well as a class with humanities students who take environmental science as an elective), and 4) the reader with a casual interest in the environment who has heard about this thing called "the Anthropocene" but wonders about what that actually means in practice.