Overview

Through much of history our relationship with the earth has been plagued by ambivalence―we not only enjoy and appreciate the forces and manifestations of nature, we seek to plunder, alter, and control them. Here Paul Shepard uncovers the cultural roots of our ecological crisis and proposes ways to repair broken bonds with the earth, our past, and nature. Ultimately encouraging, he notes, ""There is a secret person undamaged in every individual. We have not lost, and cannot lose, the genuine impulse.

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9780820319803

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Reviews

[Shepard] demands of ecology nothing less than a shift in our whole frame of reference and our attitudes toward life itself. -- New York Times Book Review [In] Shepard's texts, we can once again take a deep breath and remember that life is holy and a wildness of spirit is not only something to be retrieved and honored but the very essence of our humanity. --Terry Tempest Williams Much of what we value in contemporary thought about 'nature and culture' grew up in the seedbed of Shepard's thinking. His writing about child development, physical and cultural anthropology, animal behavior, art and mythology, the history of agriculture, and other subjects is endlessly fascinating. --Barry Lopez This is an extraordinary book. Buy it, read it, and begin to remember what it means to be a human animal. -- Bloomsbury Review This is an extraordinary book. Buy it, read it, and begin to remember what it means to be a human animal.-- Bloomsbury Review [In] Shepard's texts, we can once again take a deep breath and remember that life is holy and a wildness of spirit is not only something to be retrieved and honored but the very essence of our humanity.--Terry Tempest Williams Much of what we value in contemporary thought about 'nature and culture' grew up in the seedbed of Shepard's thinking. His writing about child development, physical and cultural anthropology, animal behavior, art and mythology, the history of agriculture, and other subjects is endlessly fascinating.--Barry Lopez [Shepard] demands of ecology nothing less than a shift in our whole frame of reference and our attitudes toward life itself.-- New York Times Book Review

This is an extraordinary book. Buy it, read it, and begin to remember what it means to be a human animal. --Bloomsbury Review Much of what we value in contemporary thought about 'nature and culture' grew up in the seedbed of Shepard's thinking. His writing about child development, physical and cultural anthropology, animal behavior, art and mythology, the history of agriculture, and other subjects is endlessly fascinating. --Barry Lopez [Shepard] demands of ecology nothing less than a shift in our whole frame of reference and our attitudes toward life itself. --New York Times Book Review [In] Shepard's texts, we can once again take a deep breath and remember that life is holy and a wildness of spirit is not only something to be retrieved and honored but the very essence of our humanity. --Terry Tempest Williams

The city geometry delights only the untrained eye, to which the subtle patterns of the vast viome are simply invisible, the wilderness in disarray, a kind of pandemonium. With such excess of lamentation, Shepard proclaims the sickness (madness) of Western society, which he traces to the dawn of agrarianism and the settled life. Hardly an original theme, especially for this romantic ecologist whose earlier books (Man in the Landscape, Thinking Animals) expressed similar concerns. For all the exaggerations, however, Shepard does deal with a succession of pivotal times: village life, the desert fathers, the Reformation, and industrialized society. In each instance, he makes some philosophically interesting points relating child development to the prevailing religious beliefs, seeing both as reflections of an underlying attitude of man toward nature. Thus, Earth Mother religions dominated early agricultural settlements, and were accompanied, according to Shepard, by trophic needs - preoccupation with food and anxieties over nature's caprices. The desert fathers are both the Jews and the early Christian leaders who introduced paternalistic monotheism, substituting abstract divinity for the concerete, interrelatedness of man with the non-human world. The Reformation reinforced a dualism that combined a condemnation of all that was natural with a prurient interest. Finally, industrialism has substituted the artificial and the mechanized, further alienating man from nature. Each stage has succeeded in further infantilizing humanity, reducing adults to the illusory omnipotence of the toddler. . . or creating monsters of dependency. With allusions to Erikson, Eliade, George Steiner, Perry Miller, and others, there are indeed occasional illuminating insights or provocative ideas. But any scheme that presents modern society in monolithic terms, snowballing downward on the basis of synergies of religion, anti-nature ideology, and child-rearing practices, topples from its own grandiose weight. (Kirkus Reviews)

This is an extraordinary book. Buy it, read it, and begin to remember what it means to be a human animal. -- Bloomsbury Review

Author Information

Paul Shepard (1925-1996) was Avery Professor of Natural Philosophy and Human Ecology at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He is the author of twelve books, a number of which are available from the University of Georgia Press.

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