The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez [Paperback]

Alexander Wilson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1992

`This is a beautiful book about ugliness, which takes the innumerable facts of the degradation of nature as so many multiple starting points for the history of the production of modern space. Wilson ranges across cognate yet extraordinarily varied topics such as nature films, theme parks, tourism, world's fairs, shopping malls, and strip-mining and nuclear plants, not merely to trace their histories but also to map out their ideologies - for it is myth and ideology that ultimately legitimize and promote the violence done to the land. It is a remarkable performance, of the greatest theoretical as well as practical-political interest.' Fredric Jameson, author of Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism . `Alex Wilson's cultural history of postwar landscapes and designed environments is drenched in passion and commitment. The Culture of Nature is as beautiful book that addresses an ugly topic. It will very soon be a classic of ecological criticism.' Andrew Ross, author of Strange Weather . The current environmental crisis has reached far beyond the land; it is a crisis of culture as well. It penetrates our leisure time, our thinking, our art and gardens. Landscape is today a place of deeply conflicting ideas about the natural world and our relation to it. In The Culture of Nature , Wilson traces the responses of North American and Native cultures to the land. He examines the multiplicity of environments built on the North American continent in the past 50 years as its inhabitants discover, exploit, protect, restore, and re-enchant a natural world in convulsion.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This year's round-up of environment-related titles contains some of the best books I've encountered in years. The best of the good is Alexander Wilson's remarkable The Culture of Nature. -- Books in Canada --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

The late Alexander Wilson was a horticulturalist, journalist, and partner in a landscape design firm. He taught and wrote widely on popular culture, media, and the environment. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Blackwell Pub (February 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557863369
• ISBN-13: 978-1557863362
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 7.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,541,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Book that Questions the "Naturalness" of Nature, January 4, 2004

By 

Kirsten Jacobson (Bangor, ME, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez (Paperback)

In "The Culture of Nature," Alexander Wilson argues that our sense of what counts as nature or as natural is by no means a "natural" or spontaneous perception of a preexistant and untouchable Nature. Instead, he demonstrates that how we experience and think of nature are largely shaped by the cultural, social, political, and economic forces that surround us and pervade our experience even when we think we have escaped them by leaving the city and venturing into the great outdoors. To support his argument, Wilson offers compelling anaylses of theme parks, forest preserves, wildlife conservation programs, scenic roadways, car, truck, train and air travel, and more. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the city versus the wildnerness experience, in how cultural forces affect our sense of what is natural, and in the role that government and financial forces have on our experience of our surroundings--especially of our "natural" surroundings.