The Edges of the Civilized World: A Journey in Nature and Culture (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Searching for answers to a "constellation of questions" about civilization and its assumptions, and for hope for the future of humanity, Alison Hawthorne Deming travels the world. Deming's work is an eloquent narrative that follows her ventures along the fringes of the wild, the uneasy boundary between civilization and its press into farther and farther grounds, "a fault line," she writes, "where pressure constantly builds, where the impingement of economic necessity abrades against nature."

Deming begins the book on an Oregon beach, a border that remakes itself each moment, and takes this theme of change to various reaches of the globe--islands in the sea of Cortez, the Bay of Fundy, southern Mexico, South America, and Hawaii. Traveling, for instance, the Peak to Peak Scenic Byway in Colorado, Deming converses with urban planners, educators, commerce boosters, and residents about how tourism is altering that stretch of country. Contrasting new ways of thinking with old, Deming arrives at a deep and keen understanding of our present dilemmas.

Deming writes about people and place with a poetic voice that seems to soar toward some fragile resolution, assurance, and peace. Yet there is urgency in her questioning of civilization's course. Ultimately, she asks what many are asking--How are we to live?--and answers with a challenge to see ourselves as citizens, not of a singular place, but of the entire living and physical community we call Earth. --Byron Ricks --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

From the great-great-granddaughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne comes a collection of eloquent, lyrical, meditative essays that weigh the high costs of civilization, particularly upon the natural world. Seeking ways to heal what she sees as our wounded relationship with nature, ourselves and the planet, Deming (Temporary Homelands) spent a year traveling to pristine spots, fragile refuges from the pressures of consumerist development. Among the exotic places she visited were ex-frontier towns perched in Colorado's Rockies; Seal Island, a bird sanctuary in the North Atlantic where puffins, auks and arctic terns nest; the Pacific Northwest; Hawaii; Punta Chueca, a parched, hungry Seri Indian village in Mexico's Sonoran Desert; Canada's Bay of Fundy; and villages and Zapotec ruins in Mexico's Oaxaca Valley. These far-flung travels enabled Deming not only to experience a sense of community she found missing back home (a 10th-generation New Englander, she has transplanted herself to Arizona, where she feels more connected with the power of the continent, its landscape and people), but also to catch glimpses of a hidden, spiritual side of reality that she feels is suppressed by our self-devouring civilization. One essay warns of the potential dangers of commercial eco-tourism; another ambitiously seeks common ground between poetry and science as ways to grasp the cosmos. Combining a naturalist's graceful precision with a cultural anthropologist's perceptiveness, her travelogue is punctuated with luminous epiphanies, as when she visits five forested mountaintops in Mexico, where the entire population of monarch butterflies living east of the Rockies spends the winter. Author tour; U.K., translation and dramatic rights: Curtis Brown Ltd.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Picador (November 20, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031220406X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312204068
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,803,437 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars stunning writing by a thoughtful writer, April 11, 2000

By A Customer

Alison Deming is both a scientist and a poet. She is kind of like Mulder & Scully wrapped into one. In this book, Deming explores several natural habitats--a small coastal town in Oregon is my personal favorite, since I've actually been to that one--and her relationship to them. How can we involve ourselves in nature without corrupting it? Is it possible? If not, then how do we learn about it? How can we enjoy it? Don't get me wrong though; this is not a prescriptive book on how to effectively enjoy nature without leaving behind unsnipped six-pack holders, but more a thoughtful, lyrical train of thought about our world and our place in it. Wonderful reading.