Flight Maps: Adventures With Nature In Modern America [Paperback]

Jennifer Price (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0465024866 | ISBN-13: 978-0465024865 | Publication Date: April 6, 2000 | Edition: New edition

In five sharply drawn chapters, Flight Maps charts the ways in which Americans have historically made connections—and missed connections—with nature. Beginning with an extraordinary chapter on the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and the accompanying belligerent early view of nature’s inexhaustibility, Price then moves on to discuss the Audubon Society’s founding campaign in the 1890s against the extravagant use of stuffed birds to decorate women’s hats. At the heart of the book is an improbable and extremely witty history of the plastic pink flamingo, perhaps the totem of Artifice and Kitsch—nevertheless a potent symbol through which to plumb our troublesome yet powerful visions of nature. From here the story of the affluent Baby-Boomers begins. Through an examination of the phenomenal success of The Nature Company, TV series such as Northern Exposure and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and the sport-utility vehicle craze, the author ruminates on our very American, very urbanized and suburbanized needs, discontents, and desires for meaningful, yet artificially constructed connections to nature. Witty, at times even whimsical, Flight Maps is also a sophisticated and meditative archaeology of Americans’ very real and uneasy desire to make nature meaningful in their lives.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Flight Maps, essayist Jennifer Price methodically accounts for the fall of the passenger pigeon, the rise of the pink lawn flamingo, the propagation of nature-themed mall stores, and what all this has to do with modern humanity's relationship to nature. The book began as an award-winning doctoral dissertation at Yale, now repackaged for the mainstream reader. Primarily a smart meditation for baby boomers on why a Volvo can't save your soul and why the name "Nature Company" should seem ironic, Flight Maps is a long, scholarly riff on how nature has evolved into a place apart. We fumble to revisit and recapture it, with everything from Toyota 4Runners to Rainforest Crunch candy.

Price's observations center around how our actions, our beliefs, and--especially--our purchases betray an idealized but conflicted view of nature: it's an undiluted source of "realness," but also a remote and abstract ideal, often mangled by our embrace. Flight Maps traces these attitudes back to 19th-century America, recounting the extinction of passenger pigeons and the faltering first steps of early conservation groups. The book's second and best half, though, covers the present, finding nature's place in the mall. Price's lightly jaded sense of humor, combined with her academic rigor, perfectly skewers the likes of Northern Exposure's $5,000-a-day moose and stress-relief products from the Nature Company's catalog, such as "Pachelbel Canon in D Blended with the Eternal Sound of the Sea--Creates a tranquil atmosphere for quiet meditation.... CD $16.98"). --Paul Hughes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Price takes nature writing in an entirely new direction as she looks for nature in all the "wrong" places. Observing that we've forgotten that everything is part of nature, she seeks a catalyst for our view of nature as separate, right, and true. This leads to a far-ranging analysis of the deep cultural shock over the abrupt extinction of the passenger pigeon, a species once so plentiful it darkened the sky. Its demise gave rise to the first wave of environmentalism, a movement bolstered by turn-of-the-century women who formed Audubon societies to protest the rage for "bird hats." Price parses the role that gender has played in our interpretation of nature, then brings class issues into the mix in a startlingly original history of another bird species, the ubiquitous plastic pink flamingo. From there, Price contemplates the packaged nature sold in The Nature Store and nature as portrayed on television, concluding wryly that consumerism has become our most common connection to the natural world. Donna Seaman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; New edition edition (April 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465024866
• ISBN-13: 978-0465024865
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,652 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #38 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Natural History

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars it manages to be both thought-provoking and fun to read, May 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Flight Maps: Adventures With Nature In Modern America (Hardcover)

It's not often that a book can challenge some ideas you hold near and dear while at the same time leaving you in stiches. A friend of mine insisted I read "Flight Maps"--I'm a confirmed environmentalist/tree-hugger etc., but Price has held up an ideological mirror to me and exposed some of my most treasured assumptions about "pristine nature" along with the contradiction of my consumerist lifestyle (yes, I own an SUV--to drive to the mountains!) coupled with my ecological sensibility. Maybe all that humor made it easier to swallow. In any event, I'm glad I read it. One of those books that really changes your perspective on life.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Explains our reactions to nature as a commodity, June 9, 2003

By 

A. Bernstein (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flight Maps: Adventures With Nature In Modern America (Paperback)

If you think The Nature Company is an oxymoron, Price articulates exactly why that is. If you feel a sense of discomfort in today's society, yet feel vaguely guilty about that discomfort, Price explains that as well. This truly is a fabulous book that will have you thinking (and perhaps even shopping) differently immediately.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Nature Company Conflict, December 17, 2004

By 

millicentsomer (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flight Maps: Adventures With Nature In Modern America (Paperback)

Price's book (also her dissertation) starts strong, with a formidably researched essay on the extinction of the passenger pigeon that does none of the usual things: it doesn't dwell on man's brutality, it doesn't eulogize the pigeon. Instead, she very thoughtfully considers the ways in which people USE nature, and why, and explores the mystery (it remains a mystery) of exactly why the passenger pigeons disappeared.

Human uses of (and, maybe more importantly, imitations of) nature are the focus of the book. The plastic pink flamingo becomes Price's symbol for our strangely consumerist attitude toward nature. WHY do we have plastic pink flamingos? To Price, they're the most obvious example of "artificial" nature, and they've gone through an amazing range of cultural significance -- from bourgeois lawn ornament to embarrassingly loud "low-income" decoration to hipster accessory.

Price dwells on the symbolism of the flamingo more than is strictly necessary. The themes are a little worn by the time we get to her analysis of the the "nature store" phenomenon, all the Natural Wonders and Nature Companies that sprang up in the nineties. Very interesting, but again, her questions have been asked and answered so thoroughly by this time that I, for one, was TOO aware, by the time I finished, that this was a doctoral dissertation and not a book.