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Available From UC Press
The Face of the Earth
Natural Landscapes, Science, and Culture
This lively book sweeps across dramatic and varied terrains—volcanoes and glaciers, billabongs and canyons, prairies and rain forests—to explore how humans have made sense of our planet’s marvelous landscapes. In a rich weave of scientific, cultural, and personal stories, The Face of the Earth examines mirages and satellite images, swamp-dwelling heroes and Tibetan nomads, cave paintings and popular movies, investigating how we live with the great shaping forces of nature—from fire to changing climates and the intricacies of adaptation. The book illuminates subjects as diverse as the literary life of hollow Earth theories, the links between the Little Ice Age and Frankenstein’s monster, and the spiritual allure of deserts and their scarce waters. Including vivid, on-the-spot accounts by scientists and writers in Saudi Arabia, Australia, Alaska, England, the Rocky Mountains, Antarctica, and elsewhere, The Face of the Earth charts the depth and complexity of our interdependence with the natural world.
SueEllen Campbell is Professor in the Department of English at Colorado State University. She is the author of Even Mountains Vanish: Searching for Solace in An Age of Extinction and Bringing the Mountain Home, among other books.
"To comprehend climate change via arts and humanities as well as science and engineering demands either a Leonardo da Vinci or the gentle audacity and magisterial breadth of SueEllen Campbell."—Richard C. J. Somerville, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
"A masterful combination of the precision and power of the sciences with the lyricism and insight of the humanities. Campbell and her colleagues have succeeded by braiding clear, accurate scientific explanation with forays into mythological and literary expressions of the human relationship to Earth."—Michael P. Branch, editor of John Muir's Last Journey
"The authors of this astonishingly original project explore nature's meanings in ways that blend the insights of plate tectonics and evolution with imagery from authors such as Dante, Milton, and the Brontes. Dozens of vivid personal narratives, written by a community of writers, ground such perspectives in explorations of rifts, bogs, volcanoes, forests, grasslands, and deserts. From all these diverse encounters with the face of nature can arise a more alert and appreciative receptiveness to the living patterns of which we ourselves are part."—John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains and The Frog Run
“Sparkling science writing, cultural and artistic insights about deep time human history, and superb personal essays on place may never have been combined so winningly in a volume as they are in The Face of the Earth. I could not put this book down. Its evocative ideas and rendered experiences delight the mind like embers from a stirred campfire."—Dan Flores, author of The Natural West and Visions of the Big Sky
"A masterful combination of the precision and power of the sciences with the lyricism and insight of the humanities. Campbell and her colleagues have succeeded by braiding clear, accurate scientific explanation with forays into mythological and literary expressions of the human relationship to Earth."—Michael P. Branch, editor of John Muir's Last Journey
"The authors of this astonishingly original project explore nature's meanings in ways that blend the insights of plate tectonics and evolution with imagery from authors such as Dante, Milton, and the Brontes. Dozens of vivid personal narratives, written by a community of writers, ground such perspectives in explorations of rifts, bogs, volcanoes, forests, grasslands, and deserts. From all these diverse encounters with the face of nature can arise a more alert and appreciative receptiveness to the living patterns of which we ourselves are part."—John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains and The Frog Run
“Sparkling science writing, cultural and artistic insights about deep time human history, and superb personal essays on place may never have been combined so winningly in a volume as they are in The Face of the Earth. I could not put this book down. Its evocative ideas and rendered experiences delight the mind like embers from a stirred campfire."—Dan Flores, author of The Natural West and Visions of the Big Sky