Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World

by Susan Schiefelbein, Jacques Cousteau, Bill McKibben (Introduction)

Overview

The beloved explorer Jacques Cousteau witnessed firsthand the complexity and beauty of life on earth and undersea-and watched the toll taken by human activity in the twentieth century. In this magnificent last book, now available for the first time in the United States, Cousteau describes his deeply informed philosophy about protecting our world for future generations. Weaving gripping stories of his adventures throughout, he and coauthor Susan Schiefelbein address the risks we take with human health, the overfishing and sacking of the world's oceans, the hazards of nuclear proliferation, and the environmental responsibility of scientists, politicians, and people of faith. This prescient, clear-sighted book is a remarkable testament to the life and work of one of our greatest modern adventurers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781596914186
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	09/30/2008
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	691,841
Product dimensions:	8.26(w) x 10.90(h) x 0.86(d)

About the Author

Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997) was world-renowned as an ocean explorer, filmmaker, educator, and environmental activist. He won three Oscars and the Palme d'Or for his films, and wrote or coauthored more than seventy-five books. Susan Schiefelbein has won the National Magazine Award and the Front Page Award for her cover stories on social issues. A former editor at the Saturday Review, she went on to write the narration for many of Cousteau's documentary films. She lives in Paris.

Table of Contents

Foreword   Bill McKibben     ix
Introduction   Susan Schiefelbein     1
The Drive to Explore     27
Personal Risk     45
Public Risk     80
Irreplaceable Water, Irreplaceable Air     106
The Holy Scriptures and the Environment     116
Saccage     130
Catch as Catch Can     146
Science and Human Values     178
The Hot Peace: Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Energy     205
Life in a Billion Years     263
The Miracle of Life: The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus     276
Epilogue: An Update Since the Writing of This Book     293
Selected Bibliography     303

Editorial Reviews

Completed only a year before his 1997 death, Jacques Cousteau's The Human, The Orchid, and The Octopus stands as a final testament of his environmental beliefs. Like many of his other books, this work blends the best elements of an adventure story, a tutorial on the natural world, and a passionate manifesto on sustaining life on our planet. The book, never before available in the United States, has been released to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the great ocean explorer's death. His coauthor and frequent collaborator, Susan Schiefelbein, introduces the text and provides an update on more recent ecological developments. The capstone of a momentous environmental career.

The late Cousteau (1910-1997) is still offering remarkable tales of nature and the sea alongside coauthor Schiefelbein. Stephen Hoye delivers a solid reading complete with an astounding Cousteau impersonation that will have listeners questioning just who they are listening to during the introduction. Hoye transports the audience around the globe and under the sea, capturing the tense incidents throughout the tale in a believable manner. Though most of the tale is told from Schiefelbein's perspective, Hoye manages to capture the spirit of Cousteau without always resorting to the impersonation. His reading is underplayed and all the more realistic because of it. As Cousteau would have demanded, the conservation information included becomes the star of the show, and the story is a medium to spread the word about Mother Earth. A Bloomsbury hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 6, 2007). (Feb.)

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Publishers Weekly

It has been ten years since Cousteau's death, but there was one book still left in the pipeline. Originally published in French in 1997 as L'homme, la pieuvre et l'orchidée, and now available for the first time in English, this is a comprehensive presentation of the conservation and preservation philosophy that inspired Cousteau to become an activist for the oceans and the earth during his lifetime. Although not by any means a biography, the book contains numerous anecdotes and an extensive introduction by coauthor and longtime Cousteau collaborator Schiefelbein that is primarily biographical. The prose is eloquent and at times almost poetical, especially in the eponymous final chapter. This worthwhile look back at the French scientist who taught us to love scuba diving and the ocean raises questions still highly relevant ten years later. Recommended for all libraries at the high school level and above.
—Margaret Rioux

Library Journal

From Oscar-winning explorer-filmmaker Cousteau (1910-1997), a final bouquet for the planet he loved. The Frenchman who enthralled millions in more than 70 books (The Silent World, 2004, etc.) and the TV series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau makes an eloquent case for conserving our natural world in these 11 essays, completed before his death and published for the first time in the United States. Following a foreword by Bill McKibben, the collection opens with a meditation on the instinctive human drive to explore and then considers aspects of the need to protect "the last remaining unexplored expanse of earth-underwater," which first attracted the author as a young midshipman on a world tour in the 1930s. In each instance, Cousteau draws on experiences and observations from his career: He examines personal risk-taking, recalling the moment in 1952 (the underwater death of a young man diving from Cousteau's ship Calypso off Marseilles) when he learned to dare without danger by minimizing risks to crews; and the day at a 1959 conference of atomic scientists held in Monaco's Oceanographic Institute (where Cousteau was director) when he heard talk about using the sea as a radioactive waste dump that prompted his lifelong protests over nuclear issues. ("Stick to steering boats!" said his critics.) Elsewhere, he urges action against overfishing, unchecked coastal development and corner-cutting by commercial interests that results in threats to public health and the environment. The author proves a trusted, familiar and knowledgeable voice as he draws on explorations in the Amazon, Antarctica, the underwater caves of the Caribbean and elsewhere to express his concern for humankind'sfuture. "We are part of Earth," he declares in explaining why we must conserve. Long-time collaborator Schiefelbein provides a useful introduction as well as an update on facts and trends since the book's completion ten years ago. A treat for Cousteau fans and conservationists alike.

Kirkus Reviews

"[An] electrifying, many-faceted masterwork." ---Booklist

From the Publisher

Jacques Cousteau was a legendary adventurer—and an environmental activist. In his memoir, Cousteau, a firm proponent of the planet's rights long before Al Gore came along, runs the gamut from expressing concern to indulging in a raging polemic, never sparing the world's governments in the process. The material gives the book a heavy-handed tone, which is echoed by Stephen Hoye’s theatrical reading. His delivery is as clipped as the sails of Cousteau's beloved CALYPSO. Hoye doesn't attempt to evoke Cousteau's distinctly French parlance, but where he does match Cousteau is in his sanctimonious quality, which reinforces the text's strident tendencies. J.S.H. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

JUN/JUL 08 - AudioFile