Wild at Heart: America's Turbulent Relationship with Nature, from Exploitation to Redemption

by Alice Outwater

Overview

"Alice Outwater’s infectiously readable Wild at Heart captures the essence of ecology: Everything is connected, and every connection leads to ourselves." —Alan Weisman, author, The World Without Us and Countdown

"A wonderful book. Information rich to say the least, and the indigenous human connections and portrait of the deep connectivity of nature, are both strong elements." —Jim McClintock, author of A Naturalist Goes Fishing

Nature on the brink? Maybe not. With so much bad news in the world, we forget how much environmental progress has been made. In a narrative that reaches from Native American tribal practices to public health and commercial hunting, Wild at Heart shows how western attitudes towards nature have changed dramatically in the last five hundred years.

The Chinook gave thanks for King Salmon's gifts. The Puritans saw Nature as a frightening wilderness, full of "uncooked meat." With the industrial revolution, nature was despoiled and simultaneously celebrated as a source of the sublime. With little forethought and great greed, Americans killed the last passenger pigeon, wiped out the old growth forests, and dumped so much oil in the rivers that they burst into flame. But in the span of a few decades, our relationship with nature has evolved to a more sophisticated sense of interdependence that brings us full circle. Across the US, people are taking individual action, planting native species and fighting for projects like dam removal and wolf restoration. Cities are embracing nature, too.

Humans can learn from the past, and our choices today will determine whether nature survives. Like the First Nations, all nations must come to deep agreement that nature needs protection. This compelling book reveals both how we got here and our own and nature's astonishing ability to mutually regenerate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250085788
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/02/2019
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Alice Outwater grew up on Lake Champlain, Vermont, and studied engineering at the University of Vermont and at MIT. She is the author of Water: A Natural History and consults in water quality. She has lived on a farm since 1991 in Vermont, Hawaii and finally Colorado.

Editorial Reviews

11/26/2018
Outwater (Water: A Natural History), a water quality consultant, does a solid job of tracing North Americans’ relationship with nature, but few are likely to be as optimistic as she is about the future of the environment. She begins by contrasting religions which hold that every living thing has a soul and the Judeo-Christian tradition, which distinguishes between humans and nature. Outwater traces the implications of that latter, dominant Western belief, and of the Industrial Revolution, and the collateral consequences of decimating certain species. She does more than simply examine how the environment changed for plants and animals, spelling out the changes’ effects on human health, as with the horrific mortality rate among the lower classes in 19th-century industrialized England. On the whole, however, her glass is decidedly half-full; she notes, with pride, that since the 1960s the U.S. has “helped save the whales, heal the ozone hole, and halt acid rain.” While acknowledging that climate change “poses enormous challenges,” she asserts that humanity has come “full circle” and embraced environmentalism. Her outlook is cheerful but far from convincing at a time of enormous opposition to proactive environmental legislation in the U.S. and elsewhere, marring an otherwise well-written historical survey. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary Agency. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Outwater ends on a hopeful note as Americans are, again, embracing the natural world." —Booklist

"A cheering assessment of the future of the planet." —Kirkus Reviews

“This fascinating book reveals the extent of our nation’s heedless treatment of the environment since Europeans settled here—a perspective that highlights where progress has been made.” —Judith D. Schwartz, author of Water In Plain Sight and Cows Save the Planet

"Wild at Heart is a concise portrait of nothing less than America’s relationship with nature. In twelve eloquent chapters Alice Outwater escorts us from the 18th century's still-intact tribes, through the trials and errors of colonialism and westward expansion, the debacles of our increasingly short-sighted industrialism, the conservation victories of the 1960’s and ‘70s, and the tenuous balance achieved. With admirable calm she then depicts the depredations by today's Corporate Person as the unconscionable aberration it must be seen to be if we are to survive as a nation, an economy, or a species. A vital work by an exceptionally level-headed, Earth-aware writer." —David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and The River Why

"Through a narrative that roams in unexpected directions through surprising details and history, then periodically grounds itself by looping back to her own family before it soars off again, Alice Outwater’s infectiously readable Wild at Heart captures the essence of ecology: Everything is connected, and every connection leads to ourselves." —Alan Weisman, author, The World Without Us and Countdown

From the Publisher

2019-01-14

An optimistic look at how humans are showing greater respect for the natural world.

"There is deep agreement across western nations that we are all connected to the Earth," writes Outwater (Water: A Natural History, 1996, etc.), "and that the natural world must be respected and preserved for the future." Beginning with Native Americans, the author details Americans' interactions with a continent whose bounty seemed limitless and ripe for exploitation. Unlike European settlers, tribal communities revered nature's gifts and sought to balance human and animal needs. Outwater believes that their relationship with nature "echoes the sustainable balance we are trying to create today." In a spirited, fact-filled history, the author chronicles changing attitudes and practices over many centuries. As a response to the Industrial Revolution, Romantic philosophers, poets, and artists "embraced nature as a spiritual force." With industry sullying the environment and fomenting diseases such as tuberculosis, clean air and water were seen as curative. The rise of science, technology, and intercontinental trade inspired a vogue for collecting and classifying nature. "In Victorian times," Outwater notes, "studying nature and building a personal natural history collection was seen as an appropriate way to praise God." Public collections—zoos, museums, botanical gardens—attracted curious visitors, and tourists flocked to natural wonders such as Niagara Falls and Yosemite. Investigating nature and appreciating its aesthetic qualities, however, competed with the exploitation of waterways, forests, and land to serve increasing populations, the rise of cities, and westward expansion. To provide a picturesque experience of nature for city dwellers, landscape architecture—a term first used by Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted—combined traditional gardening with city planning. Although Outwater recounts many instances of detrimental environmental policies—e.g., Ronald Reagan's head of the Department of the Interior called the environmental movement "a left-wing cult"—she offers, in an appendix, a list of major environmental laws enacted from 1964 to 1973 that have led to significant protections. In many cases, restoration has occurred more quickly than anticipated.

A cheering assessment of the future of the planet.

Kirkus Reviews

Narrator Joyce Bean adopts the authoritative, outraged yet always persuasive voice that this cornucopia of environmental and ecological information and history demands. Her clear delivery and crystalline sound give the audiobook a convincing tone. It might have been easier to use a kind of fed-up-with-it-all approach to this wide-angle and historic look at environmental depredation and loss. Stories of pollution, the eradication of species, the fouling of air, land, and water highlight the text. But there are also more hopeful recent stories of wildlife reintroduction (wolves in Yellowstone) and fish returning to rivers (because of dam breaching in New England). Bean never falters in giving this dense and compelling audiobook an excellent reading. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2019 - AudioFile