Erosion, Terry Tempest Williams
Erosion, Terry Tempest Williams
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Erosion
Essays of Undoing

Author: Terry Tempest Williams

Narrator: Terry Tempest Williams

Unabridged: 9 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/08/2019

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

This program is read by the author.

Timely and unsettling essays from an important and beloved writer and conservationist

In Erosion, Terry Tempest Williams's fierce, spirited, and magnificent essays are a howl in the desert. She sizes up the continuing assaults on America's public lands and the erosion of our commitment to the open space of democracy. She asks: "How do we find the strength to not look away from all that is breaking our hearts?"

We know the elements of erosion: wind, water, and time. They have shaped the spectacular physical landscape of our nation. Here, Williams bravely and brilliantly explores the many forms of erosion we face: of democracy, science, compassion, and trust. She examines the dire cultural and environmental implications of the gutting of Bear Ears National Monument—sacred lands to Native Peoples of the American Southwest; of the undermining of the Endangered Species Act; of the relentless press by the fossil fuel industry that has led to a panorama in which "oil rigs light up the horizon." And she testifies that the climate crisis is not an abstraction, offering as evidence the drought outside her door and, at times, within herself.

These essays are Williams's call to action, blazing a way forward through difficult and dispiriting times. We will find new territory—emotional, geographical, communal. The erosion of desert lands exposes the truth of change. What has been weathered, worn, and whittled away is as powerful as what remains. Our undoing is also our becoming.

Erosion is a book for this moment, political and spiritual at once, written by one of our greatest naturalists, essayists, and defenders of the environment. She reminds us that beauty is its own form of resistance, and that water can crack stone.

About Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Williams is the award-winning author of The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks; Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; and When Women Were Birds, among other books. Her work is widely taught and anthologized around the world. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she is currently the Writer-in-Residence at the Harvard Divinity School and divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Castle Valley, Utah.


Reviews

Goodreads review by J.L. on August 30, 2022

I would like to hear the words "public lands" spoken in every election debate, with candidates holding both government and corporations accountable in their oversight and use." In Erosion: Essays of Undoing, Terry Tempest Williams sounds like a visionary in the best sense of the word. She argues for......more

Goodreads review by Brandie on July 23, 2019

Oof- this book is what the withered soul needs. For those of us living under oppressive Trump Era policies, Terry Tempest Williams says what we’re all feeling- with regards to his environmental (non)protection policies. She has had to live closely with them, as a resident of Utah, and an advocate fo......more

Goodreads review by Karen on April 05, 2024

David Orr writes, “The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people, but it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fi......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on February 19, 2021

As much as I agreed with the author's stance on the beauty of the world and our obligation to protect it, I just did not love this collection of essays. Williams's lyrical prose and intermittent poetry often deployed language so flowery and overwrought that I couldn't help but roll my eyes. (Example......more