Wild at Heart, Alice Outwater
Wild at Heart, Alice Outwater
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

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

Author: Alice Outwater

Narrator: Joyce Bean

Unabridged: 9 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/02/2019


Synopsis

"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 In the tradition of The World Without Us, a beautifully written and ultimately hopeful history of our relationship with the natural worldNature 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.

About Alice Outwater

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.


Reviews

I thoroughly enjoyed this in-depth piece on exploitation and our environmental triumphs but as others have alluded to it tends to give the impression that the fight is over. Yes, we have made a lot of progress but we still have an awful long way to go until we treat animals as our equals. There is a......more

Goodreads review by Carolyn

I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was going to be dry, but it is written in a conversational style that kept me reading well past when I should have shut the light off. I learned a great deal too, which is always a nice bonus. I'm very glad I was chosen to read an ARC, so thank you to NetGalle......more

Goodreads review by Carla

I consider myself to be quite a sentimental reader, but it really depends on the subject at hand. This book is for a sentimental reader, but not quite my brand or type. Alice Outwater's Wild at Heart should've been a deep, fulfilling read for me. And I enjoy types of books like these. I love stor......more

Goodreads review by Jeff

Outwater has written a history of America’s relationship with nature, and how we have moved from seeing nature something to be conquered and tamed, to something with value to be preserved. She begins by discussing how several Native American tribes approached nature. The Hopi saw themselves as guard......more

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it an informative and delightful read. Usually I don’t read non-fiction, yet I was interested in a deeper understanding of how we have historically approached nature. I found Alice Outwater’s book to be wonderfully written and a very accessible recounting of......more