I’m an English professor in New England whose research and teaching interests focus on the Shakespearean Stage and the Environmental Humanities. As an educator, I’m always looking for ways to romanticize the impact that literature can have on the world—either politically, ideologically, or physically. The story that Kim Todd shares about the European Starling proliferating in North America because of a Shakespeare-loving member of a New York Acclimatization Society has changed the way that I look at birds, at Shakespeare, and the world. It has encouraged me to find other stories like this one to share with my students—and to tell a few of my own.
In addition to providing a fascinating biological history of North America, this book is also extremely well-written.
Its chapters offer history lessons of North American landscape and ecosystems, disguised as lyrical essays that focus on a series of unlikely non-human protagonists (or antagonists, depending on how you look at them)—including hessian flies, gypsy moths, pigeons, starlings, and honeybees.
These stories matter because they remind us of how great our illusion of control is, especially when it comes to the natural world, and how far the consequences of even the most well-intentioned actions can reach. It also showed me how engaging a story can be when the human characters are resigned to the margins.
A bewitching look at nonnative species in American ecosystems, by the heir apparent to McKibben and Quammen. Mosquitoes in Hawaii, sea lampreys in the Great Lakes, mountain goats in the Olympic Mountains of Washington State--not one of these species is native to the environment in which it now flourishes, sometimes disastrously. Kim Todd's Tinkering with Eden is a lyrical, brilliantly written history of the introduction of exotic species into the United States, and how the well-meaning endeavors of scientists, explorers, and biologists have resulted in ecological catastrophe. Todd's amazingly assured voice will haunt her readers, and the stories she tells--the…
When I finished reading this book, I climbed Mount Norwottuck in Amherst, Massachusetts, and looked out over the Pioneer Valley. My perspective was completely transformed. I tried to imagine what this same valley must have looked like five hundred years before—or what a walk through New England’s woods would be without stumbling over an ancient stone wall, a Norway Maple, a field of dandelions, or other remnants of European colonialism.
This book illustrates the impact of early globalization on the earth’s biota, and how nature became implicated in human agendas of conquest. His chapter on syphilis is particularly fascinating to me as a scholar of the English stage, considering how many references Shakespeare and his contemporaries make (erroneously) to the “French” or “Spanish” pox.
Thirty years ago, Alfred Crosby published a small work that illuminated a simple point, that the most important changes brought on by the voyages of Columbus were not social or political, but biological in nature. The book told the story of how 1492 sparked the movement of organisms, both large and small, in both directions across the Atlantic. This Columbian exchange, between the Old World and the New, changed the history of our planet drastically and forever.
The book The Columbian Exchange changed the field of history drastically and forever as well. It has become one of the foundational works…
It offers sundry examples of “revenge effects” of modern technology and human acclimatization efforts to highlight the irony of what it means to live in the age of late capitalism—where everything is supposed to make our lives easier. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
This is the book that taught me about the walking catfish that escaped from the back of a van in Florida, and why you shouldn’t plant Eucalyptus trees in fire-prone areas of California. I can’t help but wonder how this book might be updated to discuss the lantern flies that invade my hometown in eastern Pennsylvania every summer.
In this fascinating book, historian of science Edward Tenner takes a fine-toothed comb to several realms of technological intervention and discovers a resolute pattern of "revenge effects, "paradoxical, ironic consequences of the step s we take supposedly to improve our lives. Whether proliferating technology is fated to lead us to utopia, we can be certain that it has plenty of tricks up its sleeve.
When you remember that life on our planet has been almost completely annihilated five times already, perhaps it makes you appreciate the ephemerality of our existence, the diversity of flora, fauna, and fungi on earth, our planet’s many gifts, etc. But when you realize that human behaviors in the age of capitalism and globalization are tantamount to the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, it makes you want to wake up from this nightmare.
This book offers an amazing history lesson about archaeology and how we have learned about our planet’s ancient history. But it also provides a sobering wake-up call, a plea for preserving biological diversity, a dirge for its snowballing disappearance. Species are going extinct at 1,000 times the natural rate.
Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions of life on earth.
Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Elizabeth Kolbert combines brilliant field reporting, the history of ideas and the work of geologists, botanists and marine biologists to tell the gripping stories of a dozen species - including the Panamanian golden frog and the Sumatran rhino - some already gone, others at the point of vanishing.
The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most…
I’m grateful to see how the narrative about Columbus, the Pilgrims, and European colonialism has changed since I was in elementary school, but for someone who was taught that Columbus was a kind of hero-genius, this book was a revelation.
One of its most powerful lessons is how efficient pre-capitalist systems of commerce were; the Incan Empire, which was far bigger than the Holy Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empire, never experienced famine because they prioritized life and well-being over gold and profit. This book also shows how flora in the Americas exploded during the sixteenth century, leading to the Orbis Spike, or the beginning of anthropogenic environmental change.
The lessons from the pre-Columbian, pre-capitalist, and pre-Enlightenment world are invaluable for confronting contemporary problems of American democracy and environmentalism today.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492—from “a remarkably engaging writer” (The New York Times Book Review).
Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized…
This book revises the anthropocentric narrative of early globalization from the perspective of the non-human world in order to demonstrate Nature’s agency in determining ecological, economic, and colonial outcomes. It welcomes readers to reimagine theater history in broader terms, and to account for non-human and atmospheric players in the otherwise anthropocentric history of Shakespearean performance. This book analyses plays, horticultural manuals, cosmetic recipes, Puritan polemics, and travel writing in order to demonstrate how the material practices of grafting, blackface performance, and pyrotechnics both catalyze and resist early forms of globalization in an ecological arena. Furthermore, this book addresses the role of an understudied ecological performance history in determining Shakespeare’s iconic cultural status, and models how non-human players have undermined Shakespeare’s authoritative role in colonial discourse.
I’ve always been fascinated by group dynamics, large and small. Why things functioned well, why they didn’t. It’s possible my ability to empathize and use humor as a consensus-builder is the reason I was elected president of a homeowners association, a music production association, and even an agricultural group. Books were not particularly involved in this fascination! But in recent years, experiencing the breakdown of civility and trust in our political and cultural discourse, I’ve taken a more analytical view of the dynamics. These books, in their very different ways, have taught me lessons about life, understanding those with different beliefs, and finding ways to connect and move forward.
We’ve all experienced the overwhelming level of political and social divisiveness in our country. This invisible “virus” of negativity is, in part, the result of the name-calling and heated rhetoric that has become commonplace among commentators and elected leaders alike.
My book provides a clear perspective on the historical and modern-day causes of our nation's divisive state. It then proposes easy-to-understand solutions—an action plan for our elected leaders and citizens as well. Rather than a scholarly treatment of a complex topic, the book challenges us to take the obvious steps required of those living in a free democracy. And it…
Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation
Lyle Greenfield's "Uniting the States of America―A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation" is a work of nonfiction and opinion. Incorporating the lessons of history and the ideas and wisdom of many, it is intended as both an educational resource and a call-to-action for citizens concerned about the politically and culturally divided state of our Union. A situation that has raised alarm for the very future of our democracy.
First, the book clearly identifies the causes of what has become a national crisis of belief in and love for our country. How the divisiveness and hostility rampant in our political…
