Why am I passionate about this?
I am not a naturalist but consider myself a practitioner of ”lyrical naturalism.” My interest is in the descriptions of nature by poets and artists in previous centuries. The dream is to inspire people to look at the natural environment through the lens of art and poetry rather than the somewhat dry frameworks of botany. My great hero is John Ruskin, a British writer whose lyrical prose has never stopped enchanting its readers. I was very happy to publish a book of essays titled Woodland Imagery in Northern Art, c. 1500-1800: Poetry and Ecology. I hope that its richly illustrated essays will inspire readers to look at the environment with renewed wonder.
Leopoldine's book list on the woodlands before the Industrial Revolution
Why did Leopoldine love this book?
Lovelock’s revolutionary discovery that earth’s living matter—air, ocean, and land surfaces—forms a complex system that has the capacity to keep our planet a fit place for life.
It is vital in instilling the knowledge in all those who inhabit the earth that Gaia (the Greek goddess of the earth) is not inert matter but a living organism.
As we imagine the earth as a living being, we may have second thoughts about doing her further harm…
2 authors picked Gaia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
In this classic work that continues to inspire many readers, Jim Lovelock puts forward his idea that the Earth functions as a single organism. Written for non-scientists, Gaia is a journey through time and space in search of evidence in support of a radically different model of our planet. In contrast to conventional belief that life is passive in the face of threats to its existence, the book explores the hypothesis that the Earth's living matter influences
air, ocean, and rock to form a complex, self-regulating system that has the capacity to keep the Earth a fit place for life.…