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摘要
摘要
Often referred to as America's national epic of exploration, the 28-month Lewis and Clark expedition was certainly America's greatest odyssey. Beginning in St. Louis, William Clark and Meriwether Lewis navigated up the Missouri River and through the prairies, reaching the summit of the Rocky Mountains and then following the Columbia River to their final destination, the Pacific Ocean. Trained in natural history and in the methods of collecting plant and animal samples, they carefully and meticulously recorded the conditions of the rivers, prairies, forests, mountains, and wildlife of pre-industrial America. In this new edition of Our Natural History, Daniel Botkin, a distinguished botanist and naturalist, recreates the grand journey -- taking us on an exciting ecological adventure back to the landscape of the great American West. In retracing their steps, Botkin reveals what this western landscape actually looked like and how much it's been changed by modern civilization and technology. He shows us that from the explorers' observations, we can learn much about the environment of our past, our environment today, and what our environment might be in the future. Now with a new afterword marking the 200th anniversary of the expedition, this timely and thought-provoking book captures our imagination and stimulates our sentiment with lessons about our environment and our place within it. Our Natural History offers a stunning and rare portrait of the rugged, beautiful, disappearing wilderness of the American West. Book jacket.
评论 (4)
出版社周刊评论
This intriguing volume begins with Lewis and Clark's search for a pass in the Rocky Mountain wilderness; it ends with the author's search for original prairie in Omaha, Nebraska. Botkin (Discordant Harmony: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century) describes the American West as seen by Lewis and Clark in 1804-06 and compares it with today's West as shaped by industrial civilization. It is a unique picture of frontier wilderness, interwoven with Botkin's own perspective on nature. He maintains that our present approach to environmental issues is based on faulty beliefs, mythologies and religious convictions. The records of Lewis and Clark are valuable for helping us understand what nature was like before we changed it. Botkin notes that we rarely approach conservation with the methodical intensity found in the explorers' journals. He has given us a fresh and welcome perspective on that historic expedition. BOMC selection. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus评论
An earnest, sometimes overwrought, and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to link the famed Lewis and Clark expedition to modern environmentalist thought. Botkin (Discordant Harmonies, 1990, etc.), a proponent of the data-heavy New Ecology, sets out to cover the same ground Meriwether Lewis and William Clark did in their 18041806 survey of the Missouri River, maintaining that their careful observations on the native species, landscapes, and human residents of that great stretch of country should serve as models for avoiding ``a glamorized utopian vision of nature.'' He covers the ground in a fashion, all right, but the framing device is contrived. Botkin writes with none of the luminousness of Lewis's journals (``Ocian in View!''), none of the sense of wonder at the vast new country the expedition saw. Instead, he offers sometimes sterile, sometimes contorted observations such as: ``Lewis and Clark, like modern rivermen, were confronted hour by hour, day by day, with the reality of a changing, unpredictable, and harsh nature. It is these rates of change and kinds of changes that must be our guide to finding solutions to environmental problems.'' Botkin's decision to cut his text into subheaded, scatterburst, short discussions yields an argument that flows as choppily as the lower Missouri. In that brisk seen-this-done-that approach, simple fact too often stands in the place of reasoned observation, and statements of the obvious are offered as profundities. Botkin does hit, now and again, on meaty matters, as when he observes that even as our cartographic techniques have grown ever more sophisticated, it is harder and harder to buy a US Geological Survey topographic map, and his longish discussion of salmon ecology is worthy of a book in itself. Botkin's forays, too, into the mismanagement of our national resources are well taken. But in the end there are too many asides here, and too little matter. (maps, not seen) (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)
《书目》(Booklist)书评
Botkin, a distinguished biologist, naturalist, and prolific author, believes that our limited and outmoded conception of nature is at the root of our environmental problems. We have all the science and technology we need for coping with such dire situations as the destruction of forests and the extinction of species, but we lack the kind of perspectives and ideas that would enable us to use this knowledge productively. Botkin's quest for a viable natural history led him to the exhaustive chronicles of the remarkable Lewis and Clark expedition. Lewis, Clark, and company conducted a 7,000-mile odyssey and methodically observed, collected, measured, and mapped under the most demanding and exhausting of circumstances. Botkin puts their precious and amazingly detailed information to brilliant use as he compares their world with ours. His discussions of the fate of rivers, grizzlies, buffaloes, wolves, salmon, forests, prairies, and the people who called this "wilderness" home for centuries are hard hitting and provocative. We can only hope that books like this will steer us toward a more respectful and environmentally sound way of life. --Donna Seaman
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
Botkin, president of the Center for the Study of the Environment and director of the Program on Global Change at George Mason University, examines the journals of Lewis and Clark to understand change in nature. His question is "What was nature like before modern, technological civilization?" For people to have a better, more secure future, Botkin asserts that they must understand their relationship with the environment. They must know not only their own history but the history of nature as well. Addressing timeless topics, Botkin blends the historic past with the newsworthy present to offer solutions for the future. Recommended for all libraries.-Patricia Owens, Wabash Valley Coll., Mt. Carmel, Ill. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
目录
Preface | p. xiii |
Chapter 1 A Road Through the Wilderness | p. 1 |
Chapter 2 Meanders: Nature and the Missouri River | p. 20 |
Chapter 3 Wet and Dry Mud | p. 39 |
Chapter 4 Thirty-Seven Grizzly Bears in the Wilderness | p. 59 |
Chapter 5 A Measured Journey | p. 87 |
Chapter 6 Buffalo and Winter on the Plains: Technology Meets Wilderness | p. 101 |
Chapter 7 Wolves, People, and Biological Diversity | p. 128 |
Chapter 8 Through the Mountains | p. 159 |
Chapter 9 Down the Columbia | p. 176 |
Chapter 10 Winter and Wood on the Pacific Coast | p. 212 |
Chapter 11 The Return Through Prairie Country | p. 256 |
Afterword | p. 279 |
Notes | p. 283 |
Index | p. 298 |