Writing the World: On Globalization MIT Press

This collection of essays, memoirs, poems, and stories looks at globalization as a worldwide exchange of art and ideas. Writing the World focuses on the cultural realities of globalism -- the opportunities it provides to learn from other cultures. This knowledge, argue David Rothenberg and Wandee Pryor in their introduction, can be power: "When all of us learn enough about our differences to respect the diversity that exists, we will be unable to pretend we are the same. We will never accept the old innocence and ignorance bred by oppression and exploitation." For the contributors to Writing the World , to dream of the global village is to see the world not as a vast market but as a place of shared values and linked wonder.

"It is time to listen to the many literate voices the world speaks," say Rothenberg and Pryor. The voices of Writing the World range from Arundhati Roy on the "colonization of knowledge" in her essay "The Ladies Have Feelings, So... Shall We Leave It to the Experts?" to Naomi Klein's meditation on fences, ownership, and property. They include Bill McKibben on women farmers in Bangladesh, Hannes Westberg's account of being shot by Swedish police at a demonstration, James Barilla on invading and indigenous plant species in "The Aliens in the Garden," and many other vivid, compelling, and provocative writings that celebrate -- and illustrate -- "the poetry of cultural contact."

The theory of evolution connects us to the natural world, explaining how and why we are a part of nature. The idea of progress, on the other hand, projects a destination. "If nature can supply wonderfully elegant solutions to the problem of survival by trying out test models derived solely by chance, then surely it's possible for us to find our way forward," write David Rothenberg and Wandee Pryor, setting the terms of the discussion. But is society going somewhere in particular? Is nature improving? The stories, poems, essays, and artwork in Writing the Future examine the concepts of evolution and progress through a variety of artistic and scientific lenses and speculate on how these ideas can help us appreciate our place in the world.

The first section of the book, "Science, Mustard, Moths," looks at evolution's founding concepts and personalities, and includes Theodore Roszak's challenge to a Darwinian orthodoxy, which he traces back to another pioneering theorist, Alfred Russel Wallace. The second section, "Steps from the Cave," focuses on human change, and features Ellen Dissanayake's unusual look at prehistoric cave paintings in France, poetry by John Canaday, and a richly layered short story by Floyd Skloot. The third section, "Places in Time," moves outward to examine the world evolving and includes a reminiscence by Leslie Van Gelder of growing up "in the church of Darwin" and Eva Salzman's account of an infinitely reverberating walk through a Long Island neighborhood. In the fourth section, "Getting to the Future," the writers consider different manifestations of progress: Katherine Creed Page examines a "future perfect" through reproductive technology, Kevin Warwick reports on linking his nervous system to a computer by means of a small electronic circuit implanted under his skin, and Joan Maloof meditates on our possible future "de-evolution" -- an abdication of our dominating role and gradual return to nature -- which brings the book full circle.

Writing On Air   MIT Press   

From aerial plankton to Navajo wind gods, from joyful singing to painful emphysema, from gentle breezes to violent storms, Writing on Air, creates a fresh way of thinking about the role of air in our everyday lives. Sea captains rein it in with their sails, and pilots cut through it with their wings. We have machines to pump air into our lungs and computers to anticipate the movement of the winds. Air pervades everything we do and gives us life, yet it is impossible to capture. We can only evoke it through images, impressions, and feelings. This book offers a collage of such evocations expressed through prose, poetry, photography, and drawings. more info

Water links all aspects of our existence. From the politics of watersheds to the romance of turtles climbing up from the sea to the beaches, from Leonardo da Vinci to Octavio Paz, from death at a hot spring to the practicalities of liquidation, the writings in this collection reflect on many aspects of the human encounter with water.

The book contains some science, a few plans for managing and protecting water, and plenty of stories, poems, essays, and artwork. The writers include Bob Braine Robert Grudin, Wilson Harris, George Keithley, David Morse, Octavio Paz, physicist Sidney Perkowitz, Eva Salzman, Ted Steinberg, and Peter Warshall, editor of Whole Earth magazine. Photographers include Cyril Christo, Adam David Clayman, Monique Crépault, Helen M. Ellis, Sally Gall, Margaret McCarthy, Kristin Ordahl, Jerry Uelsmann, and Marie Wilkinson.

This is the second in a series of Terra Nova books from MIT Press, which aim to show that environmental issues are cultural and artistic as well as practical and political.          more info

This innovative book and CD, assembled by the editors of the renowned periodical Terra Nova, is the first anthology published on the subject of music and nature. Lush and evocative, yoking together the simplicities and complexities of the world of natural sound and the music inspired by it, this collection includes essays, illustrations, and plenty of sounds and music.

The anthology includes classic texts on music and nature by 20th century masters and includes a compact disc that includes fifteen tracks of music made out of, or reflective of, natural sounds, ranging from Babenzele Pygmy music to Australian butcherbirds, and from Pauline Oliveros to Brian Eno.        More info

The World and the Wild           University of Arizona Press, 2001

Selected as one of the best environmental books for 2001 by planeta.com

"Usually, debates about wilderness include the voices of development interests and 'traditional' preservation advocates, with the recent addition of conservation biologists. In this highly recommended, readable collection, many other kinds of voices prove that wilderness is not merely an American concept; that the concept needs expanding, perhaps exploding; that past debates have been too narrow, incomplete." — Choice

The first anthology to consider wilderness as a global, not just American, issue. This book aims to argue against a truism of environmentalism: that the idea of wilderness is a northern, colonialist conceit that has no place in the environmental plans of newly developing nations. Our contributors, many of them from third world or southern nations themselves, argue the opposite: that wilderness, albeit in often different forms, has an important place in any society's environmental thought and policy. But the idea of wilderness must evolve, to include the perspectives and problems of developing nations.      More info

The New Earth Reader           MIT Press, 1999

A collection of the best essays, stories, and interviews from Terra Nova, the cutting-edge literary journal. It explores the complex and multifarious ways humanity is loose in the natural world. Find out who really wrote the famous Chief Seattle speech. Read why Jaron Lanier wants to turn us all into giant squid so we can talk to one another without language. Rick Bass travels to the country with the most grizzly bears per square mile: Romania.            More info

"A magical anthology." -- Utne Reader

"Finds unexpected ways to heal the split between nature and culture." -- Publishers Weekly