"Book of Nature" is Lapham's third journal in this wonderful new quarterly (see previous review). The topic is of course "Nature" and the range and variety of works is broad. Since this is an area that I am already somewhat familiar with, many of the pieces are not new to me, but it was a delight to run across favorites, and of course the parade of new pieces I had never heard of before. There are over 100 so I will detail just a few that stood out:

The first section is called "Howling Wilderness" and deals with the power of nature that both commands worship and instills fear. Immanuel Kant, before altering the course of philosophy with the categorical imperative, mused on the aesthetics of beauty giving some wonderful definitions of "sublime" and its variants. Evan Connell recounts an epic Antarctic survival story from Shackleton's 1909 expedition, his near death experiences are so often "one is tempted to exclaim 'Oh, come off it!'". Pliny the Younger vividly re-tells one heroic tragedy during the Pompeii volcanic explosion, when citizens wore pillows on their heads to keep off falling rocks. Robinson Jeffers poetically describes sea-lions being attacked by killer whales. Jack London recalls the SF Earthquake, with people hauling trunks of possessions through the flames, the working man able to dig a hole and bury it, the middle class man without the tools or strength forced to abandon.

The second section "Garden's of Earthly Delight" is about man's control of nature according to his image. John Burger looks at the history and philosophy of the zoo, revealing its origin in early 19th century Romantic Nationalism. Vitruvius in the first-century BC discovers the length of both arms equals the height of a man, and many other fascinating body-part symmetries. Curtis White writes in 2007 about the philosophical side of environmentalism, suggesting it needs more than just science, but also an ethic, morality and spirituality. E.B. White laments the passing of a pig (not the one from Charlotte's Web).

The third section "Terra Incognita" has works which suggest "we don't know what's going on." Al Gore starts off with a motivational excerpt from the book An Inconvienent Truth - I have only seen the movie but the book seems even better. C.S. Lewis provides a wonderful quote: "What we call man's power over nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with nature as its instrument." A Crow Indian laments the death of the Buffalo.

This issue contains 6 original essays all of which are very good. The first essay by D. Grahamm Burnett attempts a summary of the history of the evolving concept "nature" in the Western tradition - a complex journey indeed, I think C.S. Lewis did a better job of it in The Discarded Image, but this is probably the academically strongest essay of the bunch, although a complex and difficult topic. Bill McKibben re-examines Thoreau's Walden and its importance to modern readers. Simon Winchester ends with a really cool and fascinating essay about how different the world would be if a volcanic mountain had popped up a few miles from its present location, thus altering the course of the Yangtze river away from China. If you read only one essay in the entire issue, don't miss this one.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd ( )