The desert and the settlement: three American anarchists
Akshay Ahuja reviews A Paradise Built in Hell, Good News, and The Long Loneliness.
December 3, 2012
The Collapse of Complex Societies (review)
The Collapse of Complex Societies is a useful book. Its model seems valid enough to me, and it contains a wealth of historical background. But I think most readers of this site already have a good idea where this society is headed. For the kind of wisdom that might point to renewal — towards which we still have to work, even if it happens long after we’re gone — we need to look elsewhere.
March 29, 2012
Man and the natural world
Thomas describes changing attitudes to the natural world in early modern Britain, a time period that he sets at approximately 1500-1800. A great many things happened in the relationship between Britons and their natural environment during this period: enclosures of common land, increasing urbanization, the birth of scientific taxonomy, early attempts at conservation, and many others. I read a few pages, saw that Thomas was an engaging writer, and decided to take a first step towards dispelling my massive ignorance of the human past.
January 13, 2012