Wild at Heart

America's Turbulent Relationship with Nature, from Exploitation to Redemption

By: Alice Outwater

Narrated by: Joyce Bean

Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

"Through a narrative that roams in unexpected directions through surprising details and history, then periodically grounds itself by looping back to her own family before it soars off again, Alice Outwater’s infectiously readable Wild at Heart captures the essence of ecology: Everything is connected, and every connection leads to ourselves." --Alan Weisman, author, The World Without Us and Countdown

In the tradition of The World Without Us, a beautifully written and ultimately hopeful history of our relationship with the natural world

Nature on the brink? Maybe not. With so much bad news in the world, we forget how much environmental progress has been made. In a narrative that reaches from Native American tribal practices to public health and commercial hunting, Wild at Heart shows how western attitudes towards nature have changed dramatically in the last five hundred years.

The Chinook gave thanks for King Salmon's gifts. The Puritans saw Nature as a frightening wilderness, full of "uncooked meat." With the industrial revolution, nature was despoiled and simultaneously celebrated as a source of the sublime. With little forethought and great greed, Americans killed the last passenger pigeon, wiped out the old growth forests, and dumped so much oil in the rivers that they burst into flame. But in the span of a few decades, our relationship with nature has evolved to a more sophisticated sense of interdependence that brings us full circle. Across the US, people are taking individual action, planting native species and fighting for projects like dam removal and wolf restoration. Cities are embracing nature, too.

Humans can learn from the past, and our choices today will determine whether nature survives. Like the First Nations, all nations must come to deep agreement that nature needs protection. This compelling book reveals both how we got here and our own and nature's astonishing ability to mutually regenerate.

©2019 by Alice Outwater. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

contains good info, but it's pretty dry

I struggled to finish this one. This book contains some interesting facts, but there wasn't anything to keep me interested. It listens more like a college lecture. I found myself daydreaming about what I needed to get and would miss entire sections of the book. The narrator was dry to listen to also. That being said it did contain some good info and facts. I definitely learned more about the early settlers and early ecological history of the us.