The Once and Future World
Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be
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4.0 • 7 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From one of Canada's most exciting writers and ecological thinkers, a book that changes the way we see nature and shows that in restoring the living world, we are also restoring ourselves.
The Once and Future World began in the moment J.B. MacKinnon realized the grassland he grew up on was not the pristine wilderness he had always believed it to be. Instead, his home prairie was the outcome of a long history of transformation, from the disappearance of the grizzly bear to the introduction of cattle. What remains today is an illusion of the wild--an illusion that has in many ways created our world.
In three beautifully drawn parts, MacKinnon revisits a globe exuberant with life, where lions roam North America and 20 times more whales swim in the sea. He traces how humans destroyed that reality, out of rapaciousness, yes, but also through a great forgetting. Finally, he calls for an "age of restoration," not only to revisit that richer and more awe-filled world, but to reconnect with our truest human nature. MacKinnon never fails to remind us that nature is a menagerie of marvels. Here are fish that pass down the wisdom of elders, landscapes still shaped by "ecological ghosts," a tortoise that is slowly remaking prehistory. "It remains a beautiful world," MacKinnon writes, "and it is its beauty, not its emptiness, that should inspire us to seek more nature in our lives."
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
J.B. MacKinnon is the very best kind of nature writer, balancing a knack for presenting scientific ideas clearly and evocatively with a poetic passion for the flora and fauna he’s examining. His new book’s central idea is deeply sad: we live in a “10 Percent World,” an era of unprecedented ecological decimation. MacKinnon paints an alarmingly grim picture. But with its gorgeous, meticulously researched descriptions of the bountiful landscapes of the past, The Once and Future World—a finalist for the 2013 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction—is also an invitation to re-imagine the world. The Vancouver-based ecologist argues that “rewilding” the planet would yield innumerable gifts for our own species.
