Kirjahaku

As it erupted in 1980, Mount St. Helens captured the attention of the region, nation, and the world, and it continues to fascinate us today? a constant reminder that we live in a volcanic landscape. In lucid prose and poetry by some of America?s leading writers and ecologists, In the Blast Zone explores this story of destruction and renewal in all its human, geological, and ecological dimensions. Most popular accounts of the momentous eruption have focused on the devastation it caused. More recent scientific work on Mount St. Helens tells a story of unexpectedly rapid and varied ecological and geological change. In the Blast Zone is the first book to present a cross-pollination of literary and scientific perspectives on the mountain?s history of cataclysm and renewal. Most of the contributors to this volume camped together on Mount St. Helens for four days in 2005?the 25th anniversary of the eruption? hiking, learning the ecology, and sharing ideas. They asked the question: What can this radically altered landscape tell us about nature and how to live our lives? In the Blast Zone collects some of their answers. While introducing fascinating ecological and geological insights, it also tells compelling stories about how science informs our lives and our relationship to nature. These writings will startle readers with new recognition of the matchless gift Mount St. Helens makes to our region and the world: the gifts of beauty, of scientific illumination, of hope.

Based on either written or oral interviews with a dozen prominent environmental writers, What's Nature Worth? explores how the art of storytelling might bring new perspectives and insights to economic and policy discussions regarding the "value" of nature and the environment. The diverse points of view explored, and the writers' insistence on careful interpretation, demonstrate that environmental values are complex, rich, and deeply felt--far more so than mainstream economic methodology would have us believe. There is general consensus among the contributors that the narrative form allows for an exploration of the richness of what it means to "value" nature without being preachy or didactic. Following interviews with the twelve authors, examples of their work demonstrate how indirect expressions of value, in the words of Allison Hawthorne Deming, have an "emotional hue" that can replenish the energy depleted by the coldness of cost-benefit arguments.

This volume focuses on the interface of the Anthropocene, sustainability, ecological aesthetics, multispecies relationality, and the environment as reflected in literature and culture. The work examines how writers have addressed ecological crises and environmental challenges that transcend national, cultural, political, social, and linguistic borders. The volume demonstrates how, as the environmental humanities developed and emerged as a critical discipline, it generated a diverse range of interdisciplinary fields of study, such as ecographics, ecodesign, ecocinema, ecotheology, ecofeminism, ethnobotany, ecolinguistics and bioregionalism, and formed valuable, interdisciplinary networks of critique and advocacy—and its contemporary expansion is exceptionally salient to social, political, and public issues today.