Flight Maps: Adventures With Nature In Modern America

Price, Jennifer

ISBN 10: 0465024858 / ISBN 13: 9780465024858

Published by Basic Books, 1999

Book is in very good condition and may include minimal underlining highlighting. The book can also include "From the library of" labels. May not contain miscellaneous items toys, dvds, etc. . We offer 100% money back guarantee and 24 7 customer service. Seller Inventory # ZBV.0465024858.VG

Synopsis:

A quirky, brilliant debut book that explores the evolution of our relationship to nature and the ways in which we attach meaning to it today. Flight Maps should find its place on any bookshelf with the likes of David Quammen and John McPhee. . In five sharply drawn chapters, Flight Maps charts the ways in which Americans have historically made connectionsand missed connectionswith nature. Beginning with an extraordinary chapter on the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and the accompanying belligerent early view of natures inexhaustibility, Price then moves on to discuss the Audubon Societys founding campaign in the 1890s against the extravagant use of stuffed birds to decorate womens hats. At the heart of the book is an improbable and extremely witty history of the plastic pink flamingo, perhaps the totem of Artifice and Kitschnevertheless a potent symbol through which to plumb our troublesome yet powerful visions of nature. From here the story of the affluent Baby-Boomers begins. Through an examination of the phenomenal success of The Nature Company, TV series such as Northern Exposure and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and the sport-utility vehicle craze, the author ruminates on our very American, very urbanized and suburbanized needs, discontents, and desires for meaningful, yet artificially constructed connections to nature. In five sharply drawn chapters, Flight Maps charts the ways in which Americans have historically made connectionsand missed connectionswith nature. Beginning with an extraordinary chapter on the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and the accompanying belligerent early view of natures inexhaustibility, Price then moves on to discuss the Audubon Societys founding campaign in the 1890s against the extravagant use of stuffed birds to decorate womens hats. At the heart of the book is an improbable and extremely witty history of the plastic pink flamingo, perhaps the totem of Artifice and Kitschnevertheless a potent symbol through which to plumb our troublesome yet powerful visions of nature. From here the story of the affluent Baby-Boomers begins. Through an examination of the phenomenal success of The Nature Company, TV series such as Northern Exposure and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and the sport-utility vehicle craze, the author ruminates on our very American, very urbanized and suburbanized needs, discontents, and desires for meaningful, yet artificially constructed connections to nature. Witty, at times even whimsical, Flight Maps is also a sophisticated and meditative archaeology of Americans very real and uneasy desire to make nature meaningful in their lives.

Review: In her award-winning Yale PhD dissertation turned mainstream hardcover, essayist Jennifer Price methodically accounts for the fall of the passenger pigeon, the rise of the pink lawn flamingo, the propagation of nature-themed shopping centre stores in the US, and what all this has to do with modern humanity's relationship to nature. Primarily a smart meditation for babyboomers on why a Volvo can't save your soul and why the name "Nature Company" should seem ironic, Flight Maps is a long, scholarly riff on how nature has evolved into a "Place Apart" that we fumble to revisit and recapture, with everything from Toyota 4-Runners to Rainforest Crunch candy.

Price's observations centre around how our actions, our beliefs, and--especially--our purchases betray an idealised but conflicted view of nature, as both an undiluted source of "Realness," but also as a difficult-to-connect-with abstraction, often mangled by our embrace. Flight Maps traces these attitudes back to 19th-century America, recounting the extinction of passenger pigeons, the controversy over bird-topped women's hats, and the faltering first steps of early conservation groups. The book's second and best half, though, covers the present, from John Waters' flicks to nature's place in the mall. Price's just-jaded-enough sense of humour combined with her academic rigor perfectly skewers the likes of Northern Exposure's $5,000-a-day moose and stress-relief products from the Nature Company's catalogue (delivered in perfect deadpan: "Pachelbel Canon in D Blended with the Eternal Sound of the Sea--Creates a tranquil atmosphere for quiet meditation. CD $16.98"). --Paul Hughes, Amazon.com

Bibliographic Details

Title: Flight Maps: Adventures With Nature In ...
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication Date: 1999
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: very_good