Nature and Madness - Softcover

This is an extraordinary book. Buy it, read it, and begin to remember what it means to be a human animal. --Bloomsbury Review [In] Shepard's texts, we can once again take a deep breath and remember that life is holy and a wildness of spirit is not only something to be retrieved and honored but the very essence of our humanity. --Terry Tempest Williams Much of what we value in contemporary thought about 'nature and culture' grew up in the seedbed of Shepard's thinking. His writing about child development, physical and cultural anthropology, animal behavior, art and mythology, the history of agriculture, and other subjects is endlessly fascinating. --Barry Lopez [Shepard] demands of ecology nothing less than a shift in our whole frame of reference and our attitudes toward life itself. --New York Times Book Review

Through much of history our relationship with the earth has been plagued by ambivalence-we not only enjoy and appreciate the forces and manifestations of nature, we seek to plunder, alter, and control them. Here Paul Shepard uncovers the cultural roots of our ecological crisis and proposes ways to repair broken bonds with the earth, our past, and nature. Ultimately encouraging, he notes, "There is a secret person undamaged in every individual. We have not lost, and cannot lose, the genuine impulse.