The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World - Hardcover

Schiefelbein, Susan; Cousteau, Jacques

 
9781596914179: The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1596914173 ISBN 13: 9781596914179
Verlag: Bloomsbury USA, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

Part adventure story, part manifesto, the legendary ocean explorer's passionate plea for sustaining life on earth.

Explorer, diving pioneer, filmmaker, inventor, and activist, Jacques Cousteau was blessed from his childhood with boundless curiosity about the natural world. As the leader of fascinating, often dangerous expeditions all over the planet, he discovered firsthand the complexity and beauty of life on earth and undersea―and watched the toll taken by human activity in the twentieth century.

In this magnificent last book, finally available for the first time in the United States, Cousteau describes his deeply informed philosophy about protecting our world for future generations. Weaving gripping stories of his adventures throughout, he and coauthor Susan Schiefelbein address the risks we take with human health, the overfishing and sacking of the world's oceans, the hazards of nuclear proliferation, and the environmental responsibility of scientists, politicians, and people of faith. Cousteau's lyrical, passionate call for action to protect our earth and seas and their myriad life forms is even more relevant today than when this book was completed in 1996. Written over the last ten years of his life with frequent collaborator Schiefelbein, who also introduces the text and provides an update on environmental developments in the decade since Cousteau's death, this prescient, clear-sighted book is a remarkable testament to the life and work of one of our greatest modern adventurers.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bill McKibben is a founder of the environmental organization 350.org and was among the first to have warned of the dangers of global warming. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including the bestsellers The End of Nature, Eaarth, and Deep Economy.

He is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and the winner of the Gandhi Prize, the Thomas Merton Prize, and the Right Livelihood Prize. He lives in Vermont with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern.

Rezensionen

Believing that "people will protect what they love," pioneering marine explorer and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau (1910 97) set out to make humankind fall in love with the sea, the crucible of life. A man of sangfroid, conviction, courage, ingenuity, and perception, Cousteau not only was the preeminent guide to the surpassing beauty and mystery of the deep but also became a tireless defender of the watery realm. With the help of Schiefelbein, who wrote the narration for a number of his award-winning documentaries, Cousteau completed this defining and superlative chronicle the year before his death, and although it has taken a decade for it to reach America, it is fresh and stinging, replete with an anchoring foreword by Bill McKibben and Schiefelbein's vivid introduction and informative epilogue. Cousteau seamlessly splices amazing tales of exploring undersea caves, encountering sharks, and surviving an Antarctic blizzard with bracing eyewitness accounts of the shockingly rapid and potentially catastrophic destruction of marine life. Indelible descriptions of the glory of the undersea world are matched by prescient observations and arresting analysis of humankind's paradoxical approach to risk, the roles religion and science play in defining our perception of nature, and the "moral quandaries" attendant on technology, especially nuclear weapons. Cousteau's electrifying, many-faceted masterwork at once celebrates "life's miracles " and warns us that unless we stop ransacking "nature's irreplaceables," we may go the way of the dinosaurs. Seaman, Donna

Starred Review. Written by renowned ocean explorer Cousteau in the 10 years before his death, this book strikes a note of caution as it celebrates the natural world: as the seas are plundered, the biosphere is polluted and the hazards of nuclear power are imposed upon nature, the human race is unraveling complexities it took eternity to create. As a scientist and an explorer, Cousteau laments the government's use of science as a handmaiden to profit, reproaching technocrats and military and industrial leaders who, in pursuit of power and money, make decisions and leave the rest of the world, and its ecosystems, to live with their mistakes. An informative introduction and epilogue by Schiefelbein, a former editor at the Saturday Review, updates this account with developments since Cousteau's death, including the continuing depletion of the oceans and the persistent shift of funds from scientific research to economic priorities. Cousteau's reverence for life's miracles—embodied by the evolutionary wonders of the human, the orchid and the octopus—shines through in this eloquent testimony on the importance of pursuing higher ideals, particularly the preservation of the oceans and the natural world for future generations. (Nov.)
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Verlag
Bloomsbury USA
Erscheinungsdatum
2007
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1596914173
ISBN 13 
9781596914179
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
contact@bloomsbury.com

50 Bedford Square
London
England
WC1B 3DP
Deutschland

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