Bøger af David Lowenthal

A book of original poetry containing approximately 40 poems concerning the marvels of nature and the myths of science.

Orwell is both an artist and unlikely moralist in 1984. He exhorts man to reject intellectual enslavement, socialism, and perverse individualism, and instead fight for truthful unity that is founded on human dignity.

Shakespeare's Thought: Unobserved Details and Unsuspected Depths in Eleven Plays analyzes eleven of Shakespeare's most famous plays offering an in-depth exploration of the ways in which each play demonstrates his political thought and his poetic genius.

By analyzing many of Lincolns most important speeches, The Mind and Art of Abraham Lincoln, Philosopher Statesman shows him to be a profound and systematic thinker who tries to get at the root of issues, not all of them strictly political. Lowenthal emphasizes Lincolns manner of writing, which enables him to conceal his most radical thoughts, and pays special attention to the reasoning and artfulness with which he treats a wide variety of subjects. The book follows Lincoln from his Perpetuation or Lyceum address in 1838 to his last speech just after Lees surrender, as he confronts the great issues of the day and lays out the fundamentals of American politics. Along the way, Lowenthals careful analysis frees Lincoln of the charge of racial prejudice with which he has been saddled in recent years.

George Perkins Marsh (18011882) was the first to reveal the menace of environmental misuse, to explain its causes, and to prescribe reforms. David Lowenthal here offers fresh insights, from new sources, into Marshs career and shows his relevance today, in a book which has its roots in but wholly supersedes Lowenthals earlier biography George Perkins Marsh: Versatile Vermonter (1958). Marshs devotion to the repair of nature, to the concerns of working people, to womens rights, and to historical stewardship resonate more than ever. His Vermont birthplace is now a national park chronicling American conservation, and the crusade he launched is now global.Marshs seminal book Man and Nature is famed for its ecological acumen. The clue to its inception lies in Marshs many-sided engagement in the life of his time. The broadest scholar of his day, he was an acclaimed linguist, lawyer, congressman, and renowned diplomat who served 25 years as U.S. envoy to Turkey and to Italy. He helped found and guide the Smithsonian Institution, shaped the Washington Monument, penned potent tracts on fisheries and on irrigation, spearheaded public science, art, and architecture. He wrote on camels and corporate corruption, Icelandic grammar and Alpine glaciers. His pungent and provocative letters illuminate life on both sides of the Atlantic.Like Darwins Origin of Species, Marshs Man and Nature marked the inception of a truly modern way of looking at the world, of taking care lest we irreversibly degrade the fabric of humanized nature we are bound to manage. Marshs ominous warnings inspired reforestation, watershed management, soil conservation, and nature protection in his day and ours.George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation was awarded the Association for American Geographers' 2000 J. B. Jackson Prize. The book was also on the shortlist for the first British Academy Book Prize, awarded in December 2001.

Heritage has burgeoned over the past quarter of a century from a small elite preoccupation into a major popular crusade. Everything from Disneyland to the Holocaust Museum, from the Balkan wars to the Northern Irish troubles, from Elvis memorabilia to the Elgin Marbles bears the marks of the cult of heritage. In this acclaimed 1998 book David Lowenthal explains the rise of this obsession with the past and examines its power for both good and evil.

To Pass On a Good Earth is the candid and compelling new biography of one of the twentieth century's most distinctive and influential scholars. The legendary "e;Great God beyond the Sierras,"e; Carl Ortwin Sauer is America's most famed geographer, an inspiration to both academics and poets, yet no book-length biography of him has existed until now. This Missouri-born son of German immigrants contributed to many fields, with a versatility rare in his time and virtually unknown today. Sauer explored plant and animal domestication, the entry of Native Americans into the continent, their transformation of the land into prairies and cultivated fields, and subsequent European enterprise that fueled prosperity but also triggered environmental degradation and the loss of cultural diversity. Providing profound and invaluable insights into the human occupance, cultivation--and often ruination--of the earth, Sauer revolutionized our understanding of the impact of European conquest of the New World.Author and fellow geographer Michael Williams had access to Sauer's voluminous correspondence in the Bancroft Library at Berkeley and in family collections. Enlivened by these intimate letters to family and colleagues, To Pass On a Good Earth reveals the rare qualities of mind and heart that made Sauer one of America's most treasured--as well as troubled--intellectual pioneers. He brought both historical rigor and humanistic understanding to the burgeoning environmental movement and ceaselessly championed an ecumenical approach in an age of increasing specialization.