EBOOK
Pandora's Garden
Kudzu, Cockroaches, and Other Misfits of Ecology
Clinton Crockett PetersSeries: Crux: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction(0)
About
Pandora's Garden profiles invasive or unwanted species in the natural world and examines how our treatment of these creatures sometimes parallels in surprising ways how we treat each other. Part essay, part nature writing, part narrative nonfiction, the chapters in Pandora's Garden are like the biospheres of the globe; as the successive chapters unfold, they blend together like ecotones, creating a microcosm of the world in which we sustain nonhuman lives but also contain them.
There are many reasons particular flora and fauna may be unwanted, from the physical to the psychological. Sometimes they may possess inherent qualities that when revealed help us to interrogate human perception and our relationship to an unwanted other. Pandora's Garden is primarily about creatures that humans don't get along with, such as rattlesnakes and sharks, but the chapters also take on a range of other subjects, including stolen children in Australia, the treatment of illegal immigrants in Texas, and the disgust function of the human limbic system. Peters interweaves these diverse subjects into a whole that mirrors the evolving and interrelated world whose surprises and oddities he delights in revealing.
There are many reasons particular flora and fauna may be unwanted, from the physical to the psychological. Sometimes they may possess inherent qualities that when revealed help us to interrogate human perception and our relationship to an unwanted other. Pandora's Garden is primarily about creatures that humans don't get along with, such as rattlesnakes and sharks, but the chapters also take on a range of other subjects, including stolen children in Australia, the treatment of illegal immigrants in Texas, and the disgust function of the human limbic system. Peters interweaves these diverse subjects into a whole that mirrors the evolving and interrelated world whose surprises and oddities he delights in revealing.
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Reviews
"I see books such as Peters's as an expression of our Zeitgeist. I have the clear notion Pandora's Garden is necessary. In an era that some scientists have dubbed the Anthropocene, we need a clear understanding of the persistent power of what we call nature-whether that power is deemed 'invasive' or otherwise. Pandora's Garden is essential reading for anyone who loves a beautiful essay and also fo
BK Loren, author of Animal, Mineral, Radical: Essays on Wildlife, Family, and Food
"The Theory of Light and Matter displays that fine combination of mystery and manners that drove Flannery O'Connor's work and drives all good fiction: mystery over what our behaviors and misbehaviors reveal about us, and manners in the peculiar style or vision by which the author conducts the investigation."
Nicole Walker, author of Quench Your Thirst with Salt
"I find it refreshing that Peters focuses outward, on things in the world independent of the self. What's more, the writing is a pleasant blend of the clearly informational and the artfully lyrical, which helps with its purpose to get readers thinking not just about the nominal subjects (invasive species), but about people's treatment of each other. Yet Peters doesn't preach and doesn't scold. He
Patrick Madden, author of Sublime Physick: Essays