Nature: Western Attitudes since Ancient Times

My review of Peter Coates, Nature: Western Attitudes since Ancient Times is up at Metapsychology online. My bottom line: "I can't think of any reason for anyone to read this book, except perhaps as a guide to the literature for someone who is writing the work that this book should have been."

I'm having a spectacularly unproductive day. In the interest of continuing to avoid doing anything useful, I’m also going to update my interesting-only-to-me list of books I have actually read cover to cover, part of my ongoing effort to read more ethically. I have gone back and added some spring and summer entries, which I originally didn’t include because poetry and comic books go down so quickly. But really, the day I sat down to read the book by the person I am giving the pseudonym SwampWoman the BloggyFriend was actually the closest experience I’ve had in years to reading for its own sake. By contrast, the two books I china I may have finished last semester, although real academic books, were read in exactly the way I don’t like to read. They were basically skimmed repeatedly until all the skimming adds up to a full read. I’ll know for sure I’ve given them a full read only when I go through and actually see if I’ve underlined on every page.

Winter 2006

Coates, Peter A. 1998. Nature: western attitudes since ancient times. Berkeley: University of California Press. 0520217438.

Fall 2005

Shapiro, Judith. 2001. Mao's war against nature: politics and the environment in Revolutionary China. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Smil, Vaclav. 2003. China's past, China's future: energy, food, environment. New York: Routledge.

Whedon, Joss, and Karl Moline (2003) Fray. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse Comics

Summer 2005

Mohr, James C. 1978. Abortion in America: the origins and evolution of national policy, 1800-1900. New York: Oxford University Press.

SwampWoman the BloggyFriend 2003. A Book of Poetry about Nature and Relationships That Is as Lovely as Her Blog. New York: Some Press I Won’t Name.

Spring 2005

Lloyd, Elisabeth A. 2005. The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Liszka, James Jakôb. 2002. Moral competence: an integrated approach to the study of ethics. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Otomo, Katsuhiro. 2000. Akira. Vol. 1.Translation and English Language adaptation: Yuko Umezawa, Linda M. York, Jo Duffy. Originally serialized between 1981 and 1993.

Fall 2004

Huxley, Aldus. 1962. Island. Reprinted by Harper Collins Perennial, New York, 2002, ISBN: 0060085495

Coetzee, J.M. 2003. Elizabeth Costello. New York: Penguin.

Carlson, Allen, and Arnold Berleant, eds. 2004. The aesthetics of natural environments. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.

Summer 2004

Thompson, Paul. 1995. The Spirit of the Soil: Agriculture and Environmental Ethics. New York: Routledge.