Books in Canada
Alexander Wilson's remarkable The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez , is from Between the Lines, which has, on a shoestring budget, brought us more intelligent theoretical texts on the state of our cultural environment over the last five years than all of Canada's mainstream presses put together.
Wilson's book is a perfect example of what the press excels at. It is the first study ever done on the effect that the Disney-led "Let's-have-fun-and-not-think-about-who-gets-the-profits" approach to architecture, land use, and civic culture has had on our urban and natural environments. Although occasionally made opaque by its complexity, Wilson's analysis of the environments we have constructed around us (and the natural systems we have damaged or destroyed) is refreshingly neutral. He is neither a wildflower-brandishing Birkenstock environmentalist nor a bug-eyed techno-fun fascist. He argues that if sustainable development is ever to be more than a public relations term, technology, human culture, and nature are going to have to be integrated in ways that previous eras have been incapable of imagining. According to Wilson, the most dangerous problem we face is a conceptual deficit, not a technological one. This is an indispensable book, and one that readers will find themselves going back to again and again as the effects of the single-minded and single-purpose messing around of the last 50 years become more unavoidable.
Brian Fawcett (Books in Canada)
About the Author
The late Alexander Wilson was a horticulturalist, journalist, and partner in a landscape design firm. He taught and wrote widely on popular culture, media, and the environment.
