Reviews

The Once and Future World: Nature as It Was, as It Is, as It Could Be by J.B. MacKinnon

stevendedalus's review against another edition

5.0

A lovely, if dispiriting meditation, stuffed full of fascinating facts and anecdotes. MacKinnon delights in questioning assumptions of what is truly natural, and showing the harrowing impact that humanity has had on the species around it since the beginning.

It's a clear-eyed view with enough reverence for the aesthetic and spiritual pleasures of the natural world that it becomes a gentle yet firm advocate for revolution.

sandyd's review against another edition

4.0

I liked this a lot, but not as much as I would have if I hadn't recently read Wild Ones, by Jon Mooallem - which covered many of the same issues, including shifting baselines for evaluating ecological degradation, extinction, environmental amnesia, the value of environment to people, etc.

There were some memorable parts, especially if you enjoy history. Red foxes in the Canadian plains, the history of beavers and wolves in Great Britain, whaling in the Pacific and growing taro and harvesting birds for feathers in Hawaii in late prehistory, the buckskin trade in the southeast US in colonial times - MacKinnon touches on all of this and more.

tashadandelion's review against another edition

4.0

This book was recommended by Linda Nagata, a science fiction writer whose opinion I respect highly, so I picked it up and finally gave it a whirl. I must admit: I was hoping for more "future" in the author's discussion of our natural world. While the writing itself is beautiful and chock-full of fascinating facts (I had never come upon the concept of ecological amnesia before, but it makes total sense; I never knew that Polynesian swimmers knew to punch a shark on the snout to make it go away; I had no idea tortoises expressed joy), the text is largely an elegiac litany of lost species of animals. It's almost too sad to go on reading. But I did read it to the end, because the very least I owe this planet is my acknowledgement of humanity's role in this sixth extinction event we're all experiencing in slow motion. There is some discussion of rewilding, the attempt to re-introduce endangered species to their native habitat and bring that habitat back to some pre-human equilibrium now lost. It seems to me that humanity's voracious need (want?) of natural resources will always be at odds with most other animals' habitats and the ecology as a whole, until some environmental singularity decides the 12th round for us all. Not a comforting thought, but a rational one. For anyone looking for environmentalist non-fiction, this should be on your shelf.