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A review by fjette
Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild by Lucy Jones
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.0
I wanted to like this book more than I did. Some parts were exceptionally well-written, especially Jones’ prose about nature.
On the other hand, she wrote about systemic barriers to accessing nature in a way that felt cursory. The solutions she described were very small scale and rooted in people with money and access offering the outdoors to “deprived” people and places as if it were something that had to be taught to POC/low-income folks.
The book gained strength and authority throughout, but the initial few chapters about the science felt underresearched and overreaching. I preferred the tone later - we should preserve the natural world because it’s the right thing to do and our global heritage, not because a random professor did an fMRI that showed movement of neurotransmitters we don’t fully understand.
Finally, when Jones discussed people who dont like nature or feel a connection to the natural world, her tone was pretty judgmental. She didn’t address issues of access rooted in disability, and the way she talked about mental illness was limited at best. I’m glad I read and finished it, but I would recommend Braiding Sweetgrass over this book.
On the other hand, she wrote about systemic barriers to accessing nature in a way that felt cursory. The solutions she described were very small scale and rooted in people with money and access offering the outdoors to “deprived” people and places as if it were something that had to be taught to POC/low-income folks.
The book gained strength and authority throughout, but the initial few chapters about the science felt underresearched and overreaching. I preferred the tone later - we should preserve the natural world because it’s the right thing to do and our global heritage, not because a random professor did an fMRI that showed movement of neurotransmitters we don’t fully understand.
Finally, when Jones discussed people who dont like nature or feel a connection to the natural world, her tone was pretty judgmental. She didn’t address issues of access rooted in disability, and the way she talked about mental illness was limited at best. I’m glad I read and finished it, but I would recommend Braiding Sweetgrass over this book.