Green History : A Reader in Environmental Literature, Philosophy and Politics

Charting the origins of the modern ecology movement over more than two thousand years, this volume gives a voice to those hidden from history, revealing "green" themes within artistic and scientific thought.

Green History traces the development of ecological writing through history and forms a broad critical review of green ideas and movements reinforcing the importance of environmental concern and action in our own time. Animal rights, ecology as science, feminism, green fascism/socialism/anarchism, land reform, peaceful protest, industrialization, ancient ecology, evolution, grassroots activism, philosophical holism, recycling, Taoism, demographics, utopias, sustainability, spiritualism ...all these issues and many more are discussed. Authors include Alice Walker on massacre in the City of Brotherly Love, Aldous Huxley on progress, Lewis Mumford on the organic outlook, Engels on natural dialectics, Thoreau on the fontier life, the Shelleys on vegetarianism and playing God, Bacon on the New Atlantis, Hildegard of Bingen on green vigour, the unknown writer of the Bodhisattva and the Hungry Tigress and Plato on soil erosion. Each article is set within its historical and thematic context. A full introduction and a guide to further reading are also provided.