Man in the Landscape: A Historic View of the Esthetics of Nature by Paul Shepard (review)

152 Western American Literature style and method—e.g. he notes the “perennial freshness” of Leopold’s “para­ bolic” style; he appreciates Muir’s lively participles, which “convey the sense of process” in the natural world; and he critiques the self-consciousness that plagues a generation of nature writers more often represented by literary figures than by naturalists. He also celebrates the possibilities of a natural im agination rooted in correspondence: the “descendental” motif in Loren Eiseley’s poetry; the vertical axis in John Muir’s narratives; the “unity of the outer and inner landscapes” to which Barry Lopez testifies. One of the main achievements of Paul’swork and one of its chief pleasures is that it leads us to consider further the meaning of this tension between self and natural world. He asks us to take to heart Thoreau’s haunting reminder: “The universe is not a chamber of mirrors which reflect me. When I reflect, I find that there is other than me.” W 50UGLAS BURTON-CHRISTIE Santa Clara University r ^ a n in the Landscape: A Historic View of the Esthetics ofNature. By Paul Shepard. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991. 290 pages, $24.50.) In 1967, when Lynn White suggested that our destructive attitude toward the environment might stem from Judeo-Christian teachings, a suggestion that sparked heated debates among conservationists, Paul Shepard’s Man in the Landscape was published with little fanfare. The book was a revised version of Shepard’s doctoral thesis, written thirteen years before, and it dealt with some of the same issues White raised. However, Shepard suggested that the origins of our ecological crisis might predate the rise of religion; he began his examina­ tion of our attitudes toward the environment with the development in humans of binocular vision. Texas A&M recently republished Shepard’s book as the eleventh in their Environmental History Series. The book will be of special interest to WAL readers who adopt ecocriticism as their approach to literature, as it includes, among more general examinations of the place of humans in the landscape, a chapter specifically on the American West. KATE BOYES Utah State University ffie Eagle Bird: Mapping a New West. By Charles F. Wilkinson. (New York: Pan­ theon Books, 1992. 203 pages, $20.00.) The Eagle Bird is neither written by an English teacher nor penned for a literary reader. Rather, its author is a law professor; its audience, every one of us ...