This book despite it's somewhat horrific subject matter has a beauty so deep and profound it restores my faith in interest in Black and White image making. Beautifully printed it is a book that any budding black and white landscape photographer should own.

This is a cheap book considering the printing quality, the fact that it is hardbound and due to the number of plates. What's new here is the fact that the pictures are aerial photographs. The artist was creative with the aerial image and here and there we see that he has made some really beautiful images - pages 10, 12, 21, 35, 37, 41, 47, 49, 55, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 91. Some images remind me of the early work by the Spanish painter and sculptor Tapies. It goes to prove that the sensitive eye can and will find ambiguity almost everywhere. Then there's also a group of images, which resemble moonscapes.

It is a lovely book but one which has hardly anything to do with ecological concepts or ideological attempts to make a living off other people's work (curators, critics, etc).

Highly recommended especially if you are like - you hold Weston, Imogen Cunnigan, and Caponigro at the highest level of photographic art (and seriously dislike "conceptual art" made by the inch at expensive universities and colleges).

Interesting also to note that great artists are NOT mainstream and don't have master's degrees ...

Like a great deal of aerial photography (Bradford Washburn's naturalistic mountain work immediately comes to mind in this connection), Emmet Gowin's meticulously detailed portfolio depicting man's ambition writ large upon the surface of our planet can often be 'read' as much as abstract art as documentary record. As art, this series of images of a wounded planet is so deceptively compelling it is easy to become lost in the sensuousness of the aesthetic moment Gowin repeatedly creates and forget that the subject matter being systematically explored is intrinsically disturbing and of concern. Indeed, the experience of finding so much beauty in landscapes of man-made desolation and ruin is unnerving. Yet it is undeniable that from a distance the patterns on the Earth made by irrigation pivots, toxic chemical ponds, missile burial trenches, mining pits, and numerous other manifestations of human 'development' without limits are endlessly unique and dramatic. Paradoxically, it is precisely this nexus of visually stimulating, geometrically intricate imagery generated in the context of wanton exploitation and destruction of the land that sustains the narrative and aesthetic power of Changing The Earth. One is absorbed in the beauty of the photography just long enough to catch sight and become painfully aware of the pervasive, intensely consequential, problem that demands attention and thought. Thus lessons for the future abound in the pages of this volume! One day our way of taking the Earth for granted by first depleting its resources for immediate gain and then dumping what is no longer wanted or useful wherever is convenient, will be seen as the opulent conceit and obscene luxury that it surely is. Until that day, studies like Changing The Earth bare witness to our collective folly, greed and irresponsibility.

I found a lot more than I'd expected in this book. The editor obviously put a lot of thought into her selection of authors and passages from their works. It seemed to me as if these were the passages I would have marked for rereading had I read those works myself. Pretty much every selection struck me as being beautifully inspirational, poetic, or otherwise moving. I'd forgotten how much simply reading about nature can do to lift and heal the spirit. I also learned a lot: I was unaware that so many women have been writing about nature for so many years -- and it was sobering to realize that much of what the earlier authors wrote about no longer exists in our world today.

The author bios themselves make for fascinating reading. (You can't help but wonder how your own life would be summed up in a paragraph or two.) And of course, as I'd expect from any good anthology, this collection inspired me to add quite a few items to my "to-read" list. The nearly 40-page bibliography includes very helpful summaries, and lists not just the sources of this anthology's selections but many other works as well.

Whatever you might expect from Sisters of the Earth, I doubt you'll be disappointed. There should be something in it for everyone -- and it's a pretty book that would make a great gift.

I have found this book to be wonderful in the growth process of the spirit. A truly marvelous piece of work, a compilation that is worth a second volume, indeed. This is a perfect "anytime" gift, to your self as well as others that are journeying the spirit.

Sisters of the Earth is one of the best books I have ever read. It is a collection of stories on woman's relationship to the earth. Each short piece is written by a woman from the United States from any time in our history - about some connection she has with the earth. I've turned down so many pages in this book and put in little post-it notes saying "great!". After reading one of the stories a new author's work is now available to me. I give this book to others as a gift all the time. The stories themselves are personal reflections of nature that speak softly to me of the wonders I am surrounded by and often fail to notice. These stories remind me of where I really live and how powerful my connection is to the earth. I would love to see a second volume by Lorraine Anderson on this topic, she has selected well. I have also read Cries of the Spirit, also a book about woman's connection to the earth and found it very good also.

Williams has put together a visceral, haunting, beautiful stream of consciousness aria here. This little tiny book has become one of my very favorite works over the past few years I have owned a copy of it. It is one of those books that tends to find itself hidden on my bookshelf, and when I rediscover it I am in for a real treat. This is the story of a woman who is so aware of her soul that it is almost ethereal. Walking the slot canyons of Utah and Arizona has always brought out powerful emotions within me, but after reading this book a few times I literally lose myself in the earth when hiking there now. Yes, this is a tale of love and love-making, but on such a spiritual level that it is easy to fall asleep and drift into a dreamy, watery place of serenity after reading it. What more can a book offer than that???? Save yourself the money usually spent on a "relaxing vacation" to a crowded get-away and set a fire in the fireplace, put on some Loreena McKennit and lose yourself in this treasure of a book. Mary Frank's sketches and watercolors set the stage and Terry Tempest Williams provides the magic carpet.

This book is short: 62 pages is an exaggeration, since many of those pages are filled with sketches and since the book itself is only about the size of a CD case. But what it lacks in length it more than makes up for in beauty. Terry Tempest Williams is an incredible, widely respected writer, and this book was released to much critical acclaim. Her book details a woman hiking in the canyons of southern Utah, and the thoughts that flash through her mind as she walks, and the freedom she feels in nature: the kinds of thoughts we all have when we go hiking, but aren't able to put down on paper as well as she.

The thoughts the author has are the reason those of us who love the outdoors love them so much. The solitary, beautiful, amazing feeling of being alone - literally or figuratively - with the earth (or God - your pick) in its magnificent splendor, and of the thrill of being alive.

Mardy Murie is often referred to as "The Grandmother of American Conservation" and "The Grand Dame of the American Conservation movement, but somehow after reading her story, these titles barely seem adequate to describe such an incredible and personal woman. While we may liken Murie to women like Rachel Carson or Anna Botsford Comstock, Murie's journey is singular. We follow her from her childhood in Wyoming to graduation at the University of Alaska, through love, into the far reaches of the Alaskan North.
Murie successfully bridges the personal and the political, her own life and her life's work, her love for one man and her love for their work together. You will laugh with her, you will cry with her, feel scared for her, and come to love her. She will become your hero.
We must recognize Murie as an American treasure, but we must also recognize that Murie's inspiration is perhaps more important now than it ever was. The most obvious reason for this statement is the continuing struggle to preserve the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from growing oil interests. We must also recognize, however, that Murie could be the inspiration for the young generation of leaders in conservation-- a group of leaders that undoubtedly must include women. That there are very so few women leaders in conservation has caused the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women to recognize the struggle of women in their efforts to achieve leadership positions in the conservation movement. Other organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, the Sierra Club, and the National Wildlife Federation have launched campaigns to attract more women into leadership roles. The lack of women in environmental leadership reflects America's view of rugged individualism in our collective imagination...nowhere has this myth been more prominent than in the discussion of America's last frontier-- a very personal discussion for Ms. Murie.
Not only is Margaret E. Murie a woman in the conservation movement, but she is an American treasure with a very personal and very political story to tell. Even as she approaches her 101st birthday in August, she continues to speak out for Alaska's lands, peoples, and wildlife. Her story is not one of fame, comfort, or glory, but it is her American story. Mardy Murie will become your hero, your inspiration and your friend. Take the journey with her.

I, first, heard of Mardy Murie and her husband, Olaus, while watching John Denver's The Wildlife Concert. He wrote A Song For All Lovers for their deep and abiding love for each other and for the state of Alaska. The song's beauty gave rise to my curiousity. And, recently, while watching a documentary of Mardy's life, I became determined to read this book about her life.

This book is a must have. Mrs. Murie paints with words, a picture so vivid of Alaska's tundras and plains, that I felt as if I were part of it. The lifestyle was hard, but satisfying, and this woman's life was nothing short of fascinating. Mardy Murie is a living testament to the strength and beauty of women, and she leaves a shining example of what a woman can do. In her assistance in Olaus' work for the ANWR and other Alaskan Land Conservancies, to her carrying on of that work, she is a beacon to us all of what we can do.

Buy it...read it. You will fall in love with Alaska and with Mardy.

Poems to make you cry and feel and think and shiver and clasp the hands of your loved ones, never to let them go. At once both thought-provoking and profoundly emotional. I doff my cap to the editor.

Filled with the amazing jelly photography these nature essays are written by women who truly know the genre! Terry Tempest Williams has written a beautiful foreword and Judith Connor and Nora Deans wrote sparkling essays about they're involvement with these strange animals. This book also mirrors the new exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. A treasure!

Last year, I had the pleasure of meeting and attending a reading by Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. At the time, I was unfamiliar with her work, but I was nevertheless astounded by her presentation. Immediately, I bought two of her novels-- one of which was Refuge. When I read it a few months after meeting her, I was amazed at the tone and emotion in the text. Williams' book can be a source of peace or healing to many whether you have experienced cancer, a loss, or just adore nature. The language is rich yet gentle. The structure of the narrative is such that, during reading and after, a reader feels she has experiences a unique marriage of nature and family issues. The way in which Williams weaves the Great Salt Lake and its inhabitants with her own family's suffering is not only amazing but especially touching as well. Just as the waterfowl and other creatures are evicted from their home during the great rise and flood of Salt Lake, so does William's mother fight for the domicile and dominance in her own cancerous body.
This is a must read. A wonderful story of love, hardships, and more love, REFUGE is a truly breathtaking piece of art.

As the Great Salt Lake rose to submerge and destroy the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, grief rose and submerged Terry Tempest William's spirit with the destruction of her mother and grandmother by cancer. The gradual regeneration of the Refuge with the subsiding of the lake parallels the regeneration of her spirit and the subsiding of her grief. But the pain and the scars remain and transform. Terry is no longer an accepting trusting Mormon daughter but a searching questioning activist after her tumultuous emotional experience. One wonders if the gifts of awareness and sensitivity are worth the price of the pain endured. The Refuge becomes a sanctuary for the returning birds and Terry's returning spirit. No more moving piece has been written about the folly and ultimate tragedy of human intervention in the environment. From the nuclear testing of the 1950s to the manipulation of the level of the Great Salt Lake, there is much to learn about the long term consquences of our short sighted acts. Everyone should read and reread and pass on this book.

Rarely has the inner landscape of a person's soul been so honestly described in print. Terry Tempest Williams presents us with an intensely personal look at herself and still manages to remain the private person behind the book. This is no small feat... and the writing in "Refuge" is up to the task. This is very lyrical writing and could easily remind us of an older tradition of verbal story-telling and the passing on of history from generation to generation. Williams has a recurring theme in her work: that of being connected with and living fully in the physical earth surrounding her. "Refuge" illustrates this connection beautifully as the flooding of Great Salt Lake parallels her own journey through death in her family, her realization that these deaths were not innocent and, finally, her acceptance that she herself is looking down the barrel of a gun. Very haunting, sad in places and yet full of life, "Refuge" is a very unique way of looking at some of life's most demanding challenges. I sincerely hope that the author is able to avoid that fate which she leaves us thinking about at the end of the book and I applaud her decision to be so brave and honest with her writing. "Desert Quartet" by the same author is an absolutely priceless little book, and "Refuge" is the second book by this author I have read. I look forward to more releases from this dynamic and very relevant author.

Terry Tempest Williams is without a doubt one of the finest writers to tackle the intricacies of the American West in literature of any sort. Carrying her own torch is impressive enough, but Williams also evokes the activism and urgent motivation that calls us to appreciate, respect and save our remaining western wilderness that was so powerfully put into words by Edward Abbey. I have reviewed a portion of "Red" before (see "Desert Quartet"), so I will limit this review to the remainder of "Red".

Williams carries on the great and ancient tradition of storytelling to raise consciousness about uniquely Western, and specifically Colorado Plateau, issues. From the Hopi and Navajo peoples, down through the early American explorers, the proverbial cowboys and the present activist community, storytelling has been a central method of encapsulating emotion, opinion and experience into messages that have wide appeal. Williams, in stories such as "Coyote's Canyon" here in "Red", presents her powerful vision of an environmental movement wrapped in the spiritual connection with the stark, often harsh, always awe inspiring desert and given wings by action. Like Abbey, Williams does not shy away from controversy, and her opening to the title essay is a list of places that strangely grows longer each time I contemplate the names set forth. Williams gets personal here, and the blunt approach of listing over a hundred places brings to my mind the fact that I have walked on much of that ground... and that I have seen the critical need to protect these remaining places from the industrious uses and agricultural manipulation that has occured on the infinitely vaster balance of the Colorado Plateau. In this way, "Red" has demonstrated its effectiveness. Some may say that as a resident of California I might have no reason to comment on Utah... and I would, as Williams exhorts in "Red", flatly disagree. Every one of us has a responsibility to work toward a better world, and Williams manages to say this without preaching it or patronizing the reader. (Besides, my mother lives in southern Utah, and I have walked hundreds of miles of that beautiful land...).

In summary, "Red" is another jewel of a book from Terry Tempest Williams. I am glad to see "Desert Quartet" back in print, though I sorely miss Mary Frank's wonderful illustrations that were in the original. This is a book which is not a difficult read, nor a scholarly treatise... rather, it is a frank, realistic look at a serious challenge facing the United States right now.

Terry Tempest Williams created this book to fight for Wilderness with the best tool she has, her writing. The beauty of her words hang in the air and cut like a knife. When asked by a friend why she writes, Williams responds: "I write as an exercise in pure joy. I write as one who walks on the surface of a frozen river beginning to melt. I write out of my anger and into my passion. I write from the stillness of night anticipating - always anticipating. I write to listen. I write out of silence. ...I write because it is the way I talk long walks. I write as a bow to wilderness. I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness."

Both a piece of literary artistry and passionate activism, "Red"'s audience appeal is the broadest of any book I've ever read. The book's structure, both wild and bounded by cadences of space, conforms strategically to Ms. Williams' conceptual take on the color red - red represents heat, anger, unpredictability, the lifeblood of the earth that runs through human beings and all earth's creatures, and is concentrated in the searing deserts of the American West where Ms. Williams lives. A thematic tapestry though it is, it is, at its core, a living breathing message presented selflessly and succinctly by a woman who I believe understands the need for a lifelong journey down the parallel rails of human and non-human nature until these rails converge. I recommend this book highly.

Katie Lee has led a remarkable life. But while she may be a fine story teller for a live audience, she is a poor writer. I found it a slow book to flog myself through- despite an enormous interest in the subject. Too bad she couldn't have put her ego aside and sat down with a professional writer. I can think of several women writers of the west that would have been a boon to the project. I look forward to the Katie Lee biography from one of them.

Katie Lee has written a beautiful & powerful love story & funeral song to a place some considered the most beautiful on earth, now drowned under Lake Powell. The book is largely exerpts from Katie's river journals from 40+yrs ago & has an immediacy that left me feeling like I was in Glen Canyon with her. She mentions that she shared early drafts of a fiction version with Ed Abbey, who told her to just write her own story. That she couldn't make up anything better than her own experiences. Ed Abbey was right. I devoured the book in one emotional sitting, then spent the rest of the day wandering aimlessly with dreams & visions of lost desert canyons in my mind.

Katie Lee has given us a wonderful glimpse at a lost treasure. Her discriptions of the river and side canyons tell of her love of this lost world. My 2nd greatgrandfather went through Glen Canyon in 1872 with the second Powell Expedition and Katie has given me some feeling as to What he saw and the places he visited. I never understood what a treasure Glen Canyon was to Us till I read her book. Thank You Katie Lee