The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to Exon Valdez (1991). Alexander Wilson.

What an excellent book this is.  Alexander Wilson was a horticulturalist, journalist and partner in a landscape design business.  He taught and wrote widely on popular culture, media and the environment.

In the book he discusses in depth how the American people have altered the landscape in America ever since they first arrived as European colonisers  up to 1990.  He catalogues the horrific and callous way that both land and Native Americans have been treated, whilst at the same time holding out a ray of hope for the future, for which he is quite optimistic.  He helped me to firm up my views of Wilderness and what it means.  Not the 'land untrammelled by man, where man, himself is a visitor who does not remain' of the American Wilderness Act of 1964, which ignores the fact the all of North America was populated by indigenous peoples for millenia.  Instead he suggests a more humane definition, a land where nature and man live in harmony with each other.  He suggests that we need to build a culture that will nurture new relations with the natural world, relations built on harmony and livelihood rather than domination and profit.  He goes on to stress, later, that the land will only be saved if people live on it in a way that restores it - and helps the rest of us to survive.

He discusses recreation and tourism, education and how the land close to our homes has been altered, changed and developed.  He looks at how nature has been presented to the public over the years through films and television and how that presentation has changed.  He examines how world's fairs and theme parks have presented the world and the future and how we relate to nature and then he moves on to write about nature parks and zoos.  He finishes with discussions on energy and power, especially the oil  and nuclear industries with a large section on the  militarisation of the land and its misuse.  Finally there is a discussion on space research and satellite use and how it has affected the Earth for good or ill.

He died on 26th October 1993, not long after the publication of the book.  After his death a garden was created in his memory in 1998, The Alex Wilson Community Garden, in Toronto. In the garden is a plaque bearing a telling quote from from the book: "We must build landscapes that heal, connect and empower, that make intelligible our relations with each other and the natural world."

My full and complete notes on this book will be presented as part of my research folder.