Nature's Web: Rethinking Our Place on Earth

Rating:
Summary: Much Less Than Meets the Eye
Review: Marshall's book has all the trappings of an accessible academic tome and a quick skim at the bookstore suggests great potential.

But in my opinion, Nature's Web falls way short of delivering on its promised comprehensive historical review of ecological thinking around the world. The book is limited in what it reports. For instance, the chapter on Buddhist ecological thought focuses almost exclusively on the Zen vision and does that only piecemeal, not thoroughly. School of thought represented the Buddhism of Southeast Asia is mentioned in passing only. And Tibetan Buddhist is virtually ignored. It would be as if Marshall wrote a chapter proportedly on Christian ecological thought, then focused heavily on Gnosticism, and forgot to mention that there is also a Christian church based in Rome, for instance.

For an excellent review of ecological thought, see instead Interpreting Nature: Cultural Constructions of the Environment, by I.G. Simmons