OUR STORE IS CLOSED ON ANZAC DAY: THURSDAY 25 APRIL
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen is Professor of English and Director of the GW Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute at George Washington University, USA. He is the author or editor of 11 books, including Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman (2015) and Elemental Ecocriticism: Thinking with Earth, Air, Water, and Fire (2015; edited with Lowell Duckert). Linda T. Elkins-Tanton is Foundation Professor and Director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, USA. She is the author of a six-book series The Solar System (1st edition 2006; 2nd edition 2010) and co-editor, with A. Schmidt and K. Fristad, of Volcanism and Global Environmental Change (2015). Her articles have been published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Nature Geoscience, Nature, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Astrophysical Journal, among other publications.
Earth is ambitious, thought-provoking and inspirational, conversationally written between two dissimilar but very complementary viewpoints. In this great age of exoplanetary discovery, it makes me wonder how unique our wonderful home planet really is. Scott Parazynski, MD, University Explorer and Professor at Arizona State University, USA, and NASA Astronaut (retired) As much as the mindsets of a distinguished planetary scientist and a medieval studies professor differ, it is what they share in common when thinking about that object so dear to all of us, the Earth, that is so fascinating. What this delightful and informative book ultimately demonstrates is that the humanity of science itself offers untold fuel for the humanities to ponder our existence. The Object of this book, the Earth, is at once more interesting and better off because both of these scholars chose to write about it. Lawrence M. Krauss, theoretical physicist and author of A Universe from Nothing and The Greatest Story Ever Told-So Far Earth is a magical, unusual, curious book ... Cohen and Elkins-Tanton describe it as a little book about an impossibly large subject. This subject is made even larger by Cohen and Elkins-Tanton's forays into discussions of beauty, creativity, and imagination (including my favorite question in the book: Can you die from an overactive imagination? ) and how they connect to science and ultimately this planet. This makes Earth a book that is, ultimately, a testament to what can be discovered if we are brave enough to combine the unexpected. PopMatters
