The ground beneath us : from the oldest cities to the last wilderness, what dirt tells us about who we are / Paul Bogard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bogard, Paul, 1966- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Soil science.

Soil and civilization.

Earth sciences.

Underground ecology.

Physical Description:

ix, 307 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color), map ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2017.

Summary:

"When a teaspoon of soil contains millions of species, and when we pave over the earth on a daily basis, what does that mean for our future? What is the risk to our food supply, the planet's wildlife, the soil on which every life-form depends? Who much undeveloped, untrodden ground do we even have left? Paul Bogard set out to answer these questions in The Ground Beneath Us, and what he discovered is astounding. From New York (where more than 118,000,000 tons of human development rest on top of Manhattan Island) to Mexico City (which sinks inches each year into the Aztec ruins beneath it), Bogard shows us the weight of our cities' footprints. And as we see hallowed ground coughing up bullets at a Civil War battlefield; long-hidden remains emerging from below the sites of concentration camps; the dangerous, alluring power of fracking; the fragility of the giant redwoods, our planet's oldest living things; the surprises hidden under a Major League ballpark's grass; and the sublime beauty of our few remaining wildest places, one truth becomes blazingly clear-- the ground is the easiest resource to forget, and the last we should. Bogard's The Ground Beneath Us is deeply transporting reading that introduces farmers, geologists, ecologists, cartographers, and others in a quest to understand the importance of something too many of us take for granted-- dirt. From growth and to death and loss, and from the subsurface technologies that run our cities to the dwindling number of idyllic Edens that remain, this is the fascinating story of the ground beneath our feet.-- Dust jacket.

Contents:

Paved and hallowed. Manhattan ; Mexico City ; London ; Northern Virginia ; Gettysburg

Farmed and wild. Bishopstone ; Soil ; Ames ; Grass ; The sandhills

Hell and sacred. Appalachia ; Treblinka ; Alaska ; The Sierra Nevada ; Home.

Notes:

"March 2017"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-297) and index.

ISBN:

9780316342261 :

0316342262

OCLC:

974814203