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Elementals: 5-Volume Set
| Pages: | 823 pages |
| Size: | 5.25 x 7.75 inch |
| Publisher: | Center for Humans and Nature |
| Pub. Date: | September 3, 2024 |
| ISBN: | 9798986289625 |
Elementals: 5-Volume Set
“This collection feels medicinal and miraculous all at once. . . This is not just ‘nature writing.’ This is cosmic writing.”—Robert Moor, bestselling author of On Trails: An Exploration
For readers of Sand Talk, Braiding Sweetgrass, and Sounds Wild and Broken
From the Center for Humans and Nature, publisher of the award-winning anthology series Kinship, comes a new anthology series on the Elementals, a five-volume collection of essays, poetry, and stories that illuminate the dynamic relationships between people and place, human and nonhuman life, mind and the material world, and the living energies that make all life possible.
For millennia, humans have sought to identify and understand the most essential aspects of nature. Of enduring fascination are the four material elements: Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. All living beings owe their own existence and well-being to these everlasting movements of matter and flows of energy. Inspired by these powerful categories, the Elementals series asks: What can the vital forces of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire teach us about being human in a more-than-human world?
Elementals explores how people from various cultures across the planet have worked with these powerful forces of change and regeneration to shape landscapes and deepen personal and place-based relationships. More than 90 contributors―including Tyson Yunkaporta, Lyanda Fern Lynn Haupt, Sean Hill, David George Haskell, and Robin Wall Kimmerer―invite readers to consider the ways the elementals flow through our relations with a more-than-human world.
Contents:
- Earth, Vol. 1: Earth is living matter, place, and planet; soil, ground, and home. This volume offers earthy perspectives and elemental paths toward an ethic of interdependence, connection, and care for planet, place, and relations.
- Air, Vol. 2: Infinite and always in motion, constituent of everything, air is unutterably old, and its spirit carries with it the story of everything. This volume, in its creative exploration of this most ethereal yet indispensable of elements, provides breathing room for the imagination to thrive.
- Water, Vol. 3: As a living presence, the circulation and flow of healthy waters make life on Earth possible and defines our very existence. This volume invites us to ponder the traditions, perspectives, and aspirations linked to this vital element.
- Fire, Vol. 4: Fire remains wild, increasingly so today, but its domestication changed the course of human evolution. This volume asks what the many manifestations of fire might be imparting to us now, and how fire may be beckoning us to keep and tend to our elemental relations with care.
- An Elemental Life, Vol. 5: If the elements are kin to one other, then what does it mean to live in kinship with the elements? This volume brings the elements into confluence with one another, exploring diverse practices of what it means to live elementally.
With compelling stories and insightful reflections, Elementals reveals how people are working with, adapting to, and cocreating relational depth and ecological diversity by respectfully attending to the forces that shape our everyday worlds: Earth, Air, Water, Fire.
Proceeds from sales of Elementals benefit the nonprofit organization Center for Humans & Nature, home to a press and farm that explore in-depth and diverse perspectives about what it means to be human in an interconnected world. Humans & Nature Press shares ideas that build community and inspire action. Humans & Nature Farm is a place where ideas take root. The Center is a place to experience human connection with nature and consider our responsibilities to the whole community of life.
Reviews and Praise
“Refreshing as desert rain yet implacable as a flash flood; fragrant as loam (fine and filthy and veined by mycelia); diaphanous as breath yet just as nourishing to the body; both erotic and terrifying, like tendrils of flame licking your toes. The talking leaves in this bundle of books torque and transform language into something like food. Disparate flavors interlace and take the tongue hostage. Scrumptious.”
— Dr. David Abram, cultural ecologist, geophilosopher, performance artist and author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology and The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World
More Reviews and Praise
“Can we humans live in kinship with the elements before they are rendered unlivable? Perhaps, if we can learn from the elements themselves what they have to teach us about right relations. How lucky we are to have the Elementals to show us a way forward. More accurately, they offer many paths to consider. These books truly are multi-faceted – a set of conversations as interconnected as their subjects. I encourage you to join in.”
— Cara Benson, author of An Armsfull of Birds, an upcoming memoir about love, loss, and commitment during the climate crisis
“As nurturing as earth, as dynamic as water, as ethereal as air, as illuminating as fire, the works collected in Elementals astound in their revelations about what it means to be human in an age of profound change. This is literary environmental writing at its best.”
— Amy Brady, author of Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks—a Cool History of a Hot Commodity
“Wander and linger with the poems and essays in these volumes—from tundra to desert, from soil to sky, each brings an essential voice and view to the profoundest of questions. Some will make you laugh, and others weep. Together, the words in this collection make triumphant and vital cacophony that add to their meditations on earth, air, fire and water a new element: life, and how to live it.”
— Bathsheba Demuth, writer and environmental historian and author of Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait
“This collection feels medicinal and miraculous all at once. The editors have gathered a constellation of some of our brightest minds, all focused on the world’s single most important topic: how can life co-flourish here on earth, with one another and with the raw stuff of the universe? This is not just ‘nature writing.’ This is cosmic writing.”
— Robert Moor, bestselling author of On Trails: An Exploration
“The elements have never seemed more vital, or accessible, or just plain gorgeous. The elementals is a suite to sample and savor and ponder.”
— Stephen Pyne, author of The Pyrocene
“The exceptionally diverse, fascinating, fact-filled, evocative, and awe-inspiring reflections in Elementals shatters our everyday tendency to take for granted earth, air, water, and fire, whilst illuminating how these entities and forces create and enliven the biosphere. Read and be astonished.”
— Bron Taylor, author of Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future, and Editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature
Reviews and Praise
“Refreshing as desert rain yet implacable as a flash flood; fragrant as loam (fine and filthy and veined by mycelia); diaphanous as breath yet just as nourishing to the body; both erotic and terrifying, like tendrils of flame licking your toes. The talking leaves in this bundle of books torque and transform language into something like food. Disparate flavors interlace and take the tongue hostage. Scrumptious.”
— Dr. David Abram, cultural ecologist, geophilosopher, performance artist and author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology and The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World
“Can we humans live in kinship with the elements before they are rendered unlivable? Perhaps, if we can learn from the elements themselves what they have to teach us about right relations. How lucky we are to have the Elementals to show us a way forward. More accurately, they offer many paths to consider. These books truly are multi-faceted – a set of conversations as interconnected as their subjects. I encourage you to join in.”
— Cara Benson, author of An Armsfull of Birds, an upcoming memoir about love, loss, and commitment during the climate crisis
“As nurturing as earth, as dynamic as water, as ethereal as air, as illuminating as fire, the works collected in Elementals astound in their revelations about what it means to be human in an age of profound change. This is literary environmental writing at its best.”
— Amy Brady, author of Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks—a Cool History of a Hot Commodity
“Wander and linger with the poems and essays in these volumes—from tundra to desert, from soil to sky, each brings an essential voice and view to the profoundest of questions. Some will make you laugh, and others weep. Together, the words in this collection make triumphant and vital cacophony that add to their meditations on earth, air, fire and water a new element: life, and how to live it.”
— Bathsheba Demuth, writer and environmental historian and author of Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait
“This collection feels medicinal and miraculous all at once. The editors have gathered a constellation of some of our brightest minds, all focused on the world’s single most important topic: how can life co-flourish here on earth, with one another and with the raw stuff of the universe? This is not just ‘nature writing.’ This is cosmic writing.”
— Robert Moor, bestselling author of On Trails: An Exploration
“The elements have never seemed more vital, or accessible, or just plain gorgeous. The elementals is a suite to sample and savor and ponder.”
— Stephen Pyne, author of The Pyrocene
“The exceptionally diverse, fascinating, fact-filled, evocative, and awe-inspiring reflections in Elementals shatters our everyday tendency to take for granted earth, air, water, and fire, whilst illuminating how these entities and forces create and enliven the biosphere. Read and be astonished.”
— Bron Taylor, author of Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future, and Editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature
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