The Way of the Earth: Encounters with Nature in Ancient and Contemporary Thought

McLuhan, an author and filmmaker, draws on ancient and contemporary sources to examine the significance of the Earth from the perspective of six diverse cultures from Aboriginal Australia, Japan, ancient Greece, Africa, South America, and Native North America. She demonstrates that there are more similarities than differences in how people of different cultures celebrate the sacred nature of the Earth in literature, mythology, religion, and art. Includes hundreds of traditional and modern examples of literature and art, illustrated with b&w and color photos. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

McLuhan's bold, stimulating survey of how the world's cultures have struggled to make sense of their place in the universe should be as popular as her books on Native Americans ( Touch the Earth, etc.). She identifies underlying common themes in six disparate traditions: Greece, where Gaia, the Earth Mother, dominated pre-Hellenic myths; Japan, whose ancient ethos emphasized an emotional conjunction with nature and ecological awareness; aboriginal Australia, where "The Dreaming"--an otherworld peopled with mythic spirit-beings--gives meaning to life; Africa, where many inhabitants recognize a spiritual force-field linking humans, nature, gods, ancestors; the Kogi tribe of Colombia, who believe they are guardians of life on Earth; and Native North Americans, who "enter sacredness" via rituals and holy sites. This exuberantly multicultural synthesis detects spiritual consonances among Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis, West African global theorist Amadou Hampate Ba of Mali, Aboriginal writer Loraine Mafi Williams and Kiowan novelist-painter N. Scott Momaday. Illustrations.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See Focus on p.1906.

In this fascinating collection, a filmmaker and author of books on American Indian life (including Touch the Earth, LJ 1/15/72) brings together excerpts from the works of poets, novelists, essayists, philosophers, and ethnologists of six different cultures to show how empathy with the earth can take "precedence over the impulse to exploit." An initial chapter outlines commonalities in the traditional cultures of the Australian aborigines, the Japanese, the Greeks, various African tribes, the Kogi of Colombia, and Native North Americans. Subsequent chapters examine each culture's understanding and celebration of their lands. What emerges are portraits of peoples not so much concerned with nature in the abstract as devoted to and fused with their particular landscapes, whether these are as grandly beautiful as Mount Fuji or as humble as a handful of dry soil. This is not a book to be read through from cover to cover. McLuhan's technique of breaking the collection into short thematic chapters results in repetitious reintroductions to quoted authors, and her analyses lack the depth and clarity of works by scholars like Mircea Eliade or Joseph Campbell. Instead, McLuhan offers readers eloquent glimpses of the primacy of place in cultures not yet submerged by shopping malls and superhighways. A suitable purchase for most libraries.
Joan S. Elbers, formerly with Montgomery Coll., Rockville, Md.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.