Griffith Taylor: Visionary, Environmentalist, Explorer.

Strange, Carolyn; Bashford, Alison.

ISBN 10: 0642276684 / ISBN 13: 9780642276681

Published by National Library of Australia (NLA), Canberra, 2008

About this Item

Paperback large octavo, very good condition, black & white & sepia (brown-tinted) & colour text-photos, minor edgewear, autograph (author's written dedication title page). Heavy, and extra postage may be requested to destinations outside Australia. 283 pp. Carolyn Strange and Alison Bashford have written a biography of the great Australian academic (University of Sydney). Thomas Griffith Taylor (1880 - 1963) was a geographer, anthropologist and world explorer. They explain what drove this 'long, lean, lanky' man to such extremes: geographically, intellectually and politically. His travels took him from Captain Scott's final expedition in Antarctica to every continent on earth. In a life that stretched from the Boer War to the Cold War, he sought to enlighten the public on the human relation to the environment. As a geographer whose work crossed into anthropology, he courted controversy and craved recognition. Today's preoccupations with climate change, the ascendancy of Asian nations, and the renewed threat of nuclear war, were all addressed by Taylor generations earlier. (Written autograph of Alison Bashford.).

Seller Inventory # 26675

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Griffith Taylor: Visionary, Environmentalist, Explorer.
• Publisher: National Library of Australia (NLA), Canberra
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0642276684
• ISBN 13: 9780642276681
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Seller catalogs:
  • EARTH SCIENCES

About this title

Synopsis

Thomas Griffith Taylor (1880-1963) was a geographer, anthropologist, and world explorer. His travels took him from Captain Scott's final expedition in Antarctica to every continent on earth, in a professional life that stretched from the Boer War to the Cold War. Taylor's research ranged from microscopic analysis of fossils to the ‘races of man,' the geographic basis of global politics, while his work as a professor led him from his Cambridge education to the Universities of Chicago and Sydney, as well as Harold A. Innis' recently-founded geography department in the University of Toronto.

As a scientific secularist, Taylor made it his lifelong mission to enlighten the public on humankind's relation to the environment and was an early environmentalist. His progressive views on interracial marriage, as well as his criticisms of social Darwinist doctrines, anti-Semitism, and twentieth-century nationalism caused him to be constantly embroiled in controversy. Often dismissed by his contemporary political and intellectual opponents, many subsequent scientists and thinkers have come to regard his life as prophetic. This timely, beautifully produced, and copiously illustrated biography recounts and analyses the fascinating life of a remarkably contemporary man.

About the Author

Carolyn Strange is a senior fellow in the Research School of Humanities at the Australian National University.
Allison Bashford is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Sydney.