Tony Pasquariello - The Ecology of Eden

This is a book about humankind's place in nature, real and imagined. There are several reasons why such a book should find its center in images of paradise. First of all, those images show our muddled feelings about our place in nature: our guilty pride, our snug discomfort. They reveal our sense that something has gone wrong somewhere down the line. By imagining a time or place of perfect harmony between humans and nature, they indict the discord we feel here and now. Whether the harmony they imagine is, or was, real is a good question, but in a way beside the point. The discord is real enough.