New Med Book
- To: m*@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: New Med Book
- From: T* L*
- Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 13:23:36 +0000
One for the real Mediterraneans - and the really serious
Mediterraneans, at that - among us might be a new book called The
Nature of Mediterranean Europe, by Dick Grove and Oliver Rackham, one
of the products of a European Union project on (nasty word for a nasty
affliction) 'desertification.'
The authors are both Cambridge (UK) academics, Grove a geographer,
Rackham one of the great experts on the interaction between humans and
landscape (particularly in relation to the way humans have made use of
trees).
Hence there is a great deal in the book about how millenia-long
traditions of human use of the land and its plants have affected the
way the Mediterranean looks today - and about how (and why) attempts
to use non-traditional methods have often been disastrous. It's not a
book directly about gardens but would, I suspect, have many
interesting ideas to offer anyone (particularly a newcomer to the
region) attempting to garden in a 'typical' Mediterranean climate.
As a bonus, both authors write real English rather than academic
jargon - Rackham, in particular, is a considerable stylist in a very
dry, laid-back English way. Less of a bonus is the fact that the book
- all 384 pages of it, admittedly - costs around £45 in the UK, though
I dare say that shopping around might enable you to find it at a good
deal less. It's published by Yale.
If anyone from the region buys it and reads it, I'd be fascinated to
learn what they thought of it - and how much practical use it proved
to be.
Tim Longville
