Re: New Med Book - Nature of Mediterranean Europe
It's on my Amazon wish list (if anyone's feeling generous! ;-))
I'm sure they won't mind quoting this, especially as the premise, that Mediterranean landscapes are
less an accident of poor management by man and more the geological consequence of the last Ice Age. is
of considerable interest and quite innovative :
Mediterranean Europe - southern Spain, France, Italy, the Balkans, Greece, and the Mediterranean
islands - is often interpreted as a "Lost Eden", once verdant and fertile, then progressively degraded
and desertified by human mismanagement and the ignorance and folly of successive civilizations. In
this engaging book, two distinguished scholars challenge this pessimistic view.
A.T. Grove and Oliver Rackham trace the evolution of climate and vegetation in
southern Europe from prehistoric times to the present. They point out that since the climate has
usually been unstable there, plant cover has had to accommodate to its extremes and has therefore
become resilient under different patterns of human activity. They show that deluges, a major factor in
promoting erosion and shaping valley floors and deltas, were more frequent during times of advancing
glaciers than they are now. They assess the nature and function of agricultural terraces, the
Mediterranean savanna, and karsts, badlands, and other desert-like landscapes.
Finally, they point to the real threats to Mediterranean landscapes in the recent past and the
immediate future: not only coastal development, but also bulldozing, excessive irrigation, and the
consequences of depopulation in the interior.
Anthony
Tim Longville wrote:
> 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
