Binocular Vision: The Politics of Representation in Birdwatching Field Guides (Critical Perspectives in the History of Environmental Design)
Clearly and engagingly written, Binocular Vision is a work of impressive scope and subtlety that will make an important contribution to the growing field of environmental cultural studies.(Daniel J. Philippon, author of Conserving Words: How American Nature Writers Shaped the Environmental Movement)This book forced me to take a more critical look at field guides and what their role can and should be. And that made it very worth reading.(The Birder's Library)Binocular Vision is a field guide to field guides that takes a novel perspective on how we think about and interact with the world around us.(The Guardian)Spencer Schaffner's Binocular Vision starts from the simple and important observation that field guides--like texts--'do cultural work.' Behind and beyond their stated purposes, field guides affirm assumptions and create expectations, and many of the conclusions the book offers will be an unsettling surprise to many of its birding readers.(aba.org Blog)