The ground beneath us
Subtitle: from the oldest cities to the last wilderness, what dirt tells us about who we are
By: Paul Bogard
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 307
ISBN-13: 9780316342261
Subjects: Soil and civilization; Earth sciences; Soil science; Underground ecology
Description: "When a teaspoon of soil contains millions of species, and when we pave over the earth on a daily basis, what does that mean for our future? What is the risk to our food supply, the planet's wildlife, the soil on which every life-form depends? Who much undeveloped, untrodden ground do we even have left? Paul Bogard set out to answer these questions in The Ground Beneath Us, and what he discovered is astounding. From New York (where more than 118,000,000 tons of human development rest on top of Manhattan Island) to Mexico City (which sinks inches each year into the Aztec ruins beneath it), Bogard shows us the weight of our cities' footprints. And as we see hallowed ground coughing up bullets at a Civil War battlefield; long-hidden remains emerging from below the sites of concentration camps; the dangerous, alluring power of fracking; the fragility of the giant redwoods, our planet's oldest living things; the surprises hidden under a Major League ballpark's grass; and the sublime beauty of our few remaining wildest places, one truth becomes blazingly clear-- the ground is the easiest resource to forget, and the last we should. Bogard's The Ground Beneath Us is deeply transporting reading that introduces farmers, geologists, ecologists, cartographers, and others in a quest to understand the importance of something too many of us take for granted-- dirt. From growth and to death and loss, and from the subsurface technologies that run our cities to the dwindling number of idyllic Edens that remain, this is the fascinating story of the ground beneath our feet.--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-297) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Paved and hallowed. Manhattan; title: Mexico City; title: London; title: Northern Virginia; title: Gettysburg; title: Farmed and wild. Bishopstone; title: Soil; title: Ames; title: Grass; title: The sandhills; title: Hell and sacred. Appalachia; title: Treblinka; title: Alaska; title: The Sierra Nevada; title: Home.