The View from Lazy Point (eBook)

Description

An exhilarating journey of natural renewal through a year with MacArthur fellow Carl Safina

Beginning in his kayak in his home waters of eastern Long Island, Carl Safina's The View from Lazy Point takes us through the four seasons to the four points of the compass, from the high Arctic south to Antarctica, across the warm belly of the tropics from the Caribbean to the west Pacific, then home again. We meet Eskimos whose way of life is melting away, explore a secret global seed vault hidden above the Arctic Circle, investigate dilemmas facing foraging bears and breeding penguins, and sail to formerly devastated reefs that are resurrecting as fish graze the corals algae-free.

"Each time science tightens a coil in the slack of our understanding," Safina writes, "it elaborates its fundamental discovery: connection."

He shows how problems of the environment drive very real matters of human justice, well-being, and our prospects for peace.

In Safina's hands, nature's continuous renewal points toward our future. His lively stories grant new insights into how our world is changing, and what our response ought to be.

About the Author

Carl Safina, author of Song for the Blue Ocean, and founder of the Blue Ocean Institute, was named by the Audubon Society one of the leading conservationists of the twentieth century. He's been profiled by The New York Times, and PBS's Bill Moyers. His books and articles have won him a Pew Fellowship, Guggenheim Award, Lannan Literary Award, John Burroughs Medal, and a MacArthur Prize. He lives in Amagansett, New York.

Praise for The View from Lazy Point…

"You could call Safina a Thoreau for the twenty-first century." —New York Post

"Safina’s book soars….I had to—and wanted to—read The View from Lazy Point very slowly, allowing myself to digest its wealth of information, to revel in the beauty of Safina’s writing, and to absorb fully the implications of his musings….What a pleasure it is to find such an enlightening, provocative companion for walking and talking—and reading. We can ask no more from those who warn about dark days ahead than that they also awaken us to the miracle of everyday life." —Dominique Browning, The New York Times Book Review

"A call to arms in the cause of hope…Mr. Safina’s writing moves easily from revelatory observation sparked by a flash of bird or splash of fish to passionate, lyrical philosophy." —The Economist

"Before Carl Safina, environmentalists could often be heard wondering where the next Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, or Henry Beston might be hiding….The pure sensuous detail, seeing the natural world from a variety of angles, was missing in the generations after Carson and Leopold." —Newsday