The ecology of Eden Book

Eisenberg explores our troubled relationship with the pristine asking why our every attempt to return to it, preserve it, revere it, takes us ever further away from Eden. In attempting to characterise our place in relation to nature, Eisenberg sets up what he sees as archetypal opposites - Fetishers and Managers fighting over the right distance to be between the Mountain (Pristine Nature) and the Tower (Pure Urbanity) while trying to preserve both nature and culture. These are caricatures of course, but Eisenberg draws on an admittedly large - perhaps too large - canvas to drive home his point. But it is unsurprising, when set up this way, that Eisenberg's solutions lie in seeking the middle ground while keeping the best of the extremes. If we cannot aspire for Eden, let us strive for Arcadia, but make sure it does not descend into the no-man's-land of shallow suburbia. The lessons will be familiar to many of us - maintain plurality, maximize resilience, increase adaptability (Earth Jazz, he calls it), cultivate biophilia and abiophilia, learn from nature and learn from culture.
The book ambles through creation myths, ecological theory, agricultural practice, all of human history, evolution, urban planning, biotechnology, the semiology of gardening, climate change, and plenty more, looping back over these themes repeatedly in case you missed them the first time around. There is a lot to like in this book but much of it is smothered under Eisenberg's slightly purple phrasing and all-too-florid etching. The canvas that emerges is a strangely incomplete, with mixed proportions and unfilled patches, as though the artist was called away on business (a person from Porlock, perhaps?) before he could properly finish his masterpiece.