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Engineering Eden
- The True Story of a Violent Death, a Trial, and the Fight over Controlling Nature
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
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Publisher's summary
The fascinating story of the century-long attempt to control nature in the American wilderness, as told through the prism of a tragic death at Yellowstone.
When 25-year-old Harry Walker was killed by a bear in Yellowstone Park in 1972, the civil trial prompted by his death became a proxy for bigger questions about American wilderness management that had been boiling for a century. At immediate issue was whether the Park Service should have done more to keep bears away from humans, but what was revealed as the trial unfolded was just how fruitless our efforts to regulate nature in the parks had always been. The proceedings drew to the witness stand some of the most important figures in 20th-century wilderness management, including the eminent zoologist A. Starker Leopold, who had produced a landmark conservationist document in the 1950s, and all-American twin researchers John and Frank Craighead, who ran groundbreaking bear studies at Yellowstone. Their testimonies would help decide whether the government owed the Walker family restitution for Harry's death, but it would also illuminate decades of patchwork efforts to preserve an idea of nature that had never existed in the first place.
In this remarkable excavation of American environmental history, nature writer and former park ranger Jordan Fisher Smith uses the story of one man's tragic death to tell the larger narrative of the futile, sometimes fatal attempts to remake wilderness in the name of preserving it. Moving across time and between Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Glacier National Parks, Engineering Eden shows how efforts at wilderness management have always been undone by one fundamental problem - that the idea of what is "natural" dissolves as soon as we begin to examine it, leaving us with little framework to say what wilderness should look like and which human interventions are acceptable in trying to preserve it.
In the tradition of John McPhee's The Control of Nature and Alan Burdick's Out of Eden, Jordan Fisher Smith has produced a powerful work of popular science and environmental history, grappling with critical issues that we have even now yet to resolve.
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- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Egan leads us on an unconventional, freewheeling tour: from America's oldest continuously inhabited community, the Ancoma Pueblo in New Mexico, to the high kitsch of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where London Bridge has been painstakingly rebuilt stone by stone; from the fragile beauty of Idaho's Bitterroot Range to the gross excess of Las Vegas, a city built as though in defiance of its arid environment.
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Narrator mispronounces everything
- By Catherine on 01-27-22
By: Timothy Egan
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Last Stand
- George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West
- By: Michael Punke
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In the last three decades of the 19th century, an American buffalo herd once numbering 30 million animals was reduced to 23. It was the era of Manifest Destiny, a gilded age that viewed the West as nothing more than a treasure chest of resources to be dug up or shot down. Supporting hide hunters was the US Army, which considered the eradication of the buffalo essential to victory in its ongoing war on Native Americans.
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Depressing history of American tragedy
- By J. A. Bowen on 05-16-16
By: Michael Punke
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Natural Rivals
- John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and the Creation of America’s Public Lands
- By: John Clayton
- Narrated by: Richard Powers
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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At stake in 1896 was the new idea that some landscapes should be collectively, permanently owned by a democratic government. Although many people today think of public lands as an American birthright, their very existence was then in doubt and dependent on a merger of the talents of these two men. Natural Rivals examines a time of environmental threat and political dysfunction not unlike our own and reveals the complex dynamic that gave birth to America’s rich public lands legacy.
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entertaining story of a great rivalry
- By F. McClamrock on 12-23-21
By: John Clayton
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Wild Ones
- A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America
- By: Jon Mooallem
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America’s endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor. So Jon Mooallem ventures into the field, often taking his daughter with him, to move beyond childlike fascination and make those creatures feel more real. Wild Ones is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects it.
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The line between conservation and domestication...
- By Bonny on 04-02-14
By: Jon Mooallem
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In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond
- In Search of the Sasquatch
- By: John Zada
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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On the central and north coast of British Columbia, the Great Bear Rainforest is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, containing more organic matter than any other terrestrial ecosystem on the planet. The area plays host to a wide range of species, from thousand-year-old western cedars to humpback whales to iconic white Spirit bears. According to local residents, another giant is said to live in these woods.
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Not a relatable book
- By RJK on 07-14-19
By: John Zada
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Secrets of the Savanna
- Twenty-Three Years in the African Wilderness Unraveling the Mysteries of Elephants and People
- By: Mark Owens, Delia Owens
- Narrated by: Donna Postel, Sean Runnette
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In this riveting real-life adventure, Mark and Delia Owens tell the dramatic story of their last years in Africa, fighting to save elephants, villagers, and - in the end - themselves. The award-winning zoologists and pioneering conservationists describe their work in the remote and ruggedly beautiful Luangwa Valley, in northeastern Zambia. There they studied the mysteries of the elephant population’s recovery after poaching, discovering remarkable similarities between humans and elephants.
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A vivid view of the savanna in Africa, culture and wildlife!
- By Kd on 09-12-20
By: Mark Owens, and others
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Fire in Paradise
- By: Alastair Gee, Dani Anguiano
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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There is no precedent in postwar American history for the destruction of the town of Paradise, California. On November 8, 2018, the community of 27,000 people was swallowed by the ferocious Camp Fire, which razed virtually every home and killed at least 85 people. Fire in Paradise is a dramatic and moving narrative of the disaster based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with residents, firefighters and police, and scientific experts.
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A gripping view of an American tragedy
- By Kalutha on 06-30-20
By: Alastair Gee, and others
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Running Out
- In Search of Water on the High Plains
- By: Lucas Bessire
- Narrated by: John Chancer
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining planetary crisis of our times. Running Out offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion and the deeper layers through which it gains meaning and force.
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Water is life, so….
- By Caroline Pufalt on 11-29-21
By: Lucas Bessire
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The Longest Road
- Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean
- By: Philip Caputo
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Philip Caputo, who had just turned 70, his wife, and their two English setters took off in a truck hauling an Airstream camper from Key West, Florida, en route via back roads and state routes to Deadhorse, Alaska. The journey took four months and covered 17,000 miles, during which Caputo interviewed more than 80 Americans from all walks of life to get a picture of what their lives and the life of the nation are really about in the 21st century.
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Very Disappointing
- By Amazon Customer on 03-25-18
By: Philip Caputo
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Heart of a Lion
- A Lone Cat's Walk Across America
- By: William Stolzenburg
- Narrated by: Mike DelGaudio
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Late one June night in 2011, a large animal collided with an SUV cruising down a Connecticut parkway. The creature appeared as something out of New England's forgotten past. Beside the road lay a 140-pound mountain lion. Speculations ran wild, the wildest of which figured him a ghostly survivor from a bygone century when lions last roamed the eastern United States. But a more fantastic scenario of facts soon unfolded.
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Outstanding story
- By Hutto on 09-28-16
What listeners say about Engineering Eden
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Deborah
- 02-25-17
A riveting telling of tragedy, alongside truly accessible science.
Rarely do I immediately re-listen to a book once finished. This is one of them.
I own the hardback book as well and was motivated to read passages.
This is an important book especially now as we face a rapidly changing environment.
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-12-21
terrible narrator - really, awful!
had to stop listening before I even finished the first chapter because the narrator was so awful. finished the book in paper form.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Sassafras
- 12-03-21
Environmental Controversy Masterfully Told
I work in environmental media and one of my great frustrations is that we often tell linear stories in a straightforward and journalistic way that doesn't pull in a new audiences. Engineering Eden manages to avoid that pitfall, masterfully weaving together courtroom drama, fiercely competing nature management philosophies, history, and biographical stories of the big players who shaped our ideas about national parks and American wilderness. Most of us were never aware of all the drama playing out behind the scenes as we hiked or drove or camped our way through America's national park system. The policies we have in place today were hard-fought by passionate (but sometimes misguided) leaders and lives were literally lost as these battles played out. Small words of warning: Don't listen while distracted because this book demands your full attention. Also, you might need to fast forward through the very real and detailed accounts of national park deaths if you're squeamish.
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- DgoMom
- 07-19-22
Wish I Had Known
We just returned from a trip to Yellowstone and I stumbled across this book. I wish I had known this history ahead of time! So interesting.
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- Kerry Cox
- 04-07-20
Riveting true story, well performed
This book is a monumentally ambitious accomplishment in terms of scope, and, like Smith's previous NATURE NOIR, so smartly constructed. The suspenseful narrative of a seminal trial is the beating heart of the story, with harrowing tales of bear encounters and colorful biographies of key players woven throughout. Together, these kept the core message and purpose of the book moving forward in a highly entertaining way. What could have become an interesting but potentially dry textbook about park and wildlife management instead bristles with life, crackling action and real flesh-and-blood characters. In telling their true stories, Smith is able to present all sides to the quandary about how best to preserve our natural parklands and wildlife, while still allowing the public to access and enjoy them. There's no easy answer, and our missteps have been many, as Smith shows. But in most cases, the mistakes were the unexpected consequences of policies made by extremely dedicated people with the best of intentions. This is a thoroughly researched, fascinating book, performed in a clear, compelling way by Traber Burns. I highly recommend it.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Richard Rich
- 11-11-21
Excellent book, poor narration
The book itself is great and worth the read, but the narrator is awful.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Karen Kroesen
- 08-06-18
loved this!
If you enjoy environmental history, you'll love this story! This story paints a great picture of the history of our National Parks and how they were managed.
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- Francine
- 07-21-19
Reader was great, but book drags on
The effort to weave the human story just didn’t make up for the general dry fact-filled book. Not a good road trip book.
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