The Maximum of Wilderness: The Jungle in the American Imagination - Hardcover

Enright, Kelly

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813932289 ISBN 13: 9780813932286

Publisher: University of Virginia Press, 2012

Synopsis

Danger in the Congo! The unexplored Amazon! Long perceived as a place of mystery and danger, and more recently as a fragile system requiring our protection, the tropical forest captivated America for over a century. In The Maximum of Wilderness, Kelly Enright traces the representation of tropical forests--what Americans have typically thought of as "jungles"--and their place in both our perception of "wildness" and the globalization of the environmental movement.

In the early twentieth century, jungle adventure--as depicted by countless books and films, from Burroughs’s Tarzan novels to King Kong--had enormous mass appeal. Concurrent with the proliferation of a popular image of the jungle that masked many of its truths was the work of American naturalists who sought to represent an "authentic" view of tropical nature through museums, zoological and botanical gardens, books, and film. Enright examines the relationship between popular and scientific representations of the forest through the lives and work of Martin and Osa Johnson (who with films such as Congorilla and Simba blended authenticity with adventure), as well as renowned naturalists John Muir, William Beebe, David Fairchild, and Richard Evans Schultes. The author goes on to explore a startling shift at midcentury in the perception of the tropical forest--from the "jungle," a place that endangers human life, to the "rain forest," a place that is itself endangered.

About this title

About the Author:

Kelly Enright is the author of Rhinoceros and Osa and Martin: For the Love of Adventure.

Review:

In this engaging book, Kelly Enright explores a complex relationship: as encounters with tropical forests help to shape American ideas about wilderness and conservation, those same ideas reciprocally influenced the management and exploitation of forests far outside the borders of the United States.

(Harriet Ritvo, MIT, author of Noble Cows and Hybrid Zebras: Essays on Animals and History (Virginia))

This innovative and imaginative book explores the tangled thicket of images associated with ‘the jungle’ in American culture during the first half of the twentieth century. Enright reveals how the jungle encounters of a handful of influential figures profoundly shaped America’s changing experiences and interpretations of tropical forests.

(Mark V. Barrow Jr., Virginia Tech, author of Nature’s Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0813932289
• ISBN 13: 9780813932286
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200