Flight Maps: Adventures With Nature In Modern America

by Jennifer Price, Jenny Price

Our Review
Flight Maps

For this unusual foray into nature writing, Jennifer Price doesn't go off into the mountains. She goes where the vast majority of American have their most consistent experiences of Nature -- in their front yards, in the malls, and in front of their television screens. Price is interested in finding out what Nature with a capital "N" means to Americans, and those are the places that reflect our hopes and desires surrounding Nature while also illuminating our philosophical and economic relationships with Nature. We have become attached to the notion of Nature as a realm Out There, apart from our hectic modern lives. Our social systems are in rapid flux, with only tenuous moorings. Nature seems to offer a timeless anchor. It is the ultimate reality to which we can appeal. As Price makes clear throughout the book, Nature is not actually Out There, but all around us and in everything we create -- no matter how "artificial," all objects must derive in some fashion from natural resources.

To get to the source of current attitudes, Price begins at an earlier era in American history, right at the transition point when the mythos of Nature was first being formulated. She takes as her case study the extinction of the passenger pigeon, but instead of searching for the causes of this extinction, she tries to understand how the people of that time experienced their relationship to the pigeons. Pioneers saw the huge flocks, numbering in the hundreds, but as the birds' numbers dwindled, their main consumers -- diners at Delmonico's, one of the first elegant New York restaurants, which featured wild game regularly; and trap shooters who imported the wild birds for tournaments -- never saw passenger pigeons in their native habitat. This disconnect increased as people began using wild nature imported from areas farther and farther away. A fashion for whole birds and bird parts on women's hats caused a crisis that resulted in the first Audubon societies, as people became aware that their actions were causing perhaps irreparable damage to wild nature. A developed view of wild nature as a separate and elevated realm (for example, appeals to the motherhood of egrets being violated when the birds were shot on their nests) set the tone for subsequent attitudes.

The elevation of Nature continued apace in contrast to the artificial creations of humanity. The pink flamingo plastic lawn ornament with its "unnatural" eye-popping colors stands in here for a whole class of objects that became singled out. But there is "nature" in a pink flamingo -- namely the materials that went into it. It became a symbol of unreal, inauthentic mass culture, as opposed to the real, authentic Nature Out There. The desire to surround oneself with the authenticity of Nature while living in an industrialized, consumer society led to stores like the Nature Company, where people could commune with Nature in a mall and take a little home with them. Nature as timeless authority was coopted to hawk an incredible variety of products -- most notably cars -- and to serve as an icon on television shows. Overall, Flight Maps has the effect of bringing to the fore more or less subconscious assumptions about Nature to which we have all been exposed. Since Price's intention is to illuminate attitudes, she does not offer a program for reintegrating nature, both the wild and transformed, into our awareness, but I could not help but be reminded of The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which details exactly how much nature is going into the things that we buy, whether or not we think of them as Nature.

--Laura Wood, Science & Nature Editor

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Nature, Essays, Environment, Ecology, Natural History

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

This author also writes under the name of Jenny Price.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Reviews

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember wanting to read this book when it was published nearly ten years ago and I'm so glad I finally picked it up. A cultural reading of plastic pink flamingos, Victorian bird hats, the Audobon Society and passenger pigeons, the book is both a send-up of past fashion trends and a cogent analysis of where Americans' relationship with nature changed to allow for our unsustainable overuse of natural resources as well as our love of nature as a place apart from modern life.

[Shana · Rating 2 out of 5]

It left me disappointed and when it was time to return it to the library I didn't renew. Her historical research is excellent and I too enjoyed the discussion of passenger pigeons and her chapter on ladies' bird hats is really much stronger as a history of Women's groups. But the whole things feels like an academic thesis paper where she keeps reminding us she is talking about the relationship between americans and nature over and over. Wish it had been rewritten to be a better book.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This author takes a historical look at the intersections between consumption and nature, specifically the nature that we can buy. The best chapter title: When Women Were Women, Men Were Men, and Birds Were Hats.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good book from one of my local free little libraries. This one doesn't fit easily into any conventional genre. It's a series of essays about how we relate to nature and fit nature into our unnatural environment in the modern world. The first essay which describes the extinction of the passenger pigeon is a typical story of heedless destruction of a bird once so prolific that its flocks darkened the sky and the collective beating of wings sounded like thunder. Until the 1870s whenever the massive flocks came, the hunters could bag three birds with each shot by aiming into the flock without picking out individual targets. And then over a stretch of a decade they went from being overwhelmingly many to extinction. In this essay the focus is on how the tragedy of extinction was blamed on the hunters while the consumers who ate the birds in fancy restaurants and the trap shooters who used them for sport and target practice got a free pass. But then it goes the opposite way in the next essay that discusses how the Audubon Society was formed by a group of women who opposed the practice of using stuffed birds and exotic feathers on women's hats. Here the entire blame for the birds being hunted to extinction was put on the consumers. The later essays shift perspective a bit, discussing what is nature and what is artifice in the modern world. It turns out that upon examination the most artificial things, like plastic lawn flamingos have a bit of nature in them and the most natural seeming things, like the goods at The Nature Company and nature shows on television are filled with artifice. What is nature anyway? Upon consideration, everything that we normally think of as being natural is marked by the heavy hand of humans. Where can we find true nature or does it even really exist? And if it does exist, how can we enjoy it when our every interaction with it spoils it and turns it into a human thing? But surely we can't just throw up our hands and let humans continue to worm their way into everything and ruin it. I think that we have to be satisfied with matters of degree and accept a certain amount of human intervention as inevitable while seeking to see ourselves as part of nature living in symbiosis with it while still recognizing that we change it constantly by our every action.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have this rule that if a book is referenced in three other books, then it goes into my "need to read" list - this book is one of those books. It's a pretty good way to make sure that you don't end up reading yourself down a weird side path of nonsense. I like to let my books pick my books.

Anyway- this book:

This book is a collection of five essays about how Americans think about and confront "Nature" as a concept. The essays cover 1. The human caused extinction of the passenger pigeon; 2. the lady led founding of the Audubon Society and the first American conservation movement: to remove dead birds from hats; 3. the meaning of pink flamingos; 4. The Nature Store and what it means that we go to the Mall to buy Nature; and 5. Nature on TV, with long passages about Dr Quinn, Northern Exposure, and Twin Peaks.

The first essay is the most traditionally historical, the second gets into issues of gender roles and class and the formation of the idea of "Nature" as an idea fraught with Meaning, and the final three essays are really well done cultural commentaries looking at the question of "what is Nature to an American?" from some unusual perspectives.

Yes, the chapter on Pink Flamingos has lots of John Waters in it.

The idea that Nature is "Something Apart" and the final arbiter of truth and authenticity, and what that means about who we are as humans - does this make us inauthentic, and outside of truth?

The idea that nature is a cultural artifact, as it must be, as a concept, is something I've been struggling with.

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a collection of five essays exploring what Nature means to Americans. The first two are historical, focusing on the demise of the passenger pigeon and the activism of women-led Audobon Societies against the use of birds in hats.

The latter were about contemporary issues; pink flamingoes, The Nature Company, and nature in television. They are all fascinating, but what makes the latter fascinating in part is how dated they are - the book came out in 1999, before the internet utterly transformed our relationship to consumerism and space, and consequently how we interact with, experience, and define Nature. They are a frozen moment in time.

Price is an entertaining author and this is a very accessible book. I do wonder if her focus and even her thesis would have changed a bit if it were written in 2018, to include climate change, the Anthropocene, and the fragility of nature as fundamental tropes. Nature is no longer something pristine and "Out There", but vulnerable and is continuing to be co-created with the parts of our modern world we consider "unnatural."

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

" 'I had never planned to become a Thoreau of the mall,' says Jennifer Price. Yet that is exactly what she has done in this brilliant debut book. Jennifer Price breaks the mold of American nature writing and does something wholly original with Flight Maps by charting the ways in which American have historically made -- and missed -- connections with nature.

"Rather than lighting out for the wild places, Price examines the ways in which we have brought nature into our homes and suburban communities. What place does nature occupy in hour hearts and minds? To answer that deceptively simple question, Price sifts through 'landscapes' and artifacts as diverse as eighteenth-century cookbooks, dinner menus, the Mall of America and John Waters movies, and ruminates on everything from the extreme popularity of The Nature Company and Northern Exposure to the plastic pink flamingo, simultaneously the totem of artifice and kitsch and a potent symbol o our problematic vision of nature.
* * *
Well, I finished the book. It didn't improve all that much, but at least I can say I've read it.

"By turns witty and whimsical, Flight Maps is a sophisticated meditative archaeology of Americans' desire to make nature meaningful in their lives."
~~back cover

I was going to give up on this book. The first two chapters were dry as dust and in fact, I didn't finish the second one. But: "the Mall of America and John Waters movies, and ruminates on everything from the extreme popularity of The Nature Company and Northern Exposure to the plastic pink flamingo"? I'll skip over the rest of that second chapter and dive into the pink flamingo chapter, to see if it gets witty and whimsical.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting coverage of topics related to nature as reality and as artifice. I appreciated her critical view of our need to have nature bend to our whims and the ways in which we disconnect our consumption from the reality that it drives much of the devastation our natural places exhibit.

The book is a bit dated (Nature Company doesn't exist anymore I believe) and the illustrations appear to be copies of copies, but the commentary is worth a read.

[Victoria McGinty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book my first semester of college. As a history major, I love works that draw on the weird niche things in history that aren’t often thought about or would not be the first pick of topic. Although, this is one of my favorite books to this day. I have developed a fascination for the passenger pigeons and I absolutely love the story of our beloved pink flamingos. Despite what some may say, I highly recommend one gives this book a chance. It’s really some tiny!

[Monique · Rating 2 out of 5]

The last two essays were the best, in my opinion. She was able to add in some of her own perspectives and made a few good points about consumerism that for some reason were missing from the earlier essays. The writing was too dry and academic for my taste. These would have been better published as separate essays instead of a book.

[Clayton Brannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read on nature and how Americans view their place in nature. A bit dated from the examples but still extremely valid points of view. Would love to see an updated version since this was first printed 20 years ago. I suspect the points she makes are even more valid today.

[Cade · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book...thinks very highly of its own opinion which I thought was a touch on the prissy, bougey side. I wanted at least a good chapter on the history of the pink flamingo, but alas, no. Although I will say the chapter on bird hats was interesting.

[Jenny Dohner · Rating 2 out of 5]

To be fair I must say that I didn’t finish this book. I didn’t even finish the first essay. By page 40 I had read enough about pigeons. History is interesting but to beat it to death....I had had enough and the prospect of something similar in the next essay was too much for me.

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good insights and some interesting comparisons, but it was a rough read for me. I'd like to be able to at least do a 2.5 because it's not a bad book, but I think my feelings toward it are being heavily weighed by my experience with the writing style.

[Stephen Dunstan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking essays that deal head on with many of the contradictions in the way we view, interpret and exploit the natural world. All five were definitely worth reading, though I did think the last one on nature in television was a bit repetitive and overly long. Recommended.

[Gail Kennon · Rating 3 out of 5]

i enjoyed it but as i'm older than her baby-boomer demographic i think i missed a lot. did put some trends in art particularly in slightly clearer perspective for me. but the central conceit of artifice vs nature is not mine.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book on Birds and their role in American Environmental History.

[Eva Castleton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed about 20% of 3/5 of the chapters.

[Lisa Eckstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

An entertaining and insightful look at how humans perform their appreciation of nature.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incisive critique of modern American cultural concepts of nature. May be a bit academic and a tad bit snarky for some, but I agree with her take on the situation.

[Victoria Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a delightful take on environmental history in a topic space so full of doom and gloom.

[Dennis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book after reading an interesting article of Price's in The Believer about the LA river and nature writing in that smoggy sprawl. Unfortunately this book did not live up to the promise of that piece. It was written in 1999 (part of which made up a doctoral thesis...uh-oh...), so chapters on decoding the cultural meaning of the now vastly invisible mall spot "The Nautre Store" and old TV shows like Northern Exposure feel really stale. Her main concern is addressing nature's meaning in popular culture- "meaning this, meaning that, meaning meaning meaning!" she cries, but rarely provides any real alswers (strings of rhetorical questions seem to be satisfactory for Price- "meaning? meaning? meaning? is a more appropriate example...). My rant, however, ends there because the book begins with two lovely and enlightening stories of the disappearance of the passenger pigeon and the popularity of bird hats in the late 19th century. I came to learn that the whole conservation movement stemmed from outrage over women wearing swallows on their heads! Who knew!?!?! Price's inconclusive inquiries about meaning (again, yawn) vanish under her well researched and humorous retellings of avian history, which prove to be extremely engaging and enlightening accounts of American cultural history.
My recommendation?
Get the book from the library, read the first two chapters, learn about birds and bird trends in the late 1800s, and resolve to never write a book filled with so many damn open ended quesitons.
The end!

[Kerfe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another of my forays into journalistic popular science, "Flight Maps" was an enjoyably easy read. Price's theme is Nature, or at least Nature as viewed through a post-modern ironic baby-boomer American lens. And it is this view of Nature, as an entity with a capial N, a Place Apart that is pristine, uninhabited, and unused, which Price feels allows us to disregard our rampant appropriation and destruction of resources. If we are not part of Nature, what we make and consume must be spearate as well: we can have our Nature and eat it too.

Price starts with the extinction of the passenger pigeon, women's bird hats, and the beginnings of the Audubon Society and other nature preservation organizations, moves on to pink flamingos, symbolic and real, then stops at the Mall to consider the contradictions inherent in the packaging and selling of Nature. She also explores how the media exploits our feelings about Nature to both sell us things and entertain.

"Nature is not a separate place," Price concludes. We need to connect, acknowledge that we are part of it, not put some of it in a Preserve and destroy the rest.

Ten years later (the book was written in 1999)it would seem we are instead further opening the divide between the human world and the Natural World, as if humans and their activites are not "natural", or an integral part of the life of the earth. And so we need take even less responsibility for a sustainable and mutually beneficial interaction with our home.

[Curtis Hodges · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall this book was a fairly easy and enjoyable read. As the title suggests the thesis of this book is how our post modern culture has come to define what Nature is or to a certain extent how we have Been taught through years of media useage on how to define what Nature is. The author does a good job in each distinctively different chapter in explaining how we have come to view what Nature is and what it means for us. The book begins with the extinction of the once abundant passenger pigeon and how they were hunted intensively for their economic uses. From there we read about the bird hat craze that took place and early environmental organizations that were born from this unsightly fad. Afterwards we move on and learn about how the both the real and symbolic meaning has helped us define what Nature is. Lastly we read how nature at the mall or the goods we purchase at the mall and how everything we view on television including nature shows help us define Nature or the boundary between nature and non nature. In all most people will learn some new points of view or pieces of information from this book. However, most of the book is filled with connections that most of us have either made before or who fail to see because of purposeful blindness. In conclusion if your interested in nature or socio-cultural books then this is a good book for you.

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I give this three stars, I'm rounding up. I loved learning that modern endangered species protection began with society women banding together to protest the use of feathers and dead birds to decorate ladies' hats. Her retelling of the extinction of the passenger pigeon was more detailed than anything I've read on the topic before, and I appreciate her analysis of how modern supply chains obscure the damage that we consumers do to nature.

But beyond that, this reads like a dissertation, and in fact the author's dissertation was its genesis. It grows more academic as it goes on, and more highfalutin words of cultural analysis creep in. By the time we got to the final chapter -- 49 pages about what TV shows about nature mean -- I was worn out. Even skimming couldn't save me.


The subtitle is misleading: this book is pretty adventure-free. And its cultural references are pretty dated, too, since it was published in 1999.

[Gloria · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this is an *old* book in terms of cultural studies and issue regarding nature, it is still worth reading. I particularly enjoyed the first two chapters, the ones on passenger pigeons and on women's hats. The first really gave me a sense of what it might have been like to live in a world with passenger pigeons---had *no* idea of the quantity and impact those birds had on the country (pigeon years, for example). And the history that pre-dates all of the PETA action on animals.... fascinating.

The later chapters on more contemporary issues of flamingos, The Nature Company were fine, but just not as enlightening.

Glad to have read it. And I think it is a keeper.... I think.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know that moment when you finally finish a book you have been stuck on and you are so happy it is finally over? Unfortunately that was the feeling of elation I had after finishing Flight Maps. I really wanted to like it and overall I think the idea of the book and how we twist nature to fit our own odd american contrives is interesting. However Price is extremely long winded and really nails her point home. Like she nailed the damn thing right through the wooden board and broke the board in the process, way too many examples and same discussion about nature versus artifice over and over again.

[Blanca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Developed from her thesis, Price recounts Americans' personal history and obsession with claiming a stake on Nature, depleting its resources, and crusading conservation efforts passionately, while creating meta levels of simultaneous consumption and reverance which reveals the most important class in America: consumer.



It starts a little didactic, but if you stick through the pigeon chapters(1-2) until the deconstruction of the pink lawn flamingo, it is very clever and thoughtful and hits its stride.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read on the history of Taste; that is, good taste and bad taste. An abstract concept, sure, but Price manages to develop her argument through an exploration of the natural vs. artificial debate. Nature=good taste and artifice=bad taste. At the core of the study, especially as the discussion enters America in the 1950s, is the plastic pink flamingo. Ironically, modern America now embraces what was once considered bad taste.

[Jennifer Randall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides an interesting perspective regarding how we as humans relate to and define nature, and how ultimately, the way that we construct nature says a lot more about us than it does about nature. This book has stimulated me to think more critically about humans' relationship to nature and how we interact and define it in ordinary, everyday ways that I hadn't previously contemplated.