The John A. Livingston Reader: The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation and One Cosmic Instant: A Natural History of Human Arrogance

by John A. Livingston, Graeme Gibson

Canada’s pioneering radical naturalist now back in print!

John A. Livingston is Canada’s Rachel Carson. His cogent, brilliant writing on the effects of man on nature has defined an entire generation of environmentalists and is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the underpinnings of today’s issues. Radical when first published in the early 1970s and 1980s, Livingston’s arguments that we must find new approaches to our perception of nature and our place within it or face the irreversibility of our destruction of nature now reads prophetically. The Reader brings two of Livingston’s poetic and provocative books back into print for a new generation of readers and features an appreciation by Graeme Gibson.

Genres: Environment, Ecology, Conservation

424 pages, Paperback

First published January 23, 2007

About the author

John Allen Livingston (November 10, 1923 – January 17, 2006) was a Canadian naturalist, broadcaster, author, and teacher. Livingston was the author of several books, including The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation (1981) and the Governor General's Award-winning Rogue Primate (1994). In his later years, he was a professor emeritus of environmental studies at York University.

Reviews

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear and angry - fundamental books for understanding our collective inability to play fair with the non-human world.

"All the magnificence and nobility of our creativity cannot begin to compensate me for what my species has cost me. Shakespeare cannot compensate me for toxic pesticides, Bach cannot compensate me for Hiroshima, nor Michelangelo for the blue whale. Jesus Christ cannot compensate me for the brutal imposition of human power over nonhuman nature. Yet, the total destruction of blue Earth may well precede any diminishment in human pride" (p.339)

[Toby Newton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning. All should read.

[Addison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hadn't heard of John A. Livingston when I picked this up from one of the little libraries on a morning walk. I was surprised to learn he was one of the pre-eminent Canadian humanists, getting his start in the fifties and sixties, born in the same city my parents are from and lived most of his life in a nearby borough of Toronto. I hurriedly read the book excited to learn about a topic I was sorely lacking any knowledge in. Of the two papers included in the reader, 'Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation' was more instructive. The best part of the book was the 1990 interview between JAL and Farley Mowat. The interview was inserted right after the foreword and I found that some of John's persuasive passion and straight talking present there was lost when you move to the papers. I'm really glad I stumbled across collection. It has encouraged me to check in on more modern discourse in the same vein, but it reminded me that I'm increasingly losing my patience for the style and format of academic writing.