Coral Lives by Michele Currie Navakas (.ePUB)
File Size: 39 MB
Coral Lives: Literature, Labor, and the Making of America by Michele Currie Navakas
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 39 MB
Overview: A literary and cultural history of coral—as an essential element of the marine ecosystem, a personal ornament, a global commodity, and a powerful political metaphor
Today, coral and the human-caused threats to coral reef ecosystems symbolize our ongoing planetary crisis. In the nineteenth century, coral represented something else; as a recurring motif in American literature and culture, it shaped popular ideas about human society and politics. In Coral Lives, Michele Currie Navakas tells the story of coral as an essential element of the marine ecosystem, a cherished personal ornament, a global commodity, and a powerful political metaphor. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including works by such writers as Sarah Josepha Hale, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and George Washington Cable, Navakas shows how coral once helped Americans to recognize both the potential and the limits of interdependence—to imagine that their society could grow, like a coral reef, by sustaining rather than displacing others.
Genre: Non-Fiction > History
Free Download links: