Bøger af David Rains Wallace

Sigmund Freud based his psychoanalytic theory of the "Oedipus complex" partly on his reading of the play, Hamlet, conjecturing that William Shakespeare's conflicted feelings about his family had influenced the play's portrayal of Prince Hamlet's psycho-sexual conflicts about his family. Later in life, however, Freud decided that the play had not been written by an actor and businessman from Stratford-on-Avon, as is traditionally believed, but by a nobleman named Edward de Vere who had adopted "William Shakespeare" as a pseudonym. One result of this, Freud thought, was that psychoanalytic theory might have to be modified, perhaps transformed, to fit a changed identity for the world's greatest author. Edward de Vere had a very different life than William Shakspere's (as the actor's name was usually spelled), and Freud thought de Vere's life reflected and elucidated the plays and poems much more than the actor's life. Would a different life and personality for Shakespeare reveal new and different things about the human mind? This book examines Freud's and Shakespeare's works to address that question. In particular, it looks at the relationship between Freud's ideas about the conscious and unconscious mind, and Shakespeare's ideas about man and nature in his works with wilderness settings, including the long narrative poem, Venus and Adonis, and the plays, Titus Andronicus, As You Like It, Timon of Athens, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. Shakespeare writes about animal minds as well as human ones, but they didn't play a part in Freud's psychological ideas, although, as a Darwinian evolutionist, Freud believed that the human mind had originated from animal minds, not from divine creation. So Shakespeare's insights into non-human life might indeed have changed Freud' ideas significantly.

Shakespeare is often praised for his love and understanding of nature. Less has been written about how he acquired those qualities. Biographers assume they originated from a youth in the countryside around Stratford-on-Avon. Yet relatively few Shakespeare works are set in the settled English midlands. More are set in wild places: a French forest in "As You Like It," British heaths and moors in "Macbeth" and "King Lear," a Balkan seacoast in "The Winter's Tale," a Mediterranean desert island in "The Tempest."Shakespeare's evocations of these places are brief, as befits play scripts, but they are vivid and they often contain precise details about natural features as well as original, surprisingly modern, thoughts about the man-nature relationship. Did Shakespeare simply imagine wild places during a life spent commuting between Stratford and London? Or did he experience them, and if so, how? In "Shakespeare's Wilderness," one of America's leading nature writers tackles these questions. David Rains Wallace draws on his own experience of Shakespeare and nature, and on nature-related English literature from "Beowulf" to a twentieth century poet laureate, Ted Hughes, and comes up with some surprising answers. "In his masterpiece of a hybrid work of literary criticism and natural history... Wallace has seized on a bronco of a thesis statement and he's masterfully followed it through the entire Western Canon." Mark Anderson, author, Shakespeare by Another Name.

Described as "a writer in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and other self–educated seers" by the San Francisco Chronicle, David Rains Wallace turns his attention to one of the most distinctive corners of California: the San Francisco Bay Area. Weaving a complex and engaging story of the Bay Area from personal, historical, and environmental threads, Wallace's exploration of the natural world takes readers on a fascinating tour through the region: from Point Reyes National Park, where an abandoned campfire and an invasion of Douglas fir trees combusted into a dangerous wildfire, to Oakland's Lake Merritt, a surprising site amid skyscrapers for some of the best local bird–watching; from the majestic Diablo Range near San Jose, where conservationists fight against land developers to preserve species like mountain lions and golden eagles, to the Golden Gate itself, the iconic bridge that—geologically speaking—leads not to gold but to serpentine. Each essay explores a different place throughout the four corners of the Bay Area, uncovering the flora and fauna that make each so extraordinary.With a naturalist's eye, a penchant for local history, and an obvious passion for the subject, Wallace's new collection is among the first nature writing dedicated entirely to the Bay Area. Informative, engrossing, and exquisitely described, Mountains and Marshes affords unexpected yet familiar views of a beloved region that, even amidst centuries of growth and change, is as dynamic as it is timeless.

Mammals first evolved at about the same time as dinosaurs, and their story is perhaps the more fascinating of the two-in part because it is also our own story. In this literate and entertaining book, eminent naturalist David Rains Wallace brings the saga of ancient mammals to a general audience for the first time. Using artist Rudolph Zallinger's majestic The Age of Mammals mural at the Peabody Museum as a frame for his narrative, Wallace deftly moves over varied terrain-drawing from history, science, evolutionary theory, and art history-to present a lively account of fossil discoveries and an overview of what those discoveries have revealed about early mammals and their evolution. In these pages we encounter towering mammoths, tiny horses, giant-clawed ground sloths, whales with legs, uintatheres, zhelestids, and other exotic extinct creatures as well as the scientists who discovered and wondered about their remains. We meet such memorable figures as Georges Cuvier, Richard Owen, Edward D. Cope, George Gaylord Simpson, and Stephen Jay Gould and learn of their heated disputes, from Cuvier's and Owen's fights with early evolutionists to present controversies over the Late Cretaceous mass extinction. Wallace's own lifelong interest in evolution is reflected in the book's evocative and engaging style and in the personal experiences he expertly weaves into the tale, providing an altogether expansive perspective on what Darwin described as the "e;grandeur"e; of evolution.

Described as "e;a writer in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and other self-educated seers"e; by the San Francisco Chronicle, David Rains Wallace turns his attention in this new book to another distinctive corner of California-its desert, the driest and hottest environment in North America. Drawing from his frequent forays to Death Valley, Red Rock Canyon, Kelso Dunes, and other locales, Wallace illuminates the desert's intriguing flora and fauna as he explores a controversial, unresolved scientific debate about the origin and evolution of its unusual ecosystems. Eminent scientists and scholars appear throughout these pages, including maverick paleobiologist Daniel Axelrod, botanist Ledyard Stebbins, and naturalists Edmund Jaeger and Joseph Wood Krutch. Weaving together ecology, geology, natural history, and mythology in his characteristically eloquent voice, Wallace reveals that there is more to this starkly beautiful landscape than meets the eye.

This work is a vision of wilderness in the Klamath Mountains of northwest California and southwest Oregon, seen through the lens of "evolutionary mythology". Using his explorations of the diverse ecosystems in this region, the author ponders the role of evolution and myth in American culture.

Tells a story about evolution, as well as a tale of the storms, scurvy, and shipwrecks that plagued the Pacific coast's explorers, naturalists, and scientists, many of whom led turbulent or tragic lives, with themes reflected in the wonder and danger of the coast itself.