- Favorite Magazines
- Sports
- Crafting & DIY
- Health & Fitness
- Home & Garden
- Just Added
- Magazines - All
- See all magazine collections
Visionary Women
How Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall, and Alice Waters Changed Our World
1 of 1 copy available
Winner of The Green Prize for Sustainable Literature
A Finalist for the PEN/Bograd Weld Prize for Biography
This is the story of four influential women who profoundly shaped the world we live in today. Together, these women—linked not by friendship or field, but by their choice to break with convention—showed what one person speaking truth to power can do. Jane Jacobs fought for livable cities and strong communities; Rachel Carson warned us about poisoning the environment; Jane Goodall demonstrated the indelible kinship between humans and animals; and Alice Waters urged us to reconsider what and how we eat.
With a keen eye for historical detail, Andrea Barnet traces the arc of each woman's career and explores how their work collectively changed the course of history. While they hailed from different generations, Carson, Jacobs, Goodall, and Waters found their voices in the early sixties. At a time of enormous upheaval, all four stood as bulwarks against 1950s corporate culture and its war on nature. Consummate outsiders, each prevailed against powerful and mostly male adversaries while also anticipating the disaffections of the emerging counterculture.
All told, their efforts ignited a transformative progressive movement while offering people a new way to think about the world and a more positive way of living in it.
"These four gave their moment—and ours—a unique and compelling way to perceive the interconnections within a society, as well as its relationship to its surroundings." —Bill McKibben, The Nation
-
Creators
-
Publisher
-
Release date
November 21, 2023 -
Formats
-
Kindle Book
-
OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780062310743
- File size: 8701 KB
-
EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780062310743
- File size: 10509 KB
-
-
Languages
- English
-
Reviews
-
November 15, 2017
Rachel Carson fought for the environment and Jane Jacobs for livable cities; Jane Goodall shows us the link between humans and animals and Alice Waters how to eat well. Barnet (All-Night Party) reveals how these women helped launch the modern progressive movement. With a 40,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
-
Starred review from March 1, 2018
Barnet maps the shared ethos that propelled four visionaries whose efforts alerted people to the dangers of unbridled technology, consumerism, and industrial assaults against nature and the human ecosystem, and who offered a new, more holistic way to think about the world, and a more benign way of living in it. Founding modern environmentalist Rachel Carson, city advocate and master strategist Jane Jacobs, born naturalist and primate expert turned global ambassador for the living world Jane Goodall, and Alice Walker, a natural collaborator and pioneering organic restaurateur and sustainability activist, were or are acutely observant and intuitive, recognizing the crucial interconnectedness of life, cherishing beauty, and understanding the deep significance of community. Raised by intellectually nurturing mothers, all four original thinkers and risk-takers can be described as impassioned and tenacious, sharply attuned to the threats of their time, and deeply concerned about the future. With both resonant detail and purposeful distillation, Barnet tells their dramatic stories within the context of the counterculture of 50 years ago, charts the ongoing vitality and influence of their compassionate visions, and asks if we will yet accomplish what these four accidental revolutionaries call on us to do to preserve the web of life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)
-