Examining ways that letters of the alphabet have been assigned value in political, spiritual, and religious belief systems through the ages, a volume filled with rare images draws on a variety of sources to explore the history of written language. BOMC & QPB Alt. Reader's Subscription Main.

A pioneering exploration of the roots of our attitudes toward nature, Paul Shepard's most seminal work is as challenging and provocative today as when it first appeared in 1967. Man in the Landscape was among the first books of a new genre that has elucidated the ideas, beliefs, and images that lie behind our modern destruction and conservation of the natural world. Departing from the traditional study of land use as a history of technology, this book explores the emergence of modern attitudes in literature, art, and architecture--their evolutionary past and their taproot in European and Mediterranean cultures. With humor and wit, Shepard considers the influence of Christianity on ideas of nature, the absence of an ethic of nature in modern philosophy, and the obsessive themes of dominance and control as elements of the modern mind. In his discussions of the exploration of the American West, the establishment of the first national parks, and the reactions of pioneers to their totally new habitat, he identifies the transport of traditional imagery into new places as a sort of cultural baggage.

The following is inscribed on page 308 of the author's copy of Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy : ' During this chapter decided to write a history of landscape architecture, at 10.05am Sunday 23rd May 1958' , and ' completed at Taormina, Feb. 1975 ' Ten years later the idea of translating his great work The Landscape of Man into visible form was formulated at Seattle on the evening of 19 May 1985. The sketch plan, with little future deviation, was completed in time for breakfast the following morning. The Historical Gardens that this book describes are only part of a multi-million twenty year programme initiated by the Moody Foundation for the enrichment of Galveston, Texas - a city destroyed by inundation in 1900 and now materially recovered. The site of the gardens themselves is twenty-five acres of flat land adjoining sea marshes. This will be divided by artificial mountains into West and East. There will be fifteen cultures and the guide will take the visitor through the

Geoffrey Jellicoe has long been regarded internationally as the pre-eminent landscape architect of our time. The recipient of many honors, including a knighthood, he now ranks among the century's leading artists in any medium. His working career spans more than six decades, and embraces a truly staggering variety of landscapes and gardens. Project by project, this authoritative monograph examines the definitive canon of Jellicoe's work. Divided into three major sections, the book chronicles Jellicoe's progress towards his remarkable late flowering after 1964, when he finally freed himself from the demands of running a formal practice to concentrate on developing his own unique vision and philosophy of man's relationship to his environment. The author's introduction provides an invaluable guide to the underlying vocabulary and idioms of Jellicoe's work: water, viewpoints, axes, paths, routes, groves, landmarks, secret gardens, elevation and gradation. Over fifty projects, both planned and fully realized, are described in detail, often with a preamble by the author, followed by Jellicoe's own comments, either drawn from his own unpublished papers or from his classic texts on landscape design. The projects include his masterworks: Shute House, Sutton Place, the Moody Gardens and the Atlanta Historical Gardens. Several complete designs have been specially photographed by Hugh Palmer to show the development of Geoffrey Jellicoe's work over years of growth and change, notably at Ditchley, St. Paul's Walden Bury and Shute. Where available, Geoffrey Jellicoe's own plans have been reprinted in full color, some on 6-page foldouts; many of these have never been reproduced in book form before.Michael Spens has enjoyed the benefit of considerable assistance from Geoffrey Jellicoe, whose own contribution to the book has been substantial. As a survey of the work of the century's foremost landscape architect, this volume is as important a contribution to the literature of landscape and garden design as his own The Landscape of Man, also published by Thames and Hudson.

Argues that much of what surrounds Americans is depressing, ugly, and unhealthy; and traces America's evolution from a land of village commons to a man-made landscape that ignores nature and human needs.

Resource added for the Landscape Horticulture Technician program 100014.

The San Francisco Bay can be viewed as a geographic paradox: a place and a void. The collective Bay (composed of San Francisco Bay, San Pablo Bay, and Suisun Bay) both unites and divides the community of the Bay Area, giving identity to the region while separating its populace. The Bay is a backspace, where hardened surfaces of the industrial city crumble into the water--as well as a shorefront, with designed parks and recreational marinas. It is intensely visited in some areas and nearly inaccessible in others; its beauty is acclaimed, its dumping grounds unparalleled. Its sparkling water is refreshed from Sierra snowmelt, its sewer outfalls and urban runoff robust. Once intensely militarized, it is now, just as intensely, demilitarized. In a sense, the Bay is a natural entity, borne of great rivers draining the entire Central Valley of California, however, every inch of its shoreline today is the product of human activity, by either intent or incident.