Nature's Chaos

by James Gleick and Eliot Porter

Book Overview

With 102 spectacular full-color photos, this fascinating field guide explores the world's natural disorder. New in paperback. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670835323
• ISBN13: 9780670835324
• Release Date: November 1990
• Publisher: Viking
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 2.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.3" x 0.5" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

Beautiful and Profound

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to listen...does it make a sound? Is there any sense, order or meaning to the universe beyond our human projections? These photographs of Eliot Porter--selected to provide an illustration and counterpoint to James Gleick's eloquent text--are among the most rapturously beautiful ever produced. They are the visual equivalent of poet Wallace Stevens' attempt to grasp that which lies beyond the limits of sentience. Looking through the original hardcover edition is both an act of meditation and of homage--to the greatness of creation, in all its mystery, as well as to the human need to think, feel, and reach for meaning. As I journey through these images, I ask myself, do we look out upon the universe from afar--or do we do so from within, as integral parts of the greater mystery? Let go...allow Gleick's text to pose the question--and Porter's photographs to frame the answer.