Fromm, an erudite, prolific author of numerous works ranging from ecocritical commentary to self-reflective discourses, presents a compilation of essays that illuminate his views regarding why most Americans seem oblivious to the destruction of their environment.
(Choice 2009)
Fromm's contrarian view is explored beautifully in 'Ecology and Ecstasy on Interstate 80,' declaring that 'everything human is technological' while driving through the Sierras. The closing essays examine more esoteric issues of free will and social evolution. Fans of nature writing will find Fromm's travels witty and engaging, and his analysis unblemished by typical academic pretension or abstraction.
(Publishers Weekly 2009)
Perfect for classroom discussion and debate.
(Midwest Book Review 2009)
Fromm's journey from victim, to campaigner, to pioneer of eco-criticism (that is, the study of literature from an ecological viewpoint) is documented here, alongside challenging analyses of man's place in nature, free will, our relationship with technology and more. Scholarly but engaging, Fromm is an environmentalist, but also a realist.
(Organic Gardener 2010)
Fromm is most truly a literary scholar rather than a philosopher or scientist. Nonetheless, the journey that this book represents traverses all three realms of inquiry as well as showing an engaging and provocative intellectual trajectory, and it would be churlish to deny that it represents a real and enduring effort by an important thinker to grapple with a range of vital human and ecological issues.
(Organization & Environment 2010)
The Nature of Being Human is a lively, opinionated, impressively learned and always readable contribution to the current debate on the human and natural costs of the dogma of ‘progress’.
(British Society for Literature and Science 2010)
How rare it is that a work of philosophical inquiry is written with the passion of a cri de coeur, but Harold Fromm's brilliantly conceived The Nature of Being Human resonates with such uncanny depths. Here is an utterly engrossing first-person account of a harrowing pilgrimage into the 21st century and its disturbing revelations about humankind's truest nature, in contrast to the comforting solicitudes of a 'humanist' past. If the role of the philosopher is to force us to think, Harold Fromm is a born philosopher.
(Joyce Carol Oates )
Harold Fromm writes about 'awakening to the environment,' but his book is much more. A desperately needed, beautifully crafted manifesto, it is nothing less than a great humanist awakening to the reality of also being a material, fully biological creature.
(David P. Barash, coauthor of How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories )
Fromm delineates three main movements in the naturalistic thinking of the past several decades—ecology, Darwinism, and consciousness studies. He brings a fine and subtle literary intelligence to bear on these subjects, brilliantly illuminating their imaginative implications. His prose is vibrant, vigorous, pithy, and often humorous.
(Joseph Carroll, author of Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature )
The Nature of Being Human is a good read—enjoyable and instructive.
(Francisco Ayala Evolutionary Theory 2009) Fromm delineates three main movements in the naturalistic thinking of the past several decades―ecology, Darwinism, and consciousness studies. He brings a fine and subtle literary intelligence to bear on these subjects, brilliantly illuminating their imaginative implications. His prose is vibrant, vigorous, pithy, and often humorous.
-- Joseph Carroll About the Author
Harold Fromm is a visiting scholar at the University of Arizona whose writings on the self, the environment, and academia have been widely read and debated. He is the coeditor of The Ecocriticism Reader and the author of Academic Capitalism and Literary Value.
