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The ground beneath us : from the oldest cities to the last wilderness, what dirt tells us about who we are / Paul Bogard.

by Bogard, Paul, 1966-

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Soil and civilization.

Earth sciences.

9780316342261 (hc.)

ix, 307 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : color illustrations ; 25 cm

Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-297) and index.

Paved and hallowed. Manhattan ; Mexico City ; London ; Northern Virginia ; Gettysburg -- Farmed and wild. Bishopstone ; Soil ; Ames ; Grass ; The sandhills -- Hell and sacred. Appalachia ; Treblinka ; Alaska ; The Sierra Nevada ; Home.

"When a teaspoon of soil contains millions of species, and when we pave over the earth on a daily basis, what does that mean for our future? What is the risk to our food supply, the planet's wildlife, the soil on which every life-form depends? Who much undeveloped ground do we even have left? More than 118 million tons of human development rest on top of Manhattan Island. Mexico City sinks inches each year into the Aztec ruins beneath it. As we see hallowed ground coughing up bullets at a Civil War battlefield; long-hidden remains emerging from below the sites of concentration camps; the dangerous, alluring power of fracking; the fragility of the giant redwoods, our planet's oldest living things; the surprises hidden under a Major League ballpark's grass; and the sublime beauty of our few remaining wildest places, one truth becomes blazingly clear-- the ground is the easiest resource to forget, and the last we should. The author introduces farmers, geologists, ecologists, cartographers, and others in a quest to understand the importance of something too many of us take for granted - dirt"--Provided by publisher.

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