SOURCE: “Where History and Nature Collide,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 16, 1995, p. 3.

In the following review, Eder offers a mixed assessment of Landscape and Memory, noting that the work is burdened by excessive detail and anecdotal reference.

Landscape is more than a nourishment that the earth provides to our imaginations. It is a nourishment that our imaginations provide to the earth. Against the extreme ecological notion of a primal state of wilderness sullied by human civilization, the historian Simon Schama writes:

“The wilderness, after all does not locate itself, does not name itself. It was an act of Congress in 1864 that established Yosemite Valley as a place of sacred significance for the nation, during the war which marked the moment of Fall in the American Garden. Nor could the wilderness venerate itself. It needed hallowing visitations from New England preachers like Thomas Starr King, photographers like...