Two men in a pub...... no not a joke but with an idea to develop an intellectual tour de force of ideas from writers, historians, poets, artists, economist and many others about the world in which we find ourselves today. To set up a manifesto on what might be resolved from what we have learnt into the world we face.
If this philosophical idea seems just a bit incomprehensible I'd say approach with care but do dip into what is a Pandora's Box of diverse thinking and writing.
I will highlight the article about Luddites (and my local Nottinghamshire connections from the loom breakers in nineteenth century England), a personal account of growing up in the American mining/fracking zone which has seeped into lives and bodies and the artistic world of an Iraqi refuge whose escape has shown a humanity to help.
This is wide ranging stuff and very intellectually led. It has merits against the instant social media response to the world around us perhaps. Will it affect change and make leaders, politicians, religions face up to challenges? I think not but I admire the authors and contributors for at least trying

Where this world is going on and how can we develop a different attitude about our environment complicated by climate change and a lot of unusual, scaring weather's answer from a crazy climate?
How can we give peace again to Earth and men?

In my land old people said that when Earth is stressed and there are quakes or floods or uncertainties caused by extreme climate conditions, people are stressed and peaceless as well. A good environment means for man peace because the environment is every man's land.

This book published last Aug 4th Walking on Lava Selected Works for Uncivilized Times edited by Charlotte Du Cann, Dougald Hine, Nick Hunt and Paul Kingsnorth the sum of the first ten books published by the cultural association Dark Mountain where we meet, in very erudite words, without hiding anything the risks for the future, the story of our humanity and a project for saving the Planet re-thinking our history with creativity.

The Dark Mountain Project was founded in 2009 wanted by a group of ecologists and creative people who thought that what they were hearing about nature and ecology was not sufficient for changing the world in better, but that, at the same time the world needed and needs extra-attention because what we are seeing in a daily base is scaring. I am writing when two days ago we experienced in Italy the quake of Ischia where two people lost their lives and a lot of houses and a church collapsed with great simplicity as if they would have been sand. Italy: a year ago we lived the quake of Amatrice with wagons of dead people. Who knows: maybe if the climate change wouldn't have been so strongly influential we wouldn't have lived all these disasters, or in less measure.

What these group of thinkers of the Dark Mountain Project wants to do is to try to reunite all the creative mind for telling to the world, their world as it was and proposing some solutions.
These tales, poems are amazing. I prefer the tales of the past, where nature was tranquil, where agriculture was clean and rich for every man.
In all these tales there are big reflections about the state of the world, and where this Old World is going on and what we can do for changing the situation before it becomes too irreversible, if it's not arrived yet the point of no return. Returning to the past can be a great idea :-)



I thank NetGalley and Chelsea Green Publishing for the eBook.

This book offers nice views and has beautiful writing.
But sadly its a bit too "dream-y" for me personally. I love the ideas that are talked about in this book about how we could help our world - but it never offers actual ideas how we can get there in a realistic way.
Which sadly is what i think we don't need more books with talk about what we should do - we need more books that offer actual options that are realistic and possible in our real world!

its still a beautiful book to read and if you are interested in it? do pick it up, as i said, the writing alone make it worth a read!

But sadly it was not what i personally wanted from this book so it was not really what i wanted from it.

I may not have been the ideal target for this book. On the one hand, I admired the writing as I was reading, but I also wasn't really buying the message. There was a lot of talking about the dangers of civilization, and how we should go back to living in harmony with the world, but no one mentions the elephant in the room: to make that workable, you would probably have to get rid of as much as 3/4 of the world population. And from all the history I've read, overpopulation isn't the fault of civilization, it that civilization came about due to overpopulation to deal with the friction that resulted.

Still, the writing was (for the most part) lovely, and did make me think in places, even when I disagreed. 'Shikataganai' in particular, near the end of the book, affected me deeply,

I was unfortunately unable to finish this work. I think I requested it under the impression that there would be more creative/lyrical works that functioned in an inhumanizing style, but I wasn't able to really enjoy or get through the esoteric essays that dominate the work. Even the more lyrical works seemed too doused in explanations of how the work was dehumanising instead of a more subtle approach. Thank you to the publisher for providing an ARC.