This landmark text analyzes the impact of human action on nature by linking the environmental degradation of ancient Mediterranean civilization to the United States of the 1800s. As profoundly topical today as it was in 1864.

Global warming, acid rain, the depletion of forests, the polluting of the atmosphere and the oceans--Botkin (biology and environmental studies, U. of California, Santa Barbara) argues that our ability to solve these problems is limited not by our scientific knowledge, but by the myths and metaphors that shape our perception of the natural world. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Reconstructing historical conceptions of harmonic distance, Audacious Euphony advances a geometric model appropriate to understanding triadic progressions characteristic of 19th-century music. Author Rick Cohn uncovers the source of the indeterminacy and uncanniness of romantic music, as he focuses on the slippage between chromatic and diatonic progressions and the systematic principles under which each operate.