• Complain

Johnson - All Natural*: *a Skeptics Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety

Here you can read online Johnson - All Natural*: *a Skeptics Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2013, publisher: Potter;Ten Speed;Harmony;Rodale;Rodale Press, Incorporated, genre: Religion. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Johnson All Natural*: *a Skeptics Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety
  • Book:
    All Natural*: *a Skeptics Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Potter;Ten Speed;Harmony;Rodale;Rodale Press, Incorporated
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2013
  • Rating:
    3 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 60
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

All Natural*: *a Skeptics Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "All Natural*: *a Skeptics Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

In this age of climate change, killer germs, and obesity, its easy to feel as if weve fallen out of synch with the global ecosystem. This ecological anxiety has polarized a new generation of Americans: many are drawn to natural solutions and organic lifestyles, while others rally around high-tech development and industrial efficiencies. Award-winning journalist Nathanael Johnson argues that both views, when taken to extremes, can be harmful, even deadly.

Johnson, raised in the crunchy-granola epicenter of Nevada City, California, lovingly and rigorously scrutinizes his familys all-natural mindset, a quest that brings him into the worlds of an outlaw midwife, radical doctors, renegade farmers and one hermit forester. Along the way, he uncovers paradoxes at the heart of our ecological condition: Why, even as medicine improves, are we becoming less healthy? Why are more American women dying in childbirth? Why do we grow fatter the more we diet? Why have so many attempts to...

Johnson: author's other books


Who wrote All Natural*: *a Skeptics Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

All Natural*: *a Skeptics Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "All Natural*: *a Skeptics Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Mention of specific companies organizations or authorities in this book does - photo 1

Mention of specific companies organizations or authorities in this book does - photo 2

Mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities in this book does not imply endorsement by the author or publisher, nor does mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities imply that they endorse this book, its author, or the publisher.

Internet addresses and telephone numbers given in this book were accurate at the time it went to press.

2013 by Nathanael Johnson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

Rodale books may be purchased for business or promotional use or for special sales. For information, please write to: Special Markets Department, Rodale, Inc., 733 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Portions of this book were previously published in Assembly, Eldr, and Harpers magazines, and in the collection Sierra Songs and Descants. E. coli DNA images used by permission of the California Department of Public Health.

Book design by Amy King

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Johnson, Nathanael.

All natural: a skeptic's quest to discover if the natural approach to diet, childbirth, healing, and the environment really keeps us healthier and happier/Nathanael Johnson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60529-074-4 hardcover

ISBN 978-1-60961-548-2 ebook

1. Organic living. 2. Environmental health. 3. Human ecology. I. Title.

GF77.J64 2012

640dc23 2012029538

We inspire and enable people to improve their lives and the world around them - photo 3

We inspire and enable people to improve their lives and the world around them.
rodalebooks.com.

To Mom and Dad. We turned out all right despite/because of all this.

I NTRODUCTION

My inspiration for this book began when I was 7, as I sat huddled with my little brother on the covered porch of our house in the pines outside Nevada City, California, our backs against the door, watching the rain fall. It was cold that day, the kind of coldjust on the verge of freezingthat somehow cuts more deeply than it would if the temperature dropped another five degrees and wet turned to snow.

That was 1986, and we were out there because my parents had just bought a computer, an IBM 286. The screen was two-toned black and amber, and the machine produced a grinding noise when it was processing information, as if it were gnawing on the floppy disks we fed it. Nonetheless, my brother, Tim, and I were fascinated to the point of obsession. It was like a starship had materialized in our housethe magnetism of futuristic coolness was just as irresistible, which was precisely what my parents were worried about.

For most of our young lives, theyd managed to shield us from technology. They were determined to raise us in an Edenic natural setting, so we moved to a town in the hills of Northern California surrounded by communes and spiritual retreats, where many people lived off the electrical grid and foraged for food in the forest. As babies, wed crawled around naked because Dad had determined that all diapers, even the organic cotton kind, were an abhorrent corruption of natures plan. We were fed a diet of organic brown rice and garden vegetables. We visited naturopaths and chiropractors. There were no televisions in our house, and we were not supposed to watch TV when we visited friends because, as my mother explained with an unsatisfying lack of specificity, it would rot our brains. But my parents, for all their idealism, also had a pragmatic streak. They knew that they couldnt hold back the rising tide of technology forever. When the computer first entered the house it was strictly off-limits. But then, under heavy lobbying, and with the understanding that a computer-dominated culture was inevitable, they agreed to a compromise: For every three hours we spent outside we were allowed to play Space Quest for half an hour. Which is why my brother, and I were outside in the wet, wrapped together in an old blanket.

I dont remember all of what was going through my head that day, besides thinking, Im cold, and frequently fighting the urge to check the time. I know I wondered whether the frigid outdoors was really healthier than a warm seat in front of a computer. I fantasized about that image for a few moments. Then I asked my brother how far wed gotten. Tim fished the clock out of his pocket. Almost eight minutes, he said.

Perhaps my parents precautions outweighed the risk, but to them the 286 was inseparable from the open pit mines, fiery smelters, and factory lines that had called it into being. It represented the piecemeal conversion of the worldfrom a colorful place that fostered life into a gray place that fostered mechanical efficiency. And my parents worried that the computer could cause a similar conversion in our brains. By the same rationale, all technologiesthat is, all attempts to control, improve, or otherwise meddle with naturewere suspect. Factory farming, food processing, pharmaceuticals, and hospital births were, in their eyes, all products of the same industrial force and, therefore, were liable to do more harm than good in the long run.

According to family ideology, good health resulted from forming connections with the surrounding world rather than controlling it, from finding harmony with nature. But when I encountered nature as a kid, instead of granting me health, it generally wanted to eat me: It wanted to lay eggs in my cereal, to fly clumsily into my ear, to skitter across my pillow and disappear into the blankets. Its easy to point to aspects of nature that are annoying or dangerous, but thats not enoughit turns outto win you unlimited Space Quest privileges. My parents had no trouble acknowledging that some parts of nature were bad and some kinds of technology were good, while maintaining their preference for the former and suspicion of the latter. And even I had to admit that there was something weird about the desperation that came over me when my time at the computer was up. Even I had to admit that there was something about the natural world that made me feel good.

Picture 4

My family went backpacking in Yosemite every summera kind of pilgrimage, to be completed regardless of difficulty. The year I was born, I rode atop Dads backpack, and two summers after that my little brother joined me in this palanquin. From then on, Tim and I paid back this service, taking a larger burden each trip. Strangers on the trail used to gape at usthis pair of heavy-laden toddlers, bandannas around our necks, red felt hats on our heads, trudging resolutely into the backcountry. I loved those trips. For some reason the mosquito bites and sunburns, the exertion and the grime, all seemed insignificant. Each day I felt my pack grow a little lighter, my stride a little surer. Each evening my brother and I teetered out into the shocking coldness of a new lake to dog-paddle in little gasping ellipses. Each night the family sat together, sipping tea, and watched the alpenglow fade from a new set of peaks.

The same year that Tim and I had sat in the sleet to earn our computer time, we hiked over Koip Peak Pass. Wed camped just before the trail grew steep, where a glacier dripped into a shallow pool. As the sun rose I made out a jagged line rising improbably up an escarpment of rusty scree. Id never seen a trail that simply hurled itself up a cliff face in that way, but when we began the ascent I found we were following the same line Id traced from below. At the end of one switchback, which seemed to traverse out over nothing, I paused. To one side I could lean into the mountain, my hand splayed across the talus tiles; to the other was sky and wisps of cloud. Below, there was a rock outcropping, then air for 5,000 feet, and then the flat pan of Nevada desert stretching out until it met the sky again. I thrilled, just for a second, at something like the sensation of flight, then felt the greasy skid of vertigo and pulled my head away. My family was on the trail below: Dad following Tim closely, and Momwith her two-ton fear of heightsbehind, placing each foot with the fanatical concentration of a firewalker.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «All Natural*: *a Skeptics Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety»

Look at similar books to All Natural*: *a Skeptics Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «All Natural*: *a Skeptics Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety»

Discussion, reviews of the book All Natural*: *a Skeptics Quest for Health and Happiness in an Age of Ecological Anxiety and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.