The Year - by Spike Bucklow (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A lyrical, poetic chronicle of nature's annual cycle, blending ancient wisdom with modern science.

The Year takes us on a journey into how nature transforms across twelve months, each chapter focusing on a specific month's natural events, from spring's beginning through winter's end. It opens with an overview of our evolving understanding of time and nature, from ancient astronomy to the present, and concludes with a chapter on the impact of climate change. Spike Bucklow draws on both modern ecological studies and historical naturalists such as Aristotle, Gilbert White, Thoreau, and Aldo Leopold. Poetic reflections from Ovid, Shakespeare, John Clare, and William Wordsworth enrich the narrative, offering further insights into nature's changes. Blending modern science with traditional wisdom, The Year provides a positive perspective on ecological, global, and personal change, appealing to those interested in ecology, astrology, and the history of science.

Review Quotes

"Bucklow, an art historian, revisits the ancient idea of the zodiac through contemporary ecological science and thought. . . . An attempt to reunite the poetic and the scientific in the shifting cycle of the months and seasons to create a cultural astronomy for the twenty-first century. . . . Full of interesting and provocative connections between ancient and modern, the human and the natural order, between ethereal ideas and experiential realities."--Mathew Lyons "The Broken Compass"

"Blending ancient wisdom with modern science, this 'lyrical, poetic' chronicle of nature's annual cycle aims to provide a positive perspective on ecological, global and personal change."-- "The Bookseller"

"The Year is a contemplative almanac charting nature and culture through the zodiac, with a powerful message for our time of grave disjuncture between the two."--Ferdinand Saumarez Smith, author of "Eleusis and Enlightenment"

"Elegantly shows the potential of traditional astrology to deepen our understanding of the most important single issue of our times, namely the ecology of the more-than-human natural world and our impacts upon it. And it does so by quietly correcting the prejudices that have come to dominate modern cultural life. . . . Invaluable."--Patrick Curry, author of "Ecological Ethics"

"Provides a cultural-historical frame for readers to unpack the way Western and secular forms of time are indebted to, or expropriate concepts from, non-Western cultures. A wonderful book that invites you to read its words in ebbs and flows: a historical-cultural-aesthetic-poetic almanac to carry in your pocket, its sentences in your head."--Julian Yates, H. Fletcher Brown Professor of English, University of Delaware

About the Author

Spike Bucklow is the author of numerous books on artists, and their materials and methods, including Children of Mercury: The Lives of the Painters, also published by Reaktion Books. He was previously professor of material culture at the University of Cambridge.