About this item
A collection of engaging and provocative essays, Prairie Soul extends the transcendental tradition of writers like Aldo Leopold and Annie Dillard. Entomologist and nature writer Jeffrey Lockwood writes about humans and insects from the grasslands of Wyoming, where he has lived and worked for almost two decades. Like Ed Abbey's Southwestern desert or Wendell Berry's rural Kentucky, Lockwood's home environment and study of grasshoppers form an interesting starting point for consideration of universal concerns and connections with the world at large.Lockwood thoughtfully examines:* Spirituality and the place of religion in science* The soulful connection between human beings and the places they live.* Grasslands and ecology.* The environment as common ground that transcends cultural and political boundariesPrairie Soul is the story of one man's evocative journey of ecological, moral, and spiritual discovery, unfolding on the high plains of Wyoming and stretching to the grasslands of France and central Asia.
About the Author
Jeffrey Lockwood is an unusual fellow. He grew up in New Mexico and spent youthful afternoons enchanted by feeding grasshoppers to black widows in his backyard. This might account for both his scientific and literary affinities.
He earned a doctorate in entomology from Louisiana State University and worked for 15 years as an insect ecologist at the University of Wyoming. He became a world-renowned assassin, developing a method for efficiently killing billions of insects (mostly pests but there's always the innocent bystander during a hit) . This contact with death drew him into questions of justice, violence, and evil.
He metamorphosed into an appointment in the department of philosophy and the program in creative writing. Unable to escape his childhood, he's written several award-winning books about the devastation of the West by locust swarms, the use of insects to wage biological warfare, and the terror humans experience when six-legged creatures invade their lives. His upcoming book, "Behind the Carbon Curtain," explores how the energy industry has censored science, art and education (not insects but pretty creepy stuff) .
Pondering the dark side of humanity led him to the realm of the murder mystery (watch for the release of "Poisoned Justice" this year) . These days, he explores how the anti-hero of crime noir sheds existentialist light on the human condition: In the end, there are no excuses - we are ultimately responsible for our actions.
