For thousands of years, we have dreamed of going back to a time, to a place - Eden, Arcadia, the Golden Age - to a paradise that we ourselves have never known. The Ecology of Eden is at once an inquiry into this dream and a startling new vision of humankind's role in nature.

The Ecology of Eden sheds a new light on present-day environmental problems, showing how we can make peace with our exile not by going back but by looking forward: by learning from nature itself - with, perhaps, some help from Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker - how humans and nature can make tough, supple music together.