Landscape and memory

This book is a fascinating treatise on the role nature (specifically wood, water, and rock) has played in Western culture. Art and history professor at Columbia University, Schama considered this the one book he needed to write. He expertly touches on so many examples of our environment's influence on our collective memory that the book is difficult to describe- everything from Hitler's obsession with the forests of Europe and the battles fought to get Susan B. Anthony on Mount Rushmore, to Western lust for Egyptian obelisks and dance parties held on the massive stumps of California Sequoias in the mid-nineteenth century. This work is also, with its classical layout and type font and its many excellent illustrations, one of the most beautifully designed books I've ever seen. Highly recommended.