`Even the hardest-headed urbanite has at some point been so moved by natural beauty as to yearn for a rural past. Evan Eisenberg, a gardener and gifted musician, explores people's fascination with the image of earthly paradise - Eden, Arcadia or the Golden Age - and asks what it shows about their relationship to nature . . . the author deftly unpacks this myth . . . this book is well worth reading' The Economist

`The Ecology of Eden is a tour de force in its attempt to explore the interface between nature and the human capacity to remake it. In a magnificent visionary sweep, Eisenberg examines the ethics and the science of altering the environment' Sunday Times