How the Canyon Became Grand: How the Canyon Became Grand

by Stephen J. Pyne

Book Overview

Presents an informed, brief geological, political, cultural, and economic history of the canyon. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670881104
• ISBN13: 9780670881109
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 199 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Great intellectual history

This book is a great intellectual history of a subject that tends to be considered so trite as to be mundane. In the course of the 20th Century the wonders of the Grand Canyon have been so often noted that they have become a cliche of commercialism. Pyne takes us back to the Spanish explorers and helps us to understand why their intellectual powers were inadequate to interpret the meaning of the Canyon when they first encountered it. Pyne describes 3 great ages of exploration, and devotes considerable space to the explanation of the geology of the canyon, first discovered in the late 1800's by John Wesley Powell and his associates. He also makes frequent reference to the human representation of the Canyon in art; he considers this, it would appear, to be as significant as its geology. He relates this art to the modernistic movements in Europe. He describes the advent of commercialism and of the ecology movement by men like Joseph Wood Krutch, who wanted the Canyon maintained in its pristine state for the enjoyment of all. He describes how the Canyon has become less important in scientific circles with the advent of the theory of plate tectonics and of crater impact zones, of space exploration.

broad world view

Pyne puts the Grand Canyon in the context of world history with numerous references to the "First, Second, and Third Ages Of Discovery", the first represented by Coronado, the second represented by Powell, the third represented by space exploration, and with numerous references to geology, (somewhat surprisingly) to art, and to nature writing. This book details the extensive geologic exploration of the canyon in the late 1800's, the art it produced, and the effects of European trends in art on the Canyon art, and the changing view of the canyon as a result of space exploration and environmentalism. A lucid and compelling work.

The First Great Intellectual History of Grand Canyon

Pyne has discovered that the Grand Canyon has no objective reality, that historically speaking, it is less a physical object than a cultural icon. And the evolution of that icon is fascinating reading indeed. As a collector of Grand Canyon materials, I believe that this unassuming volume is the most original piece of Canyon thought since Krutch's discovery of the Canyon as Wilderness in "Grand Canyon: Today and All Its Yesterdays," and before that, Dutton's easthetic discovery of the Canyon in "The Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District." The book has the additional virtue of being a premier introduction to the written source materials on the canyon. I've just logged on to buy my fifth copy.