Why We Are Here: Mobile and the Spirit of a Southern City

by Edward O. Wilson and Alex Harris

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Book cover for Why We Are Here

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Entranced by Edward O. Wilson's mesmerizing evocation of his Southern childhood in The Naturalist and Anthill, Alex Harris approached the scientist about collaborating on a book about Wilson's native world of Mobile, Alabama. Perceiving that Mobile was a city small enough to be captured through a lens yet old enough to have experienced a full epic cycle of tragedy and rebirth, the photographer and the naturalist joined forces to capture the rhythms of this storied Alabama Gulf region through a swirling tango of lyrical words and breathtaking images. With Wilson tracing his family's history from the Civil War through the Depression-when mule-driven wagons still clogged the roads-to Mobile's racial and environmental struggles to its cultural triumphs today, and with Harris stunningly capturing the mood of a radically transformed city that has adapted to the twenty-first century, the book becomes a universal story, one that tells us where we all come from and why we are here.
  • ISBN10 0871404702
  • ISBN13 9780871404701
  • Publish Date 2 November 2012
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Publisher WW Norton & Co
  • Imprint Liveright Publishing Corporation
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 240
  • Language English