LIZ CUNNINGHAM is the author of Talking Politics- Choosing the President in the Television Age (Praeger), which features frank and probing oral-history interviews with top television journalists such as Tom Brokaw, Larry King, and Robin MacNeil. She has written for Earth Island Journal, East Bay Express, the Marin Poetry Center Anthology, The Outward Bound International Journal, Times of the Islands, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She has collaborated with institutions such as the Academy for Educational Development, the Constitutional Rights Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution. She also serves on the board of Outward Bound Peacebuilding and holds a B.A. in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.
"A moving testament to the human spirit."
—Kirkus Reviews
"With genuine emotion and great pragmatism, Cunningham makes
passionate pleas for the continued health of the planet."
—Publishers Weekly
"Cunningham's earnest narration of travels to remote seas around
the world is a compelling read. Citing examples of sustainable
fisheries and marine-protected areas around the word, the book ends
on the hopeful note that we may have stopped hitting the snooze
button when it comes to taking action against climate change."
—Booklist
"Ocean Country is a great read—a moving memoir, a gripping
adventure story and a work of committed advocacy all in one
volume." —Georgia Rowe, Bay Area News Group
"This book comes as a great gift—an overwhelming reminder of the
ocean planet on which we live, with its great wonders and the risks
it faces."
—Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth and Oil and
Honey
"Ocean Country is a heroine's journey of near-death and
discovery, of hopelessness and rebirth. Cunningham's odyssey
reveals how immersion into the problems that overwhelm us is a
blessing of self-discovery. Where there is carelessness, we find
our tenderness; where there is human suffering, we find our sense
of compassion. Where there is damage and degradation, we find faith
in ourselves and know that human beings can both resist and change
all human ignorance."
—Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest and director of
Project Drawdown
"A beautifully-written memoir that shows us the ocean through
Cunningham’s eyes, with grief for what is lost, awe for what
remains, and glimpses of future redemption."
—Roz Savage, National Geographic Adventurer of the Year and
author of Rowing the Atlantic and Stop Drifting, Start Rowing
"A must read for those who want to preserve the beauty and
diversity of our world both on sea and on land."
—Arlene Blum, author of Annapurna and Breaking Trail
"Liz Cunningham, in the rich tapestry of her book, documents better
that any scientific treatise could, what we stand to lose if we
continue to let the oceans go."
—Daniel Pauly, author of Five Easy Pieces
"A thrilling adventure tale, searing exposé, and moving memoir
rolled into one. Ocean Country did something rare and precious: it
burnished my hope for the future of our oceans."
—Karen Garrison, former codirector of the Natural Resources Defense
Council’s Ocean Program
"Wave after wave of gripping narrative—mysterious, funny, prophetic
and profound—deftly delivers knowledge crucial to our times."
—Catherine Keller, author of Cloud of the Impossible and The Face
of the Deep
"A stunning account of our endangered oceans—of vanishing coral
reefs, collapsing fisheries, mindless exploitation and species
loss. But that is only the beginning. Time and again, Cunningham
discovers threads of hope in people committed to reversing these
tragedies. Taken together, by the end, they unlock a hitherto
unimagined and hopeful revelation. You can feel it in the author’s
heart. You will feel it in your own."
—Richard J. Borden, author of Ecology and Experience
“Cunningham has searched and found a powerful response to one
of the greatest questions of our time from the deepest part of
herself and expressed it with eloquence and wit and discernment,
taking the reader along with her for a marvelous ride into a
greater state of awareness.”
—Susan Murphy, author of Minding the Earth, Mending the World
"Ocean Country is a book about the art of the possible. How it is
possible to protect the planet’s glorious richness of sea-lives and
the life of fisherfolk? How can we harvest the sea without emptying
it? How is it possible to bear the oceanic consequences of run-away
carbon catastrophe? How is it possible to write a book that both
celebrates and informs, calling us to respond with hearts and minds
to the crises of the life-sustaining seas? In her book of
underwater adventures, Liz Cunningham shows us how.”
—Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Great Tide Rising
"Liz Cunningham’s journey is remarkable not only in itself, but
because it also symbolizes, and summarizes, important aspects the
journeys of everyone concerned about the fate of our planet."
—Norman MacLeod, author of The Great Extinctions
'How we’re changing the oceans—and can fix them—can seem all too
abstract, until you read Liz Cunningham’s powerful story. She takes
you inside her heart as she witnesses a huge coral reef go from
vibrantly and colorfully alive to bleached white death over just a
few days, and as she feels the splendor of swimming with whales.
Her message comes through loud and clear: through our individual
actions, each doing what we can, we can nurture the seas we all
depend upon, and where we’ve already damaged them, we can nurse
them back to health."
—Anthony Barnosky, author of Dodging Extinction
"What a journey this is—both personal and planetary! These are the
kinds of stories we need right now because they help us move from
despair to hope. Ocean Country will change the way we
look at the seas."
—Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-coordinator of the Yale University Forum on
Religion and Ecology and coauthor of Journey of the
Universe
"Liz Cunningham takes us on a journey from the Turks and Caicos to
the California coastline, to the Mediterranean, and onto the Coral
Triangle of the west Pacific. We observe amazing creatures, explore
unique habitats and ecosystems, and learn a fair amount of history
and science. But the real reward of our adventures is the
heightened appreciation we attain for the wonder and beauty, yet
fragility, of the world's oceans. We recognize just why we must
fight to defend them against the twin threats of heating and
acidification caused by our ongoing burning of fossil fuels. If you
were looking for another reason to take action to defend our oceans
against ongoing environmental assaults, then Ocean Country will
provide it."
—Michael Mann, director of the Pennsylvania State University Earth
Systems Science Center and author of Dire Predictions
"The ocean is medicine. That’s what Liz Cunningham’s book shows us.
It describes the winding, unpredictable neurological cascades that
happen when we connect deeply with our waterways. We experience
awe, wonder, purpose, insight, calm, excitement, solitude, romance,
empathy, creativity. We become advocates, warriors, custodians,
fixers, champions—we become unstoppable. In Ocean Country we meet
people where they are as they heal and are reminded how much we all
need such healing now."
—Wallace J. Nichols, author of Blue Mind
"If a pilgrimage is a transformative journey to a sacred place,
which I believe it is, Cunningham's quest is a tale of sacred
travel at a threshold point in human history. While the oceans are
in peril we have it within our power to save them if we humbly
recognize our reliance on them and truly experience their
miraculous beauty."
—Phil Cousineau, author of The Art of Pilgrimage
"For those who think the oceans are too vast, too remote, for us to
irreversibly delete their biodiversity, Ocean Country, is a sharp
rejoinder. In her very personal account, Cunningham shows how
we attack the oceans’ species on every front. ‘Biodiversity
matters’ she tells us—and provides compelling firsthand accounts of
why."
—Stuart Pimm, author of The World According to Pimm
"A vivid picture of Earth’s ocean biodiversity. This is a beautiful
book that will make you go do something about preserving that
diversity for future generations."
—Mark Williams, coauthor of Ocean Worlds
"The wreckage we humans have caused in the ocean is monumental and
dispiriting, its seeming inevitability enough to sadden and
immobilize compassionate people who’ve come to feel there’s no
longer any meaningful way for them as individuals to help. Liz
Cunningham faces this tragedy unflinchingly and, working
painstakingly through her own personal loss, finds healing and hope
in the sea. Bringing us to places of continued abundance and
fertility—an Indonesian reef sparkling with life, a fishery
restored through a collaboration of fishermen and scientists, a
humpback whale nursery where mothers gently tend their calves—her
stories are oases of hope, shimmering with the possibility of
restoration for the larger, life-giving sea."
—Deborah Cramer, author of The Narrow Edge
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