David Rothenberg – författare

A celebrated figure in myth, song, and story, the nightingale has captivated the imagination for millennia, its complex song evoking a prism of human emotions,—from melancholy to joy, from the fear of death to the immortality of art.But have you ever listened closely to a nightingale’s song? It’s a strange and unsettling sort of composition—an eclectic assortment of chirps, whirrs, trills, clicks, whistles, twitters, and gurgles. At times it is mellifluous, at others downright guttural. It is a rhythmic assault, always eluding capture. What happens if you decide to join in?As philosopher and musician David Rothenberg shows in this searching and personal new book, the nightingale’s song is so peculiar in part because it reflects our own cacophony back at us. As vocal learners, nightingales acquire their music through the world around them, singing amidst the sounds of humanity in all its contradictions of noise and beauty, hard machinery and soft melody. Rather than try to capture a sound not made for us to understand, Rothenberg seeks these musical creatures out, clarinet in tow, and makes a new sound with them. He takes us to the urban landscape of Berlin—longtime home to nightingale colonies where the birds sing ever louder in order to be heard—and invites us to listen in on their remarkable collaboration as birds and instruments riff off of each other’s sounds. Through dialogue, travel records, sonograms, tours of Berlin’s city parks, and musings on the place animal music occupies in our collective imagination, Rothenberg takes us on a quest for a new sonic alchemy, a music impossible for any one species to make alone. In the tradition of The Hidden Life of Trees and The Invention of Nature, Rothenberg has written a provocative and accessible book to attune us ever closer to the natural environment around us.

The astonishing richness of birdsong is both an aesthetic and a scientific mystery. Evolutionists have never been able to completely explain why birdsong is so inventive and why many species devote so many hours to singing. The standard explanations of defending territories and attracting mates don't begin to account for the variety and energy that the commonest birds exhibit. Is it possible that birds sing because they like to? This seemingly naive explanation is starting to look more and more like the truth. Why Birds Sing is a lyric exploration of birdsong that blends the latest scientific research with a deep understanding of musical beauty and form. Drawing on conversations with neuroscientists, ecologists, and composers, it is the first book to investigate the elusive question of why birds sing and what their song means to both avian and human ears. Whether playing his clarinet with the whitecrested laughing thrush in Pittsburgh, or jamming in the Australian winter breeding grounds of the Albert's lyrebird, Rothenberg immerses himself in the heart and soul of birdsong. He approaches the subject as a naturalist, philosopher, musician, and investigator. An intimate look at the mostlovely of natural phenomena, Why Birds Sing is a beautifully written exploration of a phenomenon that's at once familiar and profoundly alien.

"Hand's End" offers a new philosophy of technology as the fundamental way in which humans experience and define nature - the tool as humanity extended. Rothenberg examines human inventions from the water wheel to the nuclear bomb and discusses theories of technology in the thought of philosophers including Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Marx, Heidegger, Spinoza, Mumford, and McLuhan.

In this companion volume to the national public television documentary of the same name, interviews of philosophy luminaries expose the relevance of philosophy to everyday life.A Parliament of Minds brings together groundbreaking interviews with a diverse cross-section of contemporary philosophers, demystifying and humanizing this formal discipline, making philosophy accessible and relevant to all. The companion volume to the national public television series of the same name, A Parliament of Minds highlights 23 philosophers as they discuss everyday issues. These interviews offer an unusual glimpse into their vital, active, moment-by-moment thinking processes.Philosophers interviewed include K. Anthony Appiah, Yoko Arisaka, Peter Caws, Ewert Cousins, David Crocker, Ashok Gangadean, Marjorie Grene, Lewis Gordon, Lewis Hahn, Michael Halberstam, Tom Huhn, Joseph Margolis, John J. McDermott, Robert Muller, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Robert Cummings Neville, Martha Nussbaum, Esa Saarinen, Karan Singh, John J. Stuhr, David Rothenberg, Tu Wei-ming, and Nancy Tuana.

In this companion volume to the national public television documentary of the same name, interviews of philosophy luminaries expose the relevance of philosophy to everyday life.A Parliament of Minds brings together groundbreaking interviews with a diverse cross-section of contemporary philosophers, demystifying and humanizing this formal discipline, making philosophy accessible and relevant to all. The companion volume to the national public television series of the same name, A Parliament of Minds highlights 23 philosophers as they discuss everyday issues. These interviews offer an unusual glimpse into their vital, active, moment-by-moment thinking processes.Philosophers interviewed include K. Anthony Appiah, Yoko Arisaka, Peter Caws, Ewert Cousins, David Crocker, Ashok Gangadean, Marjorie Grene, Lewis Gordon, Lewis Hahn, Michael Halberstam, Tom Huhn, Joseph Margolis, John J. McDermott, Robert Muller, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Robert Cummings Neville, Martha Nussbaum, Esa Saarinen, Karan Singh, John J. Stuhr, David Rothenberg, Tu Wei-ming, and Nancy Tuana.

Can nature be restored to a pristine state through deliberate action? Must the preservation of wilderness always subordinate the interests of humans to those of other species? Can indigenous peoples be entrusted with the guardianship of their own wild resources? This collection of international writings tackles tough questions like these as it expands wilderness conservation beyond its American roots. One of the first anthologies to consider wilderness as a global issue, it takes a stand against the notion that wilderness is a northern colonialist conceit and is irrelevant to the plans of third world countries. Contributions from all over the planet Nepal, Borneo, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, South Africa, India, and the United States show instead that wilderness has an important place in the environmental thought and policy of any nation, industrial or developing. The World and the Wild boldly advances the idea that our concept of wilderness must expand to take in new vistas. It breaks fresh ground in global environmentalism and is essential reading for anyone concerned with development issues related to conservation.

Although he is known primarily as the inventor of the phrase "deep ecology," Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess's thoughts and approaches have waded through all the major streams and events of our times. From a childhood during World War I through the study of psychoanalysis in Freud's Vienna, through the midcentury hardening of ideologies to the most recent decades with the emergence of ecology as a political force, his life in the throes of nature has always fuelled a will to espouse precise and clear thinking in the face of the great contemporary dilemmas. Through a series of conversations covering the whole span of Naess's rich and complex life, David Rothenberg presents the grand old man of natural philosophy in his own words. What emerges is the personal vision of a life imbued with ecology, which reveals in the most human terms how respect for and contact with the natural world can provide the foundation for a total view of the vast problems of humanity and our place in the world. "Is it Painful to Think?" reveals insights and inspiration, hypotheses and conclusions, but above all paradox, as the difference between ideas and events comes to the surface.These are issues that all philosophers of nature must come to terms with, and this unconventional book seeks not to provide answers as much as stir discussion and reflection. This, says Naess, is where philosophy differs from religion, where conversation veers from pronouncement.

A new view of what’s “wild,” and a new path for environmentalism.At the very heart of American respect for nature, historically and philosophically, is the notion of the wild. This notion comes under scrutiny in Wild Ideas, a collection of essays that bring a fresh and refreshing perspective to the wilderness paradoxically at the center of our civilization. Blending well-known and new voices, the volume surveys classical and romantic concepts of wilderness, from the scary to the sublime, and shows why neither serves us anymore. Instead, the authors argue for a “wild culture,” in which nature is not opposed to humanity, a mere matter of resources and consumers. A cogent reassessment of the ideas that drive the conservation movement, Wild Ideas points out a new direction for future environmentalism.Among the topics discussed are the confluence of wilderness, empire, and race in the United States; the way the ecology movement uses language; gendered views of the wilderness; maps and topology, and how they affect our view of the wild; healing by the wilderness experience; and the idea of an urban wilderness. Contributors: David Abram; Douglas Buege, U of Wisconsin; Denis Cosgrove, U of London; Robert Greenway, Sonoma State U; Ed Grumbine, Sierra Institute; Marvin Henberg, Linfield College; Irene Klaver, Montana State U; Andrew Light, U of Alberta; Lois Lorentzen, U of San Francisco; Max Oelschlaeger, U of North Texas; R. Murray Schafer; Tom Wolf.

This innovative book, assembled by the editors of the renowned periodical Terra Nova, is the first anthology published on the subject of music and nature. Lush and evocative, yoking together the simplicities and complexities of the world of natural sound and the music inspired by it, this collection includes essays, illustrations, and plenty of sounds and music. The Book of Music and Nature celebrates our relationship with natural soundscapes while posing stimulating questions about that very relationship. The book ranges widely, with the interplay of the texts and sounds creating a conversation that readers from all walks of life will find provocative and accessible.The anthology includes classic texts on music and nature by 20th century masters including John Cage, Hazrat Inrayat Khan, Pierre Schaeffer, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Toru Takemitsu. Innovative essays by Brian Eno, Pauline Oliveros, David Toop, Hildegard Westerkamp and Evan Eisenberg also appear. Interspersed throughout are short fictional excerpts by authors Rafi Zabor, Alejo Carpentier, and Junichiro Tanazaki.The audio material for the book, available online at http://www.wesleyan.edu/wespress/musicandnaturecd/, includes fifteen tracks of music made out of, or reflective of, natural sounds, ranging from Babenzele Pygmy music to Australian butcherbirds, and from Pauline Oliveros to Brian Eno.

In the spring of 2013 the cicadas in the North Eastern United States emerged from their seventeen year cycle - the longest gestation period of any animal. In listening to cicadas, as well as other humming, clicking, and thrumming insects, Bug Music is the first book to consider the radical notion that we humans got our idea of rhythm, synchronization, and dance from the world of insect sounds that surrounded our species over the millions of years over which we evolved. Completing the trilogy he began with Why Birds Sing and Thousand Mile Song, David Rothenberg explores a unique part of our relationship with nature and sound - the music of insects that has provided a soundtrack for humanity throughout the history of our species.

David Rothenberg's multilayered life thrust him into Broadway's brightest lights, prison riots, political campaigns, civil rights sit-ins, and a Central American civil war. In his memoir, Fortune in My Eyes, his journey includes many of the most celebrated names in the theater: Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, Sir John Gielgud, Charles Boyer, Peggy Lee, Eartha Kitt, Charles Laughton, Alvin Ailey, and numerous others. David produced an Off-Broadway prison drama, Fortune and Men's Eyes, which reshaped his life. John Herbert's chilling play led directly to the creation of the Fortune Society, which has evolved into one of the nation's most formidable advocacy and service organizations in criminal justice. David was Elizabeth Taylor's opening night date at the Richard Burton Hamlet – a distant cry from his entering Attica prison during that institution's famed inmate uprising...just two of the experiences revealed in this memoir. As a theater publicist and producer – and as a social activist – he shares experiences with presidents (JFK and Bill Clinton) and with anonymous men and women, out of prison, who have fought to reclaim their lives. The human drama of the formerly incarcerated is a match for many of the entertainment world's most fabled characters.