The Sacred Balance: A Visual Celebration of Our Place in Nature

Tami Oliphant is a Ph.D. candidate in Library and Information Studies at the University of Western Ontario.

Canadian icon David Suzuki has teamed up with Amanda McConnell, a
documentary film writer, and Maria DeCambra to create a visually
stunning and highly readable book that celebrates our place in nature.
In the introduction, Suzuki and McConnell provide scientific
explanations of the intricacy of life on earth, eloquent insights (“If
we can only grasp that we are the world we depend on, then we will find
where we truly belong”), and the persuasive argument that air, water,
and soil are sacred and should be protected at all costs.

Supporting the well-written text are exquisite, carefully selected
photographs—a visual feast depicting everything from microscopic
bacteria to the heavens, from ocean depths to mountain tops, from
African savannahs to Nis’ga totems, from plants and animals to the
human animal. The book also includes photo reproductions of artwork
(such as Australian Aboriginal paintings and Toulouse-Lautrec’s
painting The Bed) and snippets of inspirational poetry or quotations
from Wordsworth, Whitman, Shakespeare, the Koran, the Bible, and other
noteworthy explorers, artists, and leaders. As a meditation on our place
in nature, The Sacred Balance is at once glorious and humbling.