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For most of human history, we have lived our daily lives in a close relationship with the land. Yet now, for the first time, more people are living in urban rather than rural areas, bringing about an estrangement. This book, by acclaimed author Jules Pretty, is fundamentally about our relationship with nature, animals and places. A series of interlinked essays leads readers on a journey that weaves through the themes of connection and estrangement between humans and nature. The journey shows how our modern lifestyles and economies are precisely those that would need six or eight Earths to contain them if the entire world's population adopted them. A tragedy unfolds as Pretty shows how we are rendering our own world inhospitable and how, unless we make substantial changes, we risk losing what it means to be human. Ultimately, however, the book offers directions for an optimistic future in the very face of climate change and pending global environmental catastrophe.