SKU: 55758738047

Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

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Gardens: An Essay on the Human ConditionHumans have long turned to gardens both real and imaginary for sanctuary from the frenzy and tumult that surrounds them. Those gardens may be as far away from everyday reality as Gilgamesh's garden of the gods or as near as our own backyard, but in their very conception and the marks they bear of human care and cultivation, gardens stand as restorative, nourishing, necessary havens. With Gardens, Robert Pogue Harrison graces readers with a thoughtful,

Humans have long turned to gardens--both real and imaginary--for sanctuary from the frenzy and tumult that surrounds them. Those gardens may be as far away from everyday reality as Gilgamesh's garden of the gods or as near as our own backyard, but in their very conception and the marks they bear of human care and cultivation, gardens stand as restorative, nourishing, necessary havens.

With Gardens, Robert Pogue Harrison graces readers with a thoughtful, wide-ranging examination of the many ways gardens evoke the human condition. Moving from from the gardens of ancient philosophers to the gardens of homeless people in contemporary New York, he shows how, again and again, the garden has served as a check against the destruction and losses of history. The ancients, explains Harrison, viewed gardens as both a model and a location for the laborious self-cultivation and self-improvement that are essential to serenity and enlightenment, an association that has continued throughout the ages. The Bible and Qur'an; Plato's Academy and Epicurus's Garden School; Zen rock and Islamic carpet gardens; Boccaccio, Rihaku, Capek, Cao Xueqin, Italo Calvino, Ariosto, Michel Tournier, and Hannah Arendt--all come into play as this work explores the ways in which the concept and reality of the garden has informed human thinking about mortality, order, and power.

Alive with the echoes and arguments of Western thought, Gardens is a fitting continuation of the intellectual journeys of Harrison's earlier classics, Forests and The Dominion of the Dead. Voltaire famously urged us to cultivate our gardens; with this compelling volume, Robert Pogue Harrison reminds us of the nature of that responsibility--and its enduring importance to humanity.

I find myself completely besotted by a new book titled Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition, by Robert Pogue Harrison. The author . . . is one of the very best cultural critics at work today. He is a man of deep learning, immense generosity of spirit, passionate curiosity and manifold rhetorical gifts.--Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune

This book is about gardens as a metaphor for the human condition. . . . Harrison draws freely and with brilliance from 5,000 years of Western literature and criticism, including works on philosophy and garden history. . . . He is a careful as well as an inspiring scholar.--Tom Turner, Times Higher Education

When I was a student, my Cambridge supervisor said, in the Olympian tone characteristic of his kind, that the only living literary critics for whom he would sell his shirt were William Empson and G. Wilson Knight. Having spent the subsequent 30 years in the febrile world of academic Lit. Crit. . . . I'm not sure that I'd sell my shirt for any living critic. But if there had to be one, it would unquestionably be Robert Pogue Harrison, whose study Forests: The Shadow of Civilization, published in 1992, has the true quality of literature, not of criticism--it stays with you, like an amiable ghost, long after you read it.

"Though more modest in scope, this new book is similarly destined to become a classic. It has two principal heroes: the ancient philosopher Epicurus . . . and the wonderfully witty Czech writer Karel Capek, apropos of whom it is remarked that, whereas most people believe gardening to be a subset of life, 'gardeners, including Capek, understand that life is a subset of gardening.'"--Jonathan Bate, The Spectator



Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 09/01/2009
ISBN: 9780226317908
Pages: 248
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.70d

Review Citations: New York Times Book Review 10/11/2009 pg. 20
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Marc in MA
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Excellent introduction
Format: Kindle
This is a well-written introduction for quickly learning how to use Ollama to run LLMs on your local machine. The book is light on theory but very good for facilitating hands-on experimentation. Only minimal Python experience is needed. Contrary to another reviewer's comment, the source code, which can be copied from the Kindle version of the text, is also readily available by emailing the author at the address provided. The final exercise in the book leads you through generating a RAG application to use Ollama to process your own documents without having to make them available to an external server.
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Simon Mok
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Effective book for learning ollama
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The author has explained clearly the concept. Helpful and effectively written.
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Beginners Guide to Running Your Own Private LLM
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I just read this book and really enjoyed how it breaks down using Ollama as your own private LLM. It gives you just enough info to spark some cool ideas and make you want to dive deeper into AI. If you’re totally new and curious, this is a fun, easy place to start!
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jrw879
Waukegan, US
★★★★★ 5
Lim provides an easy-to-follow path to get an LLM-powered app up and running
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Lim has written another really clear, easy-to-follow tutorial. This one walked me through the Ollama platform showing step-by-step how to download open weight models, query them, supply them with my own documents, and write applications that are powered by LLMs. Lim provides an easy-to-follow path to get the first version of an LLM-powered app up and running.
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Wil C
Bozeman, US
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Excellent roadmap for the local AI jungle
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Great little book. Every page has something useful. No fluff. Clearly written by someone whose been in the trenches lol
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Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2025

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