Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil.

• Author: Hanford, Heather

For author Daniel Hillel, the creation of soil through the marriage of earth and water is a matter of intense personal interest. Writing about it, as he does in Out of the Earth is evidently a labor of love. Perhaps spending a good part of his childhood where this union of elements is incomplete - in the sun-baked desert regions of Israel - had something to do with his choice of avocation.

Hillel brings passion even to his short course on soil formation and the hydrologic cycle, before moving on to his "lessons of the past." Be it salinization, erosion, depletion of groundwater, or wetlands destruction, he reconstructs the abuses of the environment that may have contributed to the collapse of many ancient civilizations.

When one adds to this litany of ecological woes those that modern man has concocted - agricultural chemicals, toxics, industrial waste - the prognosis for humanity would seem rather bleak.

The author, however, ends on a note of "conditional optimism." The raised-bed farming systems in...