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(JohnMuir)

(JohnMcPhee)

(PeterMatthiessen)

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, 1964

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(OlympicNationalPark)

(HohRainForest)

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In the visionary tradition of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, One Square Inch of Silence alerts us to beauty that we take for granted and sounds an urgent environmental alarm. Natural silence is our nation’s fastest-disappearing resource, warns Emmy-winning acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton, who has made it his mission to record and preserve it in all its variety-before these soul-soothing terrestrial soundscapes vanish completely in the ever-rising din of man-made noise. Recalling the great works on nature written by John Muir (Father of the National Park), John McPhee (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and Peter Matthiessen (a naturalist and writer), this beautifully written narrative, co-authored with John Grossmann, is also a quintessentially American story-a road trip across the continent from west to east in a 1964 VW bus. But no one has crossed America like this. Armed with his recording equipment and a decibel-measuring sound-level meter, Hempton bends an inquisitive and loving ear to the varied natural voices of the American landscape. He is an equally patient and perceptive listener when talking with people he meets on his journey about the importance of quietness in their lives. By the time he reaches his destination, Washington, D.C., where he meets with federal officials to press his case for natural silence preservation, Hempton has produced a historic and unforgettable sonic record of America. More than simply a book, it is an actual place, too, located in one of America’s last naturally quiet places, Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park in Washington State. The fully enlightening exploration into quietness has driven the tranquility of nature to be included in the ecological agenda of the United States.