Product Description

“Engrossing” (The Christian Science Monitor), “fascinating” (TimeOut New York), “delightfully nuanced” (Entertainment Weekly), “terrific” (New York Newsday), “inspiring” (Bust magazine). “You know a book is good when you actually welcome one of those howling days of wind and sleet that makes going out next to impossible” (The New York Times).

The Earth Moved has moved reviewers across the country. In witty, offbeat style, Amy Stewart takes us on a subterranean adventure and introduces us to our planet’s most important gatekeeper: the humble earthworm. It’s true that the earthworm is small, spineless, and blind, but its effect on the ecosystem is profound,moving Charles Darwin to devote his last years to studying its remarkable attributes and achievements.

With the august scientist as her inspiration, Stewart investigates the earthworm’s astonishing realm, talks to oligochaetologists who have devoted their lives to unearthing the complex web of life beneath our feet, and observes the thousands of worms in her own garden. Stewart’s “ease in gliding from worms to plants to humans will remind readers of John McPhee’s essays on canoes, oranges, the geology of America” (Providence Journal). “Stewart’s book paddles along in [Rachel] Carson’s wake. Read her book and you’ll start to see how the rhododendron bed in front of your house is a kind of Mars for frontier science” (The Boston Globe).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #227463 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-11
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Even Charles Darwin found the lowly earthworm fascinating: all their tiny individual labors in tilling the soil and nourishing it with their droppings add up over time to a massive collective impact on the landscape. In this absorbing, if occasionally gross, treatise, gardening journalist Stewart (From the Ground Up) delves into their dank subterranean world, detailing their problem-solving skills, sex lives (Darwin noted their "sexual passion") and shocking ability to re-grow a whole body from a severed segment (scientists have even sutured together parts of three different earthworms into a single Frankenworm). Intriguing in their own right, earthworms stand at the fulcrum of the balance of nature. In the wrong place, they can devastate forests, but in the right place, they boost farm yields, suppress pests and plant diseases, detoxify polluted soils and process raw sewage into inoffensive fertilizer; indeed, humanity's first great civilizations may have risen on the backs of earthworms, say some of the creature's most fervent champions. Stewart writes in a charming, meditative but scientifically grounded style that is informed by her personal relationship with the worms in her compost bin. In her telling, worms become metaphors-for the English working class, for the process of scientific rumination, for the redemption of death and decay by life and fertility-and serve as a touchstone for exploring the ecological view of things.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-In this fascinating book, readers are taken on a journey underground to see the impact worms have on humans and on our planet. Referring often to Charles Darwin's The Formation ofVegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms, with Observations ofTheir Habits, Stewart educates on the vital role these creatures play in growing crops, how they can neutralize the effects of nuclear waste on soil, and their ability to regenerate new body parts. An avid gardener, the author begins with the worms crawling through her own backyard before visiting them in such destinations as an endangered redwood forest in California, a sewage-treatment plant in San Francisco, a nature preserve in Minnesota, and The Giant Worm Museum in Australia (which is shaped like a 325-foot-long worm). A book that's as enlightening as it is entertaining.-James O. Cahill, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
No less a scientist than Charles Darwin wrote one of his most popular books on how earthworms were responsible for creating the rich uppermost layer of soil, and garden columnist Stewart's equal fascination for this spineless, subterranean earth mover (and ingestor) shines through in the chatty text. She explains the differences between red worms that thrive in compost piles and worm bins, nightcrawlers that dig their deep burrows in the soil, and gray worms that live around plant roots. She examines the work of scientists as they discover new species of earthworms, looks at the role of earthworms in soil ecology, dissects the anatomy and taxonomy of the world's earthworms, and discusses the interactions of human and worm. The importance of earthworms to the organic farmer and backyard gardener is one of Stewart's key points. This quirky book will find a niche in all gardening and natural-history collections. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

What you do not know....
This is a very interesting book. Most of us know something about what is beneath the oceans, but most of us know nothing about what is is beneath the earth. This book discusses the importance of earthworms, including where they should be and where they should not be. It is a book that every human being should read, now that we are, at long last, beginning to appreciate what we have left of the magnificent air, water, and earth that we inherited.

Very fine creative journalism
I prepared for a difficult read when I started into this book. I was not aware of Ms Stewart's journalistic abilities. Wow! Did I get a surprise.
The book is chock full of useful information, but it is presented in an entertaining and most readable way. I started reading for information and kept on to the end for pure pleasure.
Dividing the topic into logical but intriguing sections, the writer investigates all aspects of earthworms, thoroughly. She has a personal approach that is enthusiastic without being over the top. I found that not only did I learn facts, but I was made to think more deeply and widely about all aspects of earthworms.
I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in gardening or horticulture - in fact to anyone who would like to understand the natural world better.

I've Always Liked Earthworms, But Now I Respect Them
Amy Stewart manages, in a delightful blend of research and chatty prose, to convey the drama of the not-so-simple earthworm. I'd never considered that worms had thinking processes. Nor had it occurred to me that those cute little crawlers (YES, I consider them cute!) might, in some areas of the USA, be considered detrimental.

Ms. Stewart (no relation to me, by the way) has accomplished what so many backyard gardeners fail to do. She has asked Why? She has found the answers. She has put them in easily-digestible form for the rest of us. Don't we all need to know that earthworms can successfully be used in managing waste-treatment? Wouldn't it help if we all knew the different types of earthworms and what their strengths are in the yard/gardenenvironments?

THE EARTH MOVED is fun and thought-provoking at the same time. Definitely five stars, especially for gardeners.