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The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms |  | Author: Amy Stewart
Publisher: Algonquin Books
List Price: $12.95
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Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 45355
Media: Paperback
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 1565124685
Dewey Decimal Number: 592.64
EAN: 9781565124684
ASIN: 1565124685
Publication Date: March 11, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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).
Book Description
In the tradition of the bestselling book The Botany of Desire comes this fascinating exploration of the world underground and one of its most amazing denizens. The earthworm may be small, spineless, and blind, but its role in the ecosystem is profound. It tills the soil, destroys microscopic organisms that cause plant disease, breaks down toxins, and turns soil into rich compost, creating the most fertile areas on earth. In her witty and offbeat style, Amy Stewart shows just how much depends on the humble worm. The august Charles Darwin devoted his last years to the meticulous study of these creatures, admiring their remarkable achievements. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures, he declared. With Darwin as her inspiration, Stewart weaves her own backyard investigations with those of the obsessed oligochaetologists, unearthing the complex life that exists beneath our feet. From the legendary giant Australian worm that burrows up to fifteen feet below ground to the modest nightcrawler that inspired Darwin to write his last book to Stewart's energetic red wigglers, The Earth Moved gives worms their due and exposes their hidden--and extraordinary--universe.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 21
 Fascinating read November 9, 2009
fan of quality products (Massachusetts, USA)
If you want to establish a worm bin to recycle your organic waste, I recommend that you read "Worms Eat My Garbage" first. This book expands from your home bin into the garden and beyond and highlights both pros and cons on those underground super achievers. I thoroughly enjoyed this read and am amazed how much I learned in the process. When I told my husband to not go overboard with raking leaves this fall but maybe mulch a few and leave them be he told me that Scotts now as a commercial out that suggests exactly that together with their winterizer.
I keep two home worm bins and brought in a large bag of mulched leaves in case I don't have enough household food to offer our "little pet munchers" during the winter months. It's not hard if one cooks using fresh foods, and even stale home baked bread goes in for them to process if I don't use it for bread crumbs. Come spring, I will have a respectable amount of castings for our little back yard's plants and flowers to proliferate on. But it's more than that: Amy's book expands into the realms of organic farming, since she goes beyond the worm and explains the entire underground cosmos in an easy-to-understand writing style. If you've ever been on an organic gardening website and wondered why they sell protozoa and microbes in bags to water into the soil and what those might do, here is the book to explain how it all works together. You might just ditch your chemicals and let nature do it for you instead. I did just that several years ago due to so many birds frequenting our little yard, and a funny thing happened: we hardly have any Japanese beetles to speak of these days. That means something is eating their larvae in the soil, and it's not dangerous to any of us.
Okay, this review has probably been all over the place, so to sum it all up, here is a book that, among traveling the globe and the USA explaining worm pros and cons and takes you into an organic water treatment plant that will boggle your mind, eplains all those curious things that happen when you ditch chemicals and start catering to what naturally lives underneath your feet. You might just end up like me: I no longer dread raking all those leaves, I welcome them instead and let the worms and microbes take their nutrients back into the soil. That doesn't mean an unkempt yard, just a healthy one instead of artificial looking green grass...
I never knew earthworms were so fascinating or important! January 3, 2009
Tim F. Martin (Madison, AL United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
_The Earth Moved_ by Amy Stewart is one of those somewhat quirky non-fiction books I am fond of, a book that perhaps given its subject matter might not sound immensely attractive reading material but turns out to be very engaging and quite informative. In this case this book is about the earthworm.
In thirteen chapters the author looked at some of the most famous members of class Oligochaeta, terrestrial worms long familiar to farmers, gardeners, and fishermen, their biology, history with humanity, those whose lives they affect, and their future relationship with us.
The reader learns early on that one of the pioneering researchers of earthworms was the famous Charles Darwin, who spent his final years doing meticulous research on earthworms and writing a much beloved book on the subject. Before he wrote that book if worms were thought of at all they were seen as pests for messing up lawns and were thought to damage plant roots, while in the years after he published people came to embrace the enormous importance of the earthworm in producing soil and altering the landscape. Time and again Stewart would return to Darwin's research and writings on his worms. Darwin found that an acre of garden soil can contain over 50,000 earthworms and yield 18 tons of castings per year (castings are the volume of soil that earthworms swallow and eject as manure). Later findings showed that Darwin's numbers may in fact have been on the low side, as the figure might be one million (earthworms in the Nile valley can deposit up to a thousand tons of castings per acre).
Not all earthworms are alike. Some worms are grouped together and referred to as endogeic worms, species that are found fairly deep in the ground around the roots of plants and are rarely seen. Most of the ones possibly encountered by the gardener are small, grayish things but immense ones that never see the light of the day exist, such as the giant Australian earthworm _Megascolides australis_ which can grow to several feet in length (one can hear a gurgling sound deep in the earth when they move) and the two to three foot long possibly extinct giant worm of Oregon (_Driloleirus macelfreshi_). Larger burrowing worms like night crawlers are called anecic worms and live deep in the soil but may come to the surface to find food. Darwin's favorite was the night crawler _Lumbricus terrestris_ which like to form permanent vertical burrows in the soil, leaving tiny mounds of castings alongside the openings. Epigeic worms make their homes in the rotten mulch of a compost pile or in leaf litter on the forest floor, living on the surface of the ground, never deep in the soil. Two of the best known earthworms are epigeic, the "red wriggler" (_Eisenia fetida_) and the "redworm" (_Lumbricus rubellus_); either might be found at the bait stand, a worm compost bin, or a classroom science project. Overall there are over 4,500 earthworm species worldwide and include such weird species as a Philippines worm that is indigo-blue, spotted, and lives on the forest floor.
Sadly earthworm research not directly related to agriculture or waste disposal is very little funded and has virtually no public support, so many issues of taxonomy, evolutionary history, distribution, and the discovery of new species is funded on shoestring budgets or even done by amateurs who work other jobs.
Stewart had an interesting chapter on worm anatomy, discussing how they move through soil, feed, mate, and the amazing regenerative ability of many earthworms (though giant species are fragile).
I was surprised to learn that most species of earthworms that people encounter in the United States aren't native! The night crawler, the red wriggler, and another important species, the field worm (_Aporrectodea caliginosa_) among others came to America with settlers and were not found here originally. While earthworm do a great deal of good and are often fantastic for soil and plant health, they are in fact an invasive species. They displaced many native earthworm species and even disrupted habitats to such an extent to impact non-worm species. Woodlands that either never knew worm species or had native species with different habits are being several disrupted by worms that have migrated from farmer's fields or were originally dumped by fishermen (in some wilderness areas live bait is now banned). In some forests in the northern U.S. for instance the understory is dying as ferns and wildflowers vanish and new trees can't take root as the rich, damp, slowly decaying forest floor of fallen leaves (the duff) is being consumed by hungry worms, leaving the floor bare and removing the spongy duff layer many plants need to germinate. This has also caused the disappearance of other microscopic creatures like springtails, ground-dwelling birds, and even lead to soil erosion.
Worms however as a whole in the right environment are enormously beneficial. Stewart spent the last five chapters recounting of what great benefit they have been in the past and will continue to be in the future to humanity. New research for instance has shown better ways to make use of the actions and products of earthworms to not only increase crop yields and the nutritional value of those crops but to even control the destructive actions of other soil organisms and diseases (as well as new agricultural practices like "no-till" that cause less disruption to earthworms and soil ecology). Many times in the book Stewart talked about her back porch worm composting bin, how it has helped her garden and compared it to larger models that are being put to use to make fertilizer from animal waste, polluted resources, and human sewage, producing useful agricultural products while disposing of unwanted waste. Earthworms are even being used as living bio-monitors as scientists have been able to track the level of toxins in earthworm tissue, quantifying the cumulative effects of pollutants over time as well as the impact of multiple pollutants.
What you do not know.... March 28, 2008
Robert N. Virden (Seattle)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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 October 7, 2007
Valerie Adolph (Pacific Northwest)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
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 July 3, 2007
Fran Stewart (Hog Mountain, GA USA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 21
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