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, John McPhee, and Peter Matthiessen, 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—bugling elk, trilling thrushes, and drumming, endangered prairie chickens. He is an equally patient and perceptive listener when talking with people he meets on his journey about the importance of quiet 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. With the incisiveness of Jack Kerouac’s observations on the road and the stirring wisdom of Robert Pirsig repairing an aging vehicle and his life, One Square Inch of Silence provides a moving call to action. More than simply a book, it is an actual place, too, located in one of America’s last naturally quiet places, in Olympic National Park in Washington State.

戈登·漢普頓，聲音生態學傢，艾美奬獲奬錄音師。作品獲林白基金會、美國國傢藝術基金會，以及勞力士“雄纔偉略大奬”肯定。《時人》雜誌、公共電視網一部全國性電視紀錄片，以及漢普頓的新聲音紀錄係列“環境聲音畫像”，曾特彆報道他的聲音畫像。其公視紀錄片《消失的黎明大閤唱》為他贏 得艾美奬“傑齣個人成就奬”。目前居住在華盛頓州安吉利斯港。

約翰·葛洛斯曼，自由撰稿人，作品散見於《奧杜邦》、《君子》、《國傢地理旅行者》、《紐約時報雜誌》、《戶外》、《大觀》、《美味》、《史密森雜誌》、《運動畫刊》、《美國周末》等雜誌。目前居住在新澤西州山湖鎮。