The Earth Moved won the 2005 California Horticultural Society's Writer's Award and was named a "Best Book" of the year by the San Jose Mercury News. Now in trade paperback.
Published
Reviews of
The Earth Moved:
On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms
New York Times
December 21, 2003
...On a more subterranean level, I've started keeping a worm bin again, thanks to The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms, by Amy Stewart (Algonquin Books, $23.95). Written by a gardener who has long fed her kitchen waste to the redworms that live in two bins on her back porch, churning out humus for her tomatoes, the book ventures deep into the world of earthworms, which includes 4,500 species.
She draws inspiration from Charles Darwin's revolutionary book The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits, published in 1881 (and well worth the read, by the way).
But she moves far beyond Darwin's exploration of nightcrawlers to conversations with contemporary oligochaetologists (worm scientists) trying to figure out how, for instance, worms in the Caribbean can be so closely related to worms in Fiji or, on a more commercial level, just how much vermicompost (worm soil) can make a petunia grow best. She visits with amateurs stalking the near extinct giant Oregon worm, Driloleirus macelfreshi, which is two feet long and smells like lilies.
Interwoven with tales of explorers are intriguing facts for the gardener. Earthworms, for example, can help prevent tomato blossom-end rot, which is caused in part by a calcium deficiency. Earthworms produce calcium during digestion, adding it to soil through their castings. (Perhaps it goes without saying that this book is for the hard core.)
...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.
by Anne Raver
Excerpted from "Cuttings: A
Page Here, a Page There: Soon It's Spring"
Dan Vierra, Sacramento Bee. January 12, 2004
[A]n extraordinary subterranean adventure...
Publishers
Weekly Annex Reviews. December 22, 2003
PW Editor's Nonfiction Pick for January
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 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2003
An admirable portrait of that tireless ploughman: the earthworm.
In the detritusphere (the soil's leaf litter layer) and below ground, the busy earthworm makes dirt and more, "folding the ruins of a city, a farm, or a society into the lower strata of the earth," writes Stewart (From the Ground Up, 2001), who raises earthworms on her porch. She finds them endlessly fascinating, and they command her affection: "When I get home from a trip, the first thing I do is go outside and check on the worms." As a gardener, she's awed by the actions of these spineless wonders as they substantially alter the earth's composition, increasing its capacity to absorb and hold water, bringing about an increase in nutrients and microorganisms. Stewart keeps the information digestible and poses all the questions we might have been afraid to ask. For instance, what are earthworms' favorite human foods? Summer fruits, especially melon: "My worms eat a strictly vegan diet." Stewart gives readers the benefit of her research, referring frequently to the copy of Darwin's The Formation of Vegetable Mold, Through the Action of Worms she keeps close by her side and staying in touch with a hardy band of oligochaetologists who give her ideas to chew on, including the possible use of earthworms to process sewage and to reclaim polluted soil. The neatest trick in the earthworm's bag is regeneration, its ability to grow replacements for amputated parts--even if it sometimes dooms itself by mistakenly growing a second head. Not that the earthworm is all beneficence, for just as it kills off harmful bacteria and fungus, it can also spread them, and worms can become detrimental to certain ecosystems, as when they were introduced to the forest understory and proceeded to displace local flora and fauna.
A nifty piece of natural history. Earthworms of the world can stand a little taller.
Dallas Morning News. January 11, 2004
Amy Stewart understands that a good book can be about a subject as commonplace as the ground beneath our feet—if the author has the passion to share it. She knows an enticing title will draw readers to the bait, and a pleasant, idiosyncratic style will keep them hooked. She delivers those elements enchantingly in The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms.
[Darwin] concluded, incorrectly, that [worms] or their reproductive material must somehow be able to travel on the wind or across water. The correct explanation, as Ms. Stewart remarks in the chapter that shares the book's title, is continental drift, a phenomenon unknown to Darwin. This is one of the many small but delightful surprises in a well-crafted and well-organized succession of stories with worms as either the protagonist or in nearly hidden but important roles.
...Thanks to Ms. Stewart, readers everywhere will develop an unexpected but not unwelcome taste for worms.
by Alfred B. Bortz
excerpted from "Noble Crawling"
Interview, published April 9, 2004
The San Jose Mercury News, January 25, 2004
Good non-fiction, like good verse, causes you to open your eyes and see afresh something that has been right in front of you -- or, in this case, right under your foot. The earthworm may be small and spineless, a taken-for-granted denizen of your backyard garden, but Northern California writer Amy Stewart sees the poetry in the humble creature.
In ``The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms'' (Algonquin, 256 pp., $23.95), a tender, funny and profound book, she shares her fascination with the worm's anatomical structure, its gardening prowess and its longtime impact on the structure of the Earth. For example, did you know that worms have survived two mass extinctions, including the one that knocked off the dinosaurs? That one acre of soil can contain a million worms? That despite being blind and deaf, worms have the power to bury ancient ruins?
I bet not. This book is full of such facts that will bring more depth to your own backyard diggings. Charles Darwin himself was an impassioned oligochaetologist (an earthworm scientist) who played piano for worms to see how they would react to different notes and breathed on them to see if they reacted to different smells. Stewart says that despite the skepticism of his colleagues, Darwin saw parallels between his work on evolution and his work with worms.
``He could hardly restrain himself before laying out his central thesis: his remarkable conviction that all the vegetable mould over the whole country has passed many times through, and will again pass many times through, the intestinal canals of worms.''
Stewart, a former resident of Santa Cruz who now lives and gardens in Eureka, has all the enthusiasm and delight of a child dissecting her first worm. On her desk, she keeps a pot of dirt filled with earthworms, and there's an earthworm pin-up poster on the wall. Her passion is contagious. Good non-fiction can also be a call to action. In this case, I closed the book and went in search of a worm bin, so that I, too, could watch the slithering creatures transform my family's vegetable waste into pure gardening gold.
by Jill Wolfson
"An unseen world at the reader's feet"
The Boston Globe, January 18, 2004
One of the greatest heroes of the American landscape is usually invisible to those who enjoy its beneficence. I refer, as you may have guessed, to the humble earthworm -- the subject of Amy Stewart's "The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms" (Algonquin, $23.95). There is something about the mere mention of the earthworm that excites people to an extravagance of praise and of solemn reproach against our contempt for the lowly and unprepossessing constituents of the ranks of creation. Stewart is no exception: "Are we so hierarchical that we can't respect a creature that lives beneath our feet?" she asks. "Are we so focused on image, on appearance, that we can only love the prettiest inhabitants of the garden -- a swallowtail butterfly, a fat bumblebee -- and neglect the slimy but hardworking earthworm?" No, I would say we are not. Show me a man who does not love the earthworm and I will show you an iconoclast.
That is why it is so astonishing and scandalous to read in these pages that most earthworms in this country, including the beloved night crawler, are invaders from Europe. Little is known about the native American worm species that these trespassers did away with in their triumphal crawl across the continent. More than that, the intruders are actually destroying the once-earthwormless forests in Minnesota by consuming the carpet of leaves at its floor that is essential to indigenous undergrowth. Well, I call that news, bad news, to be sure, but not the same old paean that one is so tired of hearing. Stewart, a lover and owner of earthworms, has taken up the great subject and dealt with it clearly, the good and the bad, in all its complexity. This is a very fine book, although, as I discovered, not one for reading while eating lunch.
by Katherine A. Powers
Excerpt from "A Reading Life: Nature's Heroes, Tiny and
Towering"
The Boston Globe, January 18, 2004
Another new book, by another passionate and inquisitive writer, is "The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms," by Amy Stewart. Part gardening journal, part systematic survey, part paean to worms, her book is in many ways about how "the smallest changes [can] result in enormous outcomes." (Think of millions of worms inexorably digesting a couple of tons of soil, gradually burying the ruins of a city.) Stewart's theme of incremental change feeds Carson's book, too, as it feeds so much of science, from "The Origin of Species" to your town's recycling program.
Although you can read this slim book in an afternoon, Stewart addresses, in some depth, everything from worm regeneration to nematodes to a night crawler's "mental abilities." Carson make an appearance, as does Darwin, who spent the final years of his life studying earthworms. There's also a handy epilogue in case you want to start a worm bin of your own.
In my favorite parts of "The Earth Moved," Stewart's passion slips her restraints. She calls worms "custodians of the planet" and claims "there is not a finer pet anywhere." "They consume," she writes, "they transform, they change the earth." She even tentatively sanctions a French scientist's claim that "worms could be responsible for the development of the world's great civilizations." And indeed you find yourself considering it: Didn't most major cultures emerge where the soil had been sufficiently tilled and enriched by countless earthworms?
And yet, despite their position near the foundation of so many terrestrial ecosystems, worms -- like the denizens of deep oceans -- are still strangers to us. It is the refrain of everyone Stewart interviews: "There just aren't a lot of people looking into this yet."
The reasons for this are probably obvious: Earthworms are not, at first glance, all that glamorous; it's hard to get money to study them; and their lightless and cramped world is very difficult to examine. Yet nearly every page of Stewart's book testifies to their relevance. I think of Carson's claim that, at the end of World War II, our understanding of the seas was "dangerously inadequate."
Carson's legacy is proof that science books matter, that good prose can change the world. On its own scale, Stewart's book paddles along in 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. Stewart puts it like this: "In my own backyard, looking down at the soil, I feel the way I do when I look out at the ocean, where great blue whales and giant squid swim the unknown depths, where sharks hunt and sea cucumbers wave with the currents. . . . How much of the underground world of the giant earthworm is still unexplored and unknown?"
by Anthony Doerr
Excerpted from "On Science: Beauty and
synergy: endless oceans, the conqueror worm"
The Christian Science Monitor, March 2, 2004
Look at the smile of kinship on the face of any child who finds a worm. It's a fascination that only deepens with age, as evidenced by two new books written by grown-ups. In "The Earth Moved," California gardener Amy Stewart takes us on a subterranean journey with these spineless, blind wonders that eat their way through the soil, destroying toxins, and turning the ground into rich compost for plants and trees.
Even the great biologist Charles Darwin recognized the merit of the earthworm. "It may be doubted," he wrote in 1881, "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."
Stewart, who like many gardeners knows a lot about the earthworm population in her soil (including that there are many types of earthworms), wonders why more scientists before Darwin didn't bother to study the tiny beasts. It was Darwin who saw their potential and essentially put them on the map. He realized earthworms had the ability to affect gradual geological changes over centuries that could produce enormous outcomes - action that fitted into his work on evolution. He also projected their impact on a smaller scale: In a typical acre garden, 50,000 earthworms produce 18 tons of manure, or enriched soil, each year.
This peaceful, delicate creature, Stewart writes, has posed a large task for scientists, who have taken more than 100 years to piece together a portrait of the earthworm's dark life. But the subterrestrials still have more to teach us, even as creatures like the giant Oregon earthworm are being pushed to the brink of extinction. In an age when farmland is being paved over to accommodate urban and suburban sprawl, good soil is an increasingly valuable commodity. Earthworms - going about their deliberate business of churning out rich dirt - may emerge as unsung heroes.
Archeologists owe a debt of gratitude to earthworms, too. By churning soil, the little creatures have safely buried ancient artifacts, including coins, stone implements, and gold below the ground.
Stewart, an admitted nonscientist, began her study by making observations of the earthworms in her backyard. Like many gardeners and 6-year-old boys before her, she began keeping a worm bin inside her house to watch over their fascinating activities. They're clean, quiet, well-behaved creatures, she writes, that are interesting to watch, and even beautiful. Stewart offers us an engrossing read with related websites at the end of her book, and directions on how to make your own worm bin.
by Lori Valigra
by The worms go in, the worms go out. Two books about the slimy
creatures that make dirt happen
Baltimore Sun. February 1, 2004
If you are a gardener, or intend to become one, now's the time to commence dreaming. Give a warm thought to your vital partner, the earthworm, without whom there would be little or no compost on earth. Which brings me to The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms, by Amy Stewart (Algonquin, 240 pages, $23.95).
Stewart is a garden columnist for North Coast Journal in California and writes for other magazines and newspapers. Her previous book was From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden (Algonquin, 272 pages, $18.95). She insists she is not a scholar, but her research is formidably impressive, drawing on dozens of scientists.
Do you really want to read about creepy, crawly, slimy creatures? Yes. Take it from me.
Stewart writes only about earthworms - not about caterpillars, cutworms, tapeworms or their like. But there are many varieties in her chosen taxonomic class, Oligochaeta. Night crawlers and red wigglers are most prominent.
Charles Darwin wrote his last book about earthworms. He was among the earliest scientists to trace their enormous contributions to the richness of soil - and thus to life in general. He estimated more than 50,000 earthworms could inhabit an earth acre - but modern scientists have found as many as 1 million and in rare cases as many as 8 million.
They consume leaves, decaying woody materials and soil, and produce "cast" or "castings," a charming euphemism for dung. "They alter its composition," Stewart writes of the earth in which they work, "increase its capacity to absorb and hold water, and bring about an increase in nutrients and microorganisms. In short, they prepare the soil for farming. They work alongside humans, extracting a life from the land. They move the earth, a remarkable accomplishment for a creature that weighs only a fraction of an ounce."
Earthworms delve several inches or even feet beneath the surface, rising at night to feed. One worm will eat something like a third of its body weight daily - "a healthy earthworm population can move almost twenty tons of soil per acre." Their travels perforate the earth - in a minuscule way, plowing.
Stewart writes clearly, and sometimes poetically. Her fondness for Darwin is unbridled and her enthusiasm for worms approaches adoration: "Worms are ruminators; they sift through whatever surrounds them, turn it over, explore it, move through it. They are deliberate creatures, in no great hurry, but always in motion, twisting and burrowing, shrinking and contracting, and eating. They spend their lives in a kind of active meditation. ... For a being with such a simple brain, they seem, in this way, almost thoughtful. ... They don't chirp or sing, they don't gallop or soar, they don't hunt or make tools or write books. But they do something just as powerful: they consume, they transform, they change the earth."
So, how much do you want to know about them?
Earthworms breathe through their skin and have no lungs. Their hearts come in pairs - how many depends on the species, some have as many as five pairs of hearts. (No, no one has witnessed a worm playing poker.) They have several blood vessels. They have gizzards that grind food. They have brains, though primitive ones. They rest but apparently do not sleep. They are hermaphrodites, each with both male and female sexual organs - pores - both of which must match for mating. Small epigeic worms, like red wigglers, live for several years and reproduce quickly. A night crawler can go as far as eight feet down into the earth, rising to the surface at night in search of food. One can live as long as six years.
Worms seem extraordinarily resistant to predation or parasitism. They thrive on many varieties of protozoa and nematodes, and they seem resistant to many bacterial infections, though they share the gloomy underground with hosts of mites, bacteria, ants, spiders, millipedes, beetles, sow bugs, springtails, scorpions and fungi, all intricately connected in a "food web."
That's a trifling start.
I challenge you: However repulsive you believe earthworms are, if you read this book, they will emerge your friends - earning genuine affection and respect.
Their ecology is intricate. Most of the earthworms in North America came from Europe with plant roots in the early Colonial periods. They moved west with plantings of various sorts and have been further distributed, by landscapers' containers, mud caked on ATV tires or horses' hoofs, even by fishermen dumping bait cans at the end of the day.
In the 19th century, European earthworms were introduced in New Zealand. The land in which they were planted became as much as 70 percent more productive. Some grasses increased by 20 times in worm-populated pasture. Grazing sheep flocks doubled.
Wonderful as they are for farming, they threaten American forests, which evolved after the Ice Age without worms in the soil. These forest hardwoods' seeds age and germinate in the decaying leaf and twig layer of the forest floor - called the "duff." Earthworms consume that, taking it deep into the earth. This deters tree seeds from germinating and growing and prevents forests from replicating themselves. But on their own, worms travel only a few yards a year. So it is people, who transport them into or near the forests, who must be controlled.
It had been my impression that the case for organic agriculture arose from its crunchiness - marching hand in hand, nibbling tofu, singing choruses of "Kumbaya." But Stewart's interviews with plant scientists compellingly argue that organic farming, combined with minimizing plowing, allows worms to flourish and thus makes the land much more productive and plants more disease and pest free.
On the highly mechanized side, there already is a relatively small movement to perfect "reactors" - rigs into which farms' animal manure and other wastes can be consumed by worms, yielding fertilizer. Some early work also has been done with municipal sewage. Onward!
"Earthworms are the custodians of the planet," Stewart persuasively writes. "They were here for millions of years before we came along. They survived the extinction that killed off the dinosaurs; I imagine they'd do just fine if something came along and wiped us out, too. ...We should remember one thing: we need worms more than they need us."
Next time you see one, smile.
And say thanks.
by Michael Pakenham
from Give fresh heed to the earthworm, mighty protector of the
planet
Raleigh News & Observer. March 7, 2004
Near the end of his life, Charles Darwin focused strictly on the night crawler. No scientist before him had given any kind of earthworm such close scrutiny. But his masterwork completed, the father of evolution returned to a subject that had piqued him since young adulthood. The result: a book called "The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Actions of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits," published in 1881, the year before he died.
Are worms worthy of such august attention? Indeed they are, and garden columnist Amy Stewart pays joyous homage to Darwin and the creepy-crawlers he adored in "The Earth Moved," a book filled with intriguing details about these, as it turns out, not-so-lowly annelids. To begin with, they antedate the dinosaurs. They are also ubiquitous, thriving below ground everywhere save the poles. They come in a multitude of sizes, from almost microscopic to several feet in length. One normally yard-long monster in Australia that can stretch to 10 feet makes "a deep gurgling sound" as it moves underground. While the species of worms are many, their numbers are countless. Stewart writes, "Population studies performed in the twentieth century have shown that earthworm populations can range from as few as twenty thousand worms per acre in Rumania to an astonishing eight million per acre in a New Zealand pasture." In other words, like it or not, we can't get away from them.
Nor should we want to. According to scientists who have classified worms by their functions, the creatures fall into three major categories: One sort lives amid the roots of plants; another, exemplified by the night crawler, burrows underground; the third, including the red wiggler beloved by fishermen, lives in rotting organic matter on the surface of the ground. All of them work wonders for plants and the soil (though not for fish). They till, aerate and fertilize with their abundant castings. Stewart characterizes them as the "intestines of the soil."
Nor is this kind of diligent farming the only wonder that they work. Living in and on the soil, they "document the movement of land masses" through geologic time. They apparently came into being some 350 million years ago and found a niche around the roots of primitive plants. At that time the planet sported only one supercontinent, Pangea; when it broke apart and drifted, the worms went with it. As a result, the worms found on either side of the Atlantic are notably similar, and worms in the California redwood forests are close cousins to some worms found in Australia.
Whatever their color, they share their habitat with many other species, like mites, nematodes and bacteria, which they may eat or transport in their gut from one place to another. Stewart writes with proper amazement: "This is the earthworm's powerful secret, one that even Darwin didn't fully grasp: the earthworm, far from being one of the smallest and weakest creatures, is actually one of the largest beings in its world. In that place, it is an elephant, a whale -- a giant."
Most of the worms in this country, including the night crawler and the red wiggler, are not native. Many of our native species have, alas, disappeared under the pressures of development and deforestation. And the foreigners, brought in unwittingly with plants and mud stuck to shoes, can be beneficial or destructive. One earthworm researcher describes them to Stewart as "ecosystem engineers." In a nature preserve outside Minneapolis, these engineers have stripped the forest floor of duff, with the result that no ferns and wildflowers now grow there. Whence came these invaders? From sod brought in for a golf course and from worms thrown away by fishermen. For such a wrong-way change, there is no remedy.
Nonetheless, the worm is indeed "nature's plough," a boon to all who practice organic farming and gardening. Stewart writes of "no-till" agriculture, a method designed not to disturb the soil in the way that foot-deep tilling does. Because disturbance discourages earthworms, the structure of the soil is altered. But with no-till, the seed or seedling is dropped into a just-big-enough hole, and the worms proceed to snuggle in its roots. Home gardens, too, profit from this method. Happily, Stewart gives us instructions for putting worm-friendly no-till into action in our own yards. "Earthworms," she states, "may be the most important crop I grow."
Oh, the endless virtues of worms! Worms can handle the job of composting animal waste to the point at which it's no longer harmful. A Florida sewage-treatment plant uses worms to clean up biosolids and bring the biopathogens down to the cleanest EPA rating.
In addition to accounts of these notable accomplishments, "The Earth Moved" is filled with fascinating details. Someone who studies worms is called an oligochaetologist. A worm comes into this world out of a cocoon. It can indeed regenerate if lopped in two and may even become two worms. Not all worms are pinkish red; the Philippines boasts one species that's an iridescent indigo decorated with large white spots with yellow centers.
Amy Stewart raises red wigglers. No, she's not engaged in worm-farming, at best a parlous enterprise attracting novices who hope for riches. She raises them in a stacking worm bin for her own use, both as a handy-dandy way to dispose of vegetable scraps (they like banana skins but not orange peels) and as a source of castings. Worm castings, which enrich any garden or potted plant, are sold at my local farmers market for eight dollars a gallon. It took no more than 24 pages of this entertaining and informative book to persuade me that my porch needs a worm bin, too, and the appendix tells me where to find one.
by Janet Lembke
from Oh, the endless virtues of worms!
Entertainment Weekly. February 6, 2004
Gardening columnist Stewart spends far more time digging through soil than most of us, so she has a keen eye for the delightfully nuanced behavior of the earthworm. "I should probably leave the worms in my own garden undisturbed, but I can't resist," she writes. "Earthworms are the custodians of the planet." She's not kidding. Using Darwin's research as a starting point, she delves into their incredible abilities and offers useful tips for the green thumbs in her audience. Did you know that wasabi and mustard ward off worms? Or that, given millions of years, their dutiful work can refill a strip mine? And what about their jarringly familiar mating habits? "When a worm is looking for a sexual partner, its primary criteria is length."
by Nicholas Fonseca
from the Books section
Cleveland Plain
Dealer
February 5, 2004
"The Earth Moved" (Algonquin, 223 pages, $23.95) by Amy Stewart tells how small, spineless, blind earthworms impact the ecosystem by aerating and loosening the soil and boosting its nitrogen content.
Stewart explores the world of worms. She tells us worms are the offspring of hermaphrodite parents. They start as eggs, covered with mucous, which hardens into a cocoon. There is usually one egg per cocoon. They skip the larval stage and emerge as small wrigglers.
She discovered that worms have a preference for cooked rice, while orange peels and onions go untouched for months.
by Suzanne Hively
from Get Growing, A Primer on Worms
Rocky Mountain News, January 24, 2004
If you think worms and slugs are gross, Amy Stewart understands.
"I know that some people do," the 34-year-old author says. "They think of worms as slimy, little creatures."
But these creepy crawlers are essential to the health of a garden.
Stewart's new book, The Earth Moved - On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms (Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill) explains why. A northern California gardener, she became curious about the wigglers when she acquired a worm-composting bin for her back porch. She also learned Charles Darwin, father of evolution, spent the last years of his life studying nightcrawlers.
"Darwin put earthworms in pots on the piano and played it to see how they would react to the vibration," Stewart says.
Worms are vital to a garden, Stewart says, because they chew through tons of soil every year, making nutrients and minerals available to plant roots. But they also could have a dark side. Some observers worry nightcrawlers left behind by fishermen could be damaging forests in Minnesota by eating all of the protective leaf litter on the ground.
"Maple leaves are like candy to earthworms," says Stewart, who traveled to the state to get a firsthand look. A solution could prove difficult.
"You can't very well round up earthworms and herd them out of the forest," she says.
by Betsy Lehndorff
Excerpted from "Creepy Crawlers Play Key Garden Role"
Powell's City of
Books
"A Powell's 14 Favorites" Pick for
Winter 2004
A blind, lungless little plow that sifts our soil a teaspoon at a time is responsible for engineering our entire ecosystem. Amy Stewart has uncovered the earthworm's purposeful cycle into a delightful read that also serves as a reminder to savor our curiosities.
by Donna Kane
Powell's Books, Portland, OR
San Francisco Chronicle, January 24, 2004
Most gardeners know that one sure sign of a healthy soil is an abundance of earthworms. Author Amy Stewart takes that knowledge many steps further in her new book, "The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms" (Algonquin Books; 223 pages)...[Stewart] has a crisp writing style that helps the lay reader get through, and the closing chapters...are both fascinating and optimistic. The appendix includes a good guide to earthworm resources.
by Judy Richter
excerpted from "The Lowly Earthworm Gets Respect"
BUST Magazine, Winter 2003
This is a love song to that long, reddish-pink, ribbed and veiny thing, spinelessly seeking moist, dirty places in the dark. Yes, blessed be the blind earthworm. Our shy friends the worms are finally given all the respect and admiration they are due in Amy Stewart's gravely charming book. Most of us avoid worms when we see them, stepping over the stranded woozy ones left on the sidewalk after a rain. We may vaguely recall their genderfuck, or that they somehow fornicate by mutually rubbing their ridgy, titillatingly-named clitellum together, but we'd really rather not ponder them closely.
Stewart, however, will make you take the worm very seriously. Consider that it can move mountains, bury buildings, and turn garbage into gold--gardener's gold, that is. If humans ever harnessed their gentle powers of digestion, we could clean up the environment and revolutionize food production, bringing famine and pollutin to a hald in our lifetimes! Darwin adored them and devoted the end of his life to writing The Formation of Vegetable Mould, which clearly inspired Stewart--a gardener with the mind of a scientist--to keep and contemplate her worms. Writing soulfully, with a deliberate, placid pace, she evokes the humble, probing nature of the worm itself and like Darwin, she articulates the profound importance of this long-disrespected life form. You may still associate them with maggotty death and decay, but after reading this book, you will surely come to admire these inspiring creatures teeming quietly under the soil.
Library Journal. November 15, 2003
Following in the muddy footsteps of Charles Darwin, who provided the inspiration for her work, garden writer Stewart eagerly (and literally) digs up the dirt on earthworms. She's obviously done her homework and in sharing her knowledge conveys a real enthusiasm about her subject. Interviews with scientists as well as anecdotes about Darwin and present-day worm farmers are delivered in an easy, chatty style. Unfortunately, there is not enough hard science for someone wishing to do serious research (Stewart mixes in a lot of musings about her own garden, although she does provide a bibliography and an extensive list of worm-related newsletters and web sites) and yet too much detail for the average person who likes to putter in the backyard garden. The appeal of Stewart's book, even though it's well done, is probably limited to larger collections with a budget for popular science titles.
by Denise Hamilton
Heritage Christian School, Rindge, NH
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information
Booklist. October 15, 2003
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.
by Nancy Bent
Copyright 2003 Booklist
Publishers
Weekly. August 11, 2003. Spot Feature
Algonquin's January title The Earth Moved, by Amy Stewart, burrows deep into the hidden world of the more than 4,500 species of earthworm. The author herself keeps about 10,000 worms in a compost bin, and while they do perform the hard work of turning kitchen scraps and newspaper into fertilizer, Stewart also considers them pets. Editor Antonia Fusco, who expects the title to appeal to fans of Michael Pollan and Sue Hubbell, says, "This book makes you look at your backyard upside-down, and there's so much more than you know that goes on beneath your feet." The Earth Moved, which will have a 20,000-copy first printing, also delves into the intense earthworm study undertaken by Charles Darwin at the end of his life. The book explains that some species of worms have a life span of more than 20 years, and they lead hermaphroditic love lives (they line up head-to-tail to mate). This may leave readers wondering: When Carole King sang, "I feel the earth move under my feet," was she referring to a lover or a larva?
Northern
California Independent Booksellers Association
NCIBA News. October 2003
Speaking of funny, booksellers who were entertained on Friday by Amy Stewart, author of The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms, said she was "good enough for Letterman." Stewart brought a cache of worms and a video camera along, and her WormCam presentation brought down the house.
Washington Post. December 20, 2003
A philosophical and practical book on the subject of earthworms is to be released Jan. 23. I reviewed a pre-publication copy, and it's worth making a note on your calendar: "The Earth Moved," by Amy Stewart (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill), next month.
by Joel M. Lerner
Excerpted from: Memorable Measurements,
Starting With Nature's Sprinkler