Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Client Earth
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 2/14/1954
WEBSITE: http://www.jamesthornton.co.uk/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 98043416
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n98043416
HEADING: Thornton, James, 1954-
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100 1_ |a Thornton, James, |d 1954-
667 __ |a Environmental and social transparency under the Companies Act 2006 formerly on undifferentiated name record n87899442
670 __ |a A field guide to the soul, 1999: |b CIP t.p. (James Thornton)
670 __ |a Phone call to pub., 05-08-98 |b (James Thornton, b. Feb. 14, 1954)
670 __ |a Environmental and social transparency under the Companies Act 2006, 2010: |b t.p. (James Thornton)
670 __ |a Immediate harm, 2010: |b t.p. (James Thornton) back cover (member of the bars of California, New York, and U.S. Supreme Court; founding CEO of ClientEarth, with offices in London, Brussels, Paris and Warsaw)
670 __ |a Spirituality & Practice www site, 27 Sept. 2011: |b A field guide to the soul page (James Thornton, former senior attorney at Natural Resources Defense Council, teacher in Buddhist and Hindu traditions)
670 __ |a ClientEarth www site, 27 Sept. 2011: |b Staff page (James Thornton, CEO, environmental lawyer and social entrepreneur, founded Los Angeles Office of NRDC)
953 __ |a sh17
PERSONAL
Born February 14, 1954.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, novelists, environmental lawyer, activist, entrepreneur, and Zen priest. ClientEarth (a European environmental law group), CEO. Heffter Institute, (a neuroscience and brain science research institute), former executive director.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
James Thornton is a writer, novelist, environmental lawyer, and activist. He is the CEO of ClientEarth, the leading environmental law organization in Europe. He was the former executive director of the Heffter Institute, a brain science research organization. The institute specialized in “investigating the mind through the use of hallucinogens,” Thornton stated in an interview on the Barbican Press website. Thornton is also a Zen priest, with an interest in “how spiritual practice can heal our relationship with the Earth,” noted a writer on the James Thornton website.
Immediate Harm and Sphinx
Thornton’s debut novel, Immediate Harm, was described on the Barbican Press website as a “legal thriller with science fiction overtones.” Protagonist Kevin Rogan is an up-and-coming young attorney working in a prominent firm in New York. He is dismayed when he is assigned a pro bono case along with his regular workload. His client, an intelligent, pretty midwestern girl, has experienced acute schizophrenia literally overnight. As the case develops, her friends also succumb to severe mental illness. Rogan finally discovers a common thread among all the cases: all of the victims lived near fields of genetically modified corn. He soon starts to believe that there is a way for a disease-causing agent to spread from the corn to humans, causing the schizophrenic symptoms. Allowing the corn to mature could spread the agent to millions, but Rogan will have to face the full fury of wealth and corporate power to ensure the genetically modified crop doesn’t have the chance to devastate humanity.
Sphinx: The Second Coming, Thornton’s second novel, “starts with the idea that the gods have gone quiet,” Thornton told an interviewer on the Barbican Press website. A team of western explorers has discovered a strange code within the Great Pyramid in Egypt. The code leads to an even more complex puzzle, and as the layers of the mystery are removed, a number of unusual events occur that attract the attention of the worldwide media. With little attention paid to the potential for disaster, the explorers continue to work out the puzzle, hoping to find the answers to some of the most fundamental questions, such as the origins of the human race. What they don’t know is that what they discover could just as likely end the reign of humans and allow the ancient gods to return. “Turns out the Egyptian gods made this world and are uniquely fond of it. When they do come back and find that we are mucking it up they are far from pleased,” Thornton said on the Barbican Press website.
In the Barbican Press website interview, Thornton described what drew him to use Egypt as the basis for his novel. “I have always felt a strong pull to Ancient Egyptians and have been amazed by what they accomplished. They invented mathematics, astronomy, astrology, were among the first to use the written word, to create complex legal systems, to give women rights, they created some of the most powerful art ever made, what is still the world’s largest temple complex, and of course there is the enduring majesty and mystery of the pyramids and Sphinx. And they did all of this overnight, in historical terms,” he explained in the interview.
A Field Guide to the Soul
In his nonfiction book A Field Guide to the Soul: A Down-to-Earth Handbook of Spiritual Practice, Thornton has “written a primer on meditative practice with a naturalist bent,” commented Booklist reviewer James Klise. Thornton approaches his topic with the basic idea that protecting the environment has become not just a physical or legal issue but a spiritual concern among diverse groups. Environmentalists and religious practitioners have felt this for some time, and the general public is beginning to recognize the spiritual aspects involved.
“In elegant and deeply felt writing, the book traces three paths” that can help individuals become more in tune with the spiritual side of environmentalism, noted Jonathan Larzen in a review in Amicus Journal. Thornton believes that these three paths contain three separate ways of “awakening the soul,” noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer. The “way of the mind” allows a practitioner to use inner silence and the workings of the imagination and intellect to come up with creative solutions to environmental problems. The “way of the heart” uses the deepest of human emotions to conquer internal problems and limitations. The “way of action” moves into the external world to emphasize interaction with the physical world, giving practitioners a way to relate to the natural environment in a tangible way. Thornton includes a number of exercises that emphasize the lessons, as well as short meditations that help further illuminate the concepts he presents.
Client Earth
Client Earth describes the work of Thornton’s organization ClientEarth as its team of lawyers works to find legal ways to halt those organizations that pollute, destroy, and harm the environment. Thornton and coauthor Martin J. Goodman describe how the ClientEarth lawyers have taken on the mission of using the law to benefit the Earth and prevent the further destruction and degradation of its ecosystems. The legal teams believe that the Earth should have “planetary rights,” similar to the type of legal personhood that has been manufactured for the benefit of corporations. The book explains how attorneys in the United States and United Kingdom found regulations on fishing that allowed them to create sustainable standards that would be acceptable to all members of the European Union. The authors also note how the legal strategies deployed by ClientEarth can stop the erosion of environmental laws in the United States and United Kingdom, in some cases preventing the obliteration of decades worth of health and environmental law progress.
Thornton and Goodman give appropriate respect to techniques such as demonstrations and the marshalling of grassroots support. However, in some cases, they note that the legal process is the best way to protect the environment and ensure that egregious polluters and violators of environmental law are slowed and, preferably, stopped.
In reviewing Client Earth, a Kirkus Reviews writer concluded, “Anyone with an interest in environmental activism and environmental law will take pleasure in this vigorous account of justice in the making.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Amicus Journal, spring, 1999, Jonathan Larzen, review of A Field Guide to the Soul: A Down-to-Earth Handbook of Spiritual Practice, p. 44.
Booklist, December 1, 1998, James Klise, review of A Field Guide to the Soul, p. 623.
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2018, review of Client Earth.
Publishers Weekly, December 14, 1998, review of A Field Guide to the Soul, p. 70.
ONLINE
Barbican Press website, http://www.barbicanpress.com/ (July 17, 2018), “A Q&A with James Thornton, the Author of Sphinx.“
James Thornton website, http://www.jamesthornton.co.uk (July 17, 2018).
About
James is an environmental activist lawyer, social entrepreneur, writer and Zen priest. As CEO of ClientEarth he runs the leading law group for the environment in Europe. The New Statesman named him “one of ten people who could change the world.”
James Thornton
James Thornton
He was called “a new kind of environmental hero” by BBC Radio 4, and Metropolitan Magazine dubbed him “La force tranquille.” In 2013 The Lawyer named him one of the top 100 lawyers practicing in the UK.
James’ first novel, Immediate Harm, was published in 2011. His new novel, Sphinx: The Second Coming, is published on May 15, 2014.
As a Zen priest, James is particularly interested in how spiritual practice can heal our relationship with the Earth. He is leading the first Green Order retreat at the Los Angeles Center in June 2014. Find out more…
A Q&A WITH JAMES THORNTON, THE AUTHOR OF SPHINX
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Q: Your first novel Immediate Harm was a legal thriller with science fiction overtones – a virus jumping to humans from GM corn. Sphinx: The Second Coming is full-blown scifi. What drew you to the genre?
JT: Since I was a boy, scifi has given me a place my mind wants to go. How many novels about bourgeois angst and infidelity can you read when there are other worlds, even other universes to explore, in stories that explore the full range of human capacity and passions? Over the last five years or so, I’ve been going back to read classic scifi tales of the fifties and sixties, from the likes of Blish, Silverberg, and Simak.
Q: Sphinx has elements of scifi, fantasy, even quantum fiction. How would you place it in terms of genre? What books influenced it?
JT: It has all of those and I would add that it has elements of historical fiction as well. I wanted to take my favourite genres and blend them into a convincing whole. So the story line is compelling, I hope, and then there is this separate pleasure to be had. The reader can emerge onto the plane of the writing, if they would like to appreciate the weaving together of all these techniques. Ben and Jerry’s have a new line of ice creams that blend two flavours in the same container and have a sauce in the middle. I am aiming for that kind of fun. What books influenced Sphinx? Really, the avid reading of a lifetime. But let me give it a try: from hard science, like David Deutsch on the multiverse, to shelves of books on the history and the religion of Ancient Egypt. Space epics had an influence, particularly Olaf Stapledon, and the historical fiction of Marguerite Yourcenar, Mary Renault and Allan Massie
Q: Sphinx starts with an origin story of Ancient Egypt. You go on to recreate the priestly world of Saqqara in the mode of a historical novel, and then the action shifts to modern Cairo. What’s the pull of Egypt for you?
JT: I have always felt a strong pull to Ancient Egyptians and have been amazed by what they accomplished. They invented mathematics, astronomy, astrology, were among the first to use the written word, to create complex legal systems, to give women rights, they created some of the most powerful art ever made, what is still the world’s largest temple complex, and of course there is the enduring majesty and mystery of the pyramids and Sphinx. And they did all of this overnight, in historical terms, going from a fairly primitive predynastic culture to the magnificent Old Kingdom, around five thousand years ago, which already possessed most of what was to make Egypt great for millennia, and whose buildings and art are if anything the most elegant ever produced in Egypt.
Q: Did the novel take much research and travel?
JT: It grew out of many years of research into the history and religion of Ancient Egypt. There was a long time when I simply could not get enough of it, and there is such a course of its history there is a lot to read. I did travel to Egypt while I was writing the book, but had much of my first draft done by then, and was happy to find out that I had been able to travel there very accurately in imagination based on my reading, even to the number of steps on entering the Great Pyramid. Of course nothing does really compare to going there, being in the sun and sand, being inside the Great Pyramid with the lights turned out, the chamber illuminated by a single candle, while you and your friends invoke the gods. It’s also hard to top meditating between the paws of the Sphinx, by the Dream Stela of Thutmose IV.
Q: Sphinx opens with a prologue that tells how the whole story came to you. It claims to be real but clearly sets the reader up for fiction. Are there any grains of truth in the prologue?
JT: The9780956336446 astounding thing is that everything in the prologue is real. I was travelling to the psychiatric institute where Carl Jung was trained, because I ran a neuroscience institute at the time. The visit to the countess is just as described. Even more remarkably the hotelier in Grenoble acted just so. The boils and the dreams of the Sphinx followed. There was really a kind of compulsion to write the book. I would lie in a foetal position and scenes would unfurl in front of me. It was as if I had stepped into another world for the years from that day in Grenoble until the book is published, and I suppose, beyond.
Q: You introduce the Consilium, a parliament of galactic forces that keeps an eye on stripling Earth. Earth is in an early stage of development and could yet make fatal moves for itself. Is that how you view this planet?
JT: We are a teenage species, and the question is whether we will survive our teenage pranks long enough to mature. The big threat is global climate change, which we’ve brought about from generating electricity, driving cars, making cement and so on, before we even noticed it. Martin Rees, British Astronomer Royal, has written an elegant little book our chances of survival. It is called Is This our Final Century? A pillar of the scientific community, he estimates the probability we will cause our own extinction by 2100 as fifty/fifty.
Q: Do you see Sphinx as carrying an environmental message?
JT: Absolutely. Sphinx starts with the idea that the gods have gone quiet. In studying Egypt it became clear that just like the Jews, the Egyptians believed early on that their best people spoke right to the divine, who spoke directly back to them. After Moses, the god of the Jews stopped talking, and around the same time, so did the Egyptian gods. I wondered if the gods had gone quiet and might come back. Turns out the Egyptian gods made this world and are uniquely fond of it. When they do come back and find that we are mucking it up they are far from pleased.
Q: I see you were once head of a brain science research institute. Does neuroscience colour the book at all?
JT: The speciality of the Heffter Institute, where I was Executive Director, is investigating the mind through the use of hallucinogens. My speculation on the use of a hallucinogenic communion by the Egyptian priests is based on discussions with ethnobotanists. Much ancient religion, in the Americas, in the Indian subcontinent, and I believe in Egypt, was based on using hallucinogens to gain access to perceptions closed to everyday mind. By stimulating the brain’s serotonin system, the priests gained visions that were of deep meaning to them and were core to the belief systems they created.
Q: Brain science and brane theory – Sphinx covers the latter as well. How important is the science part of science fiction for you?
JT: Science is a very important part of science fiction for me. There is much about hard sf, say the work of Greg Egan, that I’ve always liked. And the reason why is that I like science. Right now I’m reading Richard Feynman’s QED. Who knows how it will come into my writing? When you read the papers and watch the news, it is soap opera. When you read about science, as in New Scientist and Scientific American, you are learning something new and real about the world. Soap opera repeats itself. For the first four years after I moved to the UK the headlines in the papers every day was “Blair Defiant.” This was an epic of tedium. In that same period there was a welter of fascinating science that emerged; it’s where the real news is.
Q: Egypt is one of the political hot spots on the planet. Is that political aspect current in Sphinx at all?
JT: I started writing Sphinx about 15 years ago, well before the Arab Spring and its aftermath. There are dark political forces at play in the book that have been in play for decades in Egypt, and that I believe still are. Conservative forces are present that would be unquiet should others see value in the ancient ways.
Q: Lots of cool stuff gets labelled as Zen nowadays. You’re in fact a Zen Buddhist priest. In what ways is Sphinx a Zen novel?
JT: There are a number of deep mystical experiences in the book. I can tell you they are real. And there is a deadly mind combat between two of the main characters, which gained inspiration from Zen dharma comba9780956336446t.
Q: Priest, CEO and novelist … what part of you does the novelist reach that the other roles don’t?
JT: Being a novelist activates the part of me that is a fantastical storyteller of the unbounded. In Zen we incinerate stories and experience emptiness. In my CEO role, I have talked into being the first public interest law group at pan-European level. These are stories of a certain form and content. In novels, we can make dreams real enough to share.
Q: What characters most surprised you?
JT: The Sphinx himself surprised the hell out of me. Talk about unbounded. He simply will not behave.
Q: What’s your best hope for how readers will experience Sphinx?
JT: I hope that by reading Sphinx they enter a new world, a noumenal world in which the gods are real and speak to us.
Sphinx: The Second Coming is out now in paperback and ebook.
Print Marked Items
Thornton, James: CLIENT EARTH
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Thornton, James CLIENT EARTH Scribe (Adult Nonfiction) $18.95 4, 3 ISBN: 978-1-947534-03-2
Give a hoot, don't pollute--and sue anyone who does.
According to this account by British writer Goodman (Chair, Creative Writing/Univ. of Hull; Suffer and Survive: The Extreme Life of J.S.
Haldane, 2007, etc.) and ClientEarth CEO Thornton, an American innovation ranking up there alongside jazz is the fine tradition of taking
despoliators of the environment to court; that the New World could teach the Old World something about public-interest law, they add, is "a
significant postcolonial act." Thornton and his team of environmental lawyers have taken the American ethic and run with it, their overriding
premise being that "without talented lawyers' intense scrutiny of legal language on the Earth's behalf, ecosystems will continue to vanish." The
brief of those lawyers is to "assert planetary rights"--and if corporations can have legal personhood, why should the planet not have the same
standing? ClientEarth lawyers dug deep into U.K. and EU regulations on fishing to develop sustainable standards, no easy matter in the instance
of the EU given that 26 signatory nations have to agree, and EU regulations always seem open to being thwarted. "A legal strategy deployed by a
single lawyer at ClientEarth," write the authors, "may stop the destruction of 40 years' worth of health and environmental law built up by the EU."
ClientEarth prevailed, though not without considerable difficulty--and considerably impressive lawyering, making the case, for instance, that fish
have rights, too. ("Any lawyer for halibut might start with establishing one right: Let the fish breed.") As groups such as the Natural Resources
Defense Council have learned in the U.S., the courtroom is usually a more effective venue for reform than the sidewalk. Demonstrations have
their uses, but, as the authors write, making corporate bigwigs lie awake at night wondering when the next process server is going to show up has
its own pleasures.
Anyone with an interest in environmental activism and environmental law will take pleasure in this vigorous account of justice in the making.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Thornton, James: CLIENT EARTH." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461352/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0f74b1b9. Accessed 26 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525461352
A Field Guide to the Soul: A Down-to-Earth Handbook
of Spiritual Practice
Jonathan Larzen
The Amicus Journal.
21.1 (Spring 1999): p44.
COPYRIGHT 1999 Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.. Article copyright held by Author. First published in The Amicus Journal.
http://www.nrdc.org/
Full Text:
by James Thornton Bell Tower 276 pp., $23
Increasingly, environmentalists, religious people, and the general public have come to understand that protection of the environment is
fundamentally a spiritual concern. The movement is still largely in the discovery phase. Recognizing that humanity is just one part of life on
earth, people are probing what this new awareness means for individuals, communities, and the whole planet. James Thornton, a former NRDC
lawyer, contributes to the exploration with a book based on his own journey to spiritual environmentalism.
In the mid- 1990s, a few years after founding NRDC's Los Angeles office, Thornton suffered the painful realization that even if all his hard work
on environmental projects succeeded, he and his colleagues still wouldn't solve the fundamental problem: humanity's headlong rush to
industrialize and build in ways that destroy the environment - "the disharmony in our society that would tear the Earth and ourselves apart." At a
Native American sweat lodge ceremony, he realized he had to quit his job in order to confront such inner beasts as anger, frustration, and fear of
the earth's demise.
In elegant and deeply felt writing, the book traces three paths, inspired by Thornton's Buddhist and Hindu teachers and his own meditation
practice, to "a new wisdom of the Earth." First, Thornton teaches how to "follow your breath into your body" to quiet churning thoughts and find
inner sureness. Second, he helps the reader toward clarifying a personal sense of the divine and identifying a divine being to whom one can
"offer" one's experiences of daily life. Finally, he describes how to embody the soul in one's work. Each section includes simple practices that
readers can follow to bring the soul into the doings of mind and heart.
Thornton proposes that if "enough individuals gain access to wisdom," humans might emerge as a new species, Homo gaians, who no longer
struggles to consume the organism known as Gala but instead behaves fittingly as part of it.
It would have been helpful if Thornton had included more examples of how to translate meditative, intuitive consciousness into action. While
attaining a sense of oneness with the earth is a vital first step for humans and communities, the arduous next step is the one left untaken here:
How do individual spiritual practitioners work together to heal the places to which frantic, overworked environmental activists are trying to
minister?
- Trebbe Johnson
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Larzen, Jonathan. "A Field Guide to the Soul: A Down-to-Earth Handbook of Spiritual Practice." The Amicus Journal, Spring 1999, p. 44.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A54237705/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=aac39a5a. Accessed 26 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A54237705
A FIELD GUIDE TO THE SOUL: A Down-to-Earth
Handbook of Spiritual Practice
Publishers Weekly.
245.50 (Dec. 14, 1998): p70.
COPYRIGHT 1998 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
James Thornton. Bell Tower, $23 (288p) ISBN 0-609-60369-X (Religion/Spirituality)
In a fast-paced world, the body often outruns the soul, leaving the latter panting for nourishment. Drawing on Jungian psychology and Buddhist
and Christian spiritual practices, former environmental lawyer Thornton offers a guide to bringing the soul sustenance. He contends that there are
three ways of awakening the soul. The "way of the mind," says Thornton, instructs us in using our inner silence to rid ourselves of stress and to
focus on our creativity. The "way of the heart" leads us into the "forests of our hearts to meet the beasts that dwell in them." According to the
author, following the way of the heart taps into our deepest emotions and enables us to experience the heights of mystical rapture. The "way of
action" emphasizes the ways we relate to the world around us. Following the "way of action" places us at the center of the natural world and
fosters ecological awareness and sensitivity, making us "homogaians." Although Thornton strives for new insights in these brief meditations and
exercises, th is volume of quasi-spiritual pop psychology joins already overburdened shelves. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"A FIELD GUIDE TO THE SOUL: A Down-to-Earth Handbook of Spiritual Practice." Publishers Weekly, 14 Dec. 1998, p. 70. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A53432708/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0cc26bea. Accessed 26 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A53432708
A Field Guide to the Soul: A Down-to-Earth Handbook
of Spiritual Practice
James Klise
Booklist.
95.7 (Dec. 1, 1998): p623.
COPYRIGHT 1998 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Thornton, James. A Field Guide to the Soul: A Down-to-Earth Handbook of Spiritual Practice. Feb. 1999. 288p. Crown/ Harmony/Bell Tower,
$23 (0-609-60368-X). DDC: 291.4.
Thornton, an environmental lawyer, has written a primer on meditative practice with a naturalist bent. It's neatly divided into three main sections:
"The Way of the Mind," with a focus on silence, stillness, and awareness; "The Way of the Heart," with a focus on invocation, welcoming, and
offering; and "The Way of Action," with a focus on simple needs and humility. Toward the end, the author serves up spiritual exercises.
Admittedly, Thornton's penchant for elaborate nature metaphors calls to mind the style of Jack Handy's Deep Thoughts (1992)--and despite the
down-to-earth promise of the book's subtitle, it's not always easy to identify with an author who dances alone on a mountaintop and records, in
actual quotes, conversations with waterfalls and caterpillars. But Thornton's constant emphasis on "absolute sincerity," personal responsibility,
and the choice to be "fully present," as well as his use of certain repeated phrases ("I am the landscape, not the storm"), help to make the journey
through the forest ultimately worthwhile.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Klise, James. "A Field Guide to the Soul: A Down-to-Earth Handbook of Spiritual Practice." Booklist, 1 Dec. 1998, p. 623. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A55054557/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f1bbca39. Accessed 26 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A55054557