There is no escaping landscape: it's everywhere and part of everyone's life. Landscapes have received much less attention in aesthetics than those arts we can choose to ignore, such as painting or music but they can tell us a lot about the ethical and aesthetic values of the societies that produce them.

Drawing on examples from a wide range of landscapes from around the world and throughout history, Susan Herrington considers the ways landscapes can affect our emotions, our imaginations, and our understanding of the passage of time. On Landscapes reveals the design work involved in even...