“American Earth is both a crash course in ecology and a monument to the American environmental movement.”
Review:
Amid claims of environmental calamity and an imminent apocalypse, there are those who might want a quiet book to restore some sanity and hope to their minds. American Earth, a recent installment of the Library of America, can do just that.
Edited by Bill McKibben, a veteran writer and activist, this anthology of contemporary and historical environmental writing explores our society's tragic relationship with the natural world and the ways it can be improved. Designed for both casual perusal and avid absorption, the works by 100 authors come in all forms and styles, from scientific observation to poetic meditation. Canonical figures — Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson — are joined by the obscure without any distinction of merit. Each entry offers a revelation, whether it's E.O. Wilson dropping biophilic science, Gary Snyder channeling Smokey the Bear, or Edward Abbey giving the solitary finger to a ruinous tourist industry. With McKibben's informative portraits of each author, the result is both a crash course in ecology and a monument to the American environmental movement — a movement some say has reached a crisis point, but which McKibben rightly claims is more necessary than ever. As such, this anthology isn't just a recap, but a field guide to the way ahead.
McKibben — whose classic account of global warming, The End of Nature, is excerpted here — argues that environmental writing is "America's single most distinctive contribution to the world's literature." With all due respect to comic books and Walt Whitman (both appearing here, too), a trek through this thousand-page tome leaves one nodding in inspired agreement. One can only hope that, collectively, we heed these writers' hard-earned wisdom, before we reach the final scene of a real-life Lorax.
- Michael Romano
No comments:
Post a Comment