American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau
by Bill McKibben (Editor)
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Description
As America and the world grapple with the consequences of global environmental change, the author, a writer and activist offers this anthology gathering the best and most significant American environmental writing from the last two centuries. "Each advance in environmental practice" in our nation's history, he observes in his introduction, "was preceded by a great book." In this work are the words that made a movement. Classics of the environmental imagination, the essays of Henry David show more Thoreau, John Muir, and John Burroughs; Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac; Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, are set alongside an emerging activist movement, revealed by newly uncovered reports of pioneering campaigns for conservation, passages from landmark legal opinions and legislation, and searing protest speeches. Throughout, some of America's greatest and most impassioned writers take a turn toward nature, recognizing the fragility of our situation on earth and the urgency of the search for a sustainable way of life. The anthology includes essays on overpopulation, consumerism, energy policy, and the nature of "nature" join ecologists' memoirs and intimate sketches of the habitats of endangered species, as well as a detailed chronology of the environmental movement and American environmental history. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
An excellent collection of authors ranging from Henry David Thoreau to R. Crumb, each commenting on the howling (and reduced) landscape of the American Earth.
Foreword by Al Gore.
Very well Illustrated, with examples from A.B Durand, Ansel Adams, Vint Lawrence, Crumb & many other photo documents.
I am very fond of this book and recommend it to anyone interested in a condensed yet thorough survey of environmental writng.
Foreword by Al Gore.
Very well Illustrated, with examples from A.B Durand, Ansel Adams, Vint Lawrence, Crumb & many other photo documents.
I am very fond of this book and recommend it to anyone interested in a condensed yet thorough survey of environmental writng.
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346 works; 180 members
Author Information
Bill McKibben grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts. He was president of the Harvard Crimson newspaper in college. Immediately after college he joined the New Yorker magazine as a staff writer, and wrote much of the "Talk of the Town" column from 1982 to early 1987. After quitting this job, he soon moved to the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New show more York. His first book, The End of Nature, was published in 1989 by Random House after being serialized in the New Yorker. It is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and has been printed in more than 20 languages. Several editions have come out in the United States, including an updated version published in 2006. His next book, The Age of Missing Information, was published in 1992. It is an account of an experiment: McKibben collected everything that came across the 100 channels of cable tv on the Fairfax, Virginia system (at the time among the nation's largest) for a single day. He spent a year watching the 2,400 hours of videotape, and then compared it to a day spent on the mountaintop near his home. This book has been widely used in colleges and high schools, and was reissued in 2006. McKibben's latest book is entitled, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Bill currently resides with his wife, writer Sue Halpern, and his daughter, Sophie in Ripton, Vermont. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College. 030 (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Library of America (182)
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Contains
Is an abridged version of
Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Condition of the North American Indians, Written During Eight Years Travel Amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America by George & Matthiessen Catlin, Peter & Shepherd, C.J.
The Humbugs of the World An Account of Humbugs, Delusions, Impositions, Quackeries, Deceits and Deceivers Generally, in All Ages by P. T. Barnum
The Stockholm Conference - only one earth: An introduction to the politics of survival by Friends of the Earth
Common Knowledge
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- Reviews
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- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
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- ASINs
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