Wow. Thats what you are going to say when you pick up this book. There have been a lot of great American writers over the years that have changed the way we look at ourselves, and our place in the environment. American Earth, Environmental Writing Since Thoreau covers them all. Literally starting with Thoreau and moving through all the greats, Walt Whitman, Theodore Roosevelt, Woody Guthrie, Rachel Carson, Philip K. Dick, Lyndon B. Johnson, and many many more. It has been lovingly collected and edited by Bill McKibben who we have covered many times before. It is a hard back but small and compact wasting little in the way of extra paper, the stories are indexed and there are two picture sections that beautifully bring the stories to life with pictures and illustrations.
I read a couple of the older works and was immediately struck with how long the tradition of respecting and protecting our environment is in this country. From our national park system, to the early pioneers , Americans have a proud tradition of fighting to keep our world clean and healthy. It is a tradition we need to re-kindle. Each bit of writing is introduced with some contextual information by McKibben. When taken as a whole it is a force of literary inspiration, you are stuck by “just how many” great American authors have written about the state of our environment. There is much to be learned in these pages.
There is a wonderful foreword by Al Gore that starts like this
It was a writer that first drew my attention to the environment, years before the word entered the public lexicon. My mother often read to my sister Nancy, and me at the dinner table, and in 1962, she read to use from a new book, Silent Spring. It made an unmistakable impression.
This collection is full of writing that have the power to inspire, to awe, and to inform. The at 1050 pages it is a hefty dose of literary and ecological might that I recommend everyone check out. The pictures are great, the author list would take a page just to type out, and the whole thing is printed on recycled paper using organic inks. It even comes with a little slip of ribbon woven into the binding to keep your place, a feature I wish more books had. If all that wasn’t enough the proceeds from the sale of the book will be used to support the mission of the Library of America, a nonprofit organization created in 1979 to preserve America’s literary heritage by publishing and keeping permanently in print authoritative editions of America’s best and most significant writing.
My one and only quibble with this collection is that it contains nothing from Frank Herbert, (who if you look at this site has obviously inspired me). Frank Herbert explored complex systems and ecological themes in his seminal masterpiece Dune long before many other people began thinking about it. I suggest you check it out as it is amazing, and one of the most exceptional books ever written. I will forgive Mr. McKibben for leaving Herbert out this time…but when the second edition is written he had better be in there!
If you want a one stop shop for all things literary and environmental when it comes to America (minus the part about Herbert not being in there), this lovingly crafted book is the one for you. Give it to someone you love and foster a strong environmental tradition in them as well.
Letter to the Editor
September 9, 2008
Chapel Hill (NC) Newspaper
Tapestry beautiful but resources finite
My father was in the business of manufacturing textiles. A tapestry is the centerpiece of our family’s living room. Jane Ballard’s Sampler hangs on the far wall. From an early age I learned to behold the beauty found in woven, ornamental fabrics and knitted cloth. But of all the tapestries and “samplers†I have ever seen there is nothing so beautiful, good or true as the tapestry of life to which Brian Lawe refers in his Aug. 3 letter. Each new life adds to tapestry. Mr. Lawe is due thanks.
Perhaps my perspective of the biophysical world we inhabit as relatively small, evidently finite and noticeably frangible is mistaken. That may be so. It would please me so if it turns out that my observations are shown to be fatally flawed and Brian’s perceptions of what is somehow real are altogether proven to be the correct ones. That will be just fine.
Because something is happening that continues to worry me and occasionally to awaken me in the middle of the night, I find myself sending dozens of letters to editors, hundreds of missives into the blogosphere and thousands of e-mails into cyberspace. Always the theme is the same. It is simply this: Earth’s body is finite, its resources are limited, and its ecosystem services capable of irreversible degradation by the huge scale and anticipated growth of human over-consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities, the ones we see rampantly overspreading the surface of our planetary home in our time. Earth does not resemble a mother’s teat at which the human species may forever suckle. Despite the assurances of many economists and politicians, Earth is not a cornucopia. No possible way.
The unbridled growth of the human species presents a colossal challenge to the family of humanity. The Earth as a constant, seemingly endless provider of whatsoever human beings desire is a fantasy … a widely shared, consensually validated, distinctly human product of wishful and magical thinking.
— Steven Earl Salmony, Chapel Hill
I was offered this book to review, but refused because the promoter was making false claims – here’s my e-mail to her:
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Dear Alisa
So the book contains “all the essential writings for the American environmental movement” does it? I see nothing by Daniel Quinn, Derrick Jensen, John Zerzan, Ward Churchill…anything, in fact, by those writers who dare to challenge the system itself: the reason that the environment is in such a terrible state at all. Anything with a foreword by Al Gore is guaranteed to be mainstream, working with the system, and based on the kinds of ideas that have allowed environmental degradation to get progressively worse ever since America was first infected by European settlers.
I think you may want to change your advertising, as the statement “all the essential writings for the American environmental movement” is utterly incorrect. Maybe you could say “all the essential writing by those people who subverted themselves to the American dream.”
Kind regards
Keith Farnish
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Harsh, I know, but the writers I mentioned are always ignored because they are active and challenging – all of the genuine heroes on the list are now dead.
K