BOOK REVIEW: American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau

Edited by Bill McKibben, with Foreword by Al Gore

The Library of America, 2008, $40.00

In the flurry of attention that the planetary environment is receiving these days, it is good to remember that American writers and activists have shown concern for this tender planet and the life it supports since the early days of our history. Al Gore, in his foreword to American Earth, says "it is humbling for a politician - even a recovering one - to reflect on the role writers have played, and continue to play, in developing and shaping the environmental movement. A truth eloquently expressed has an influence greater than any elected official."

Readers who've been be touched by the beauty of the landscape, both wild and domestic, will easily agree with Thoreau's wry statement: "It frequently happens that what the city prides itself on most is its park - those acres which require to be the least altered from their original condition." The roots of environmental activism are found here in the writings of Rachel Carson, John Muir, and others, but so also are the warning signs of its opposite - the human drive to grow and dominate the land.

This beautiful and moving volume was edited by Bill McKibben, whose 1989 work, The End of Nature, was the first book written to call the attention of laypeople to the dangers of global warming. Currently a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont, he has, since 2006, organized the largest demonstrations against the causes of global warming in American history. The Library of America, a nonprofit organization created in 1979, funded the publication of this volume as part of its mission to publish and preserve what are considered to be the most significant and meaningful works by American writers and keep them available to the American people in perpetuity.