By John DeFore

Standing out in the current wave of books about the environment — dire jeremiads, thoughtful analyses, and green-leaning coffee-table books — is a compact but weighty tome that is largely uninterested in conveying to readers any kind of “the time is now!” urgency. Rather, American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau released April 17 takes a historical view that begins on the placid shore of Walden Pond.

The book, published in the long-running and invaluable Library of America series (more often the home of fiction and poetry) is an anthology of work by American authors, thinkers, and activists writing about environmentalism in all its aspects — from 19th century meditations on the practices of Native American tribes to overpopulation, industrial agriculture and, of course, climate change.

The roster isn’t predictable: alongside Thoreau, Rachel Carson, and Al Gore we get songwriters (Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me,” Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”), a small chunk of the Philip K. Dick story that inspired Blade Runner, and even a cartoon strip by R. Crumb — each of which proves to be perfectly at home. Thought-provoking recent work, like Michael Pollan’s writing on food, and landmarks like Carson’s Silent Spring are joined by dusty but relevant documents like public speeches and political cartoons; there are even tidbits from one or two folks — like legendary huckster P.T. Barnum — who have rarely if ever before been positioned as proto-environmentalists. (Remarkably, the latter example is a complaint about the intrusion of billboard advertisements that “advertise in the midst of landscapes or scenery, in such a way as to destroy or injure their beauty by introducing totally incongruous and relatively vulgar associations.”)

Though carefully curated by a writer, Bill McKibben, who has crafted passionate arguments in the past, the collection isn’t meant to beat up on readers who oppose one or another course of action. Rather, as Al Gore puts it in a Foreword, the selections “show us that environmentalism, while inevitably a source of conflict, is inherent in our national character, a fundamental part of our heritage as Americans. Thomas Jefferson believed that closeness to the land was essential to a virtuous citizenry, and the great writers in this collection carry this vision forward in profound and divergent ways.”

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media