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Overview
Powerful, impassioned essays on living and being in the world, from the bestselling author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy For a generation, Bill McKibben has been among America’s most impassioned and beloved writers on our relationship to our world and our environment. His groundbreaking book on climate change, The End of Nature, is considered “as important as Rachel Carson’s classic Silent Spring”* and Deep Economy, his “deeply thoughtful and mind-expanding”** exploration of globalization, helped awaken and fuel a movement to restore local economies.
Now, for the first time, the best of McKibben’s essays—fiery, magical, and infused with his uniquely soulful investigations of modern life—are collected in a single volume. Whether meditating on today’s golden age in radio, the natural place of biting black flies in our lives, or the patriotism of a grandmother fighting to get corporate money out of politics, McKibben inspires us to become better caretakers of the Earth—and of one another.
*The Plain Dealer (Cleveland )
**Michael Pollan
Synopsis
Powerful, impassioned essays on living and being in the world, from the bestselling author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy
For a generation, Bill McKibben has been among America’s most impassioned and beloved writers on our relationship to our world and our environment. His groundbreaking book on climate change, The End of Nature, is considered “as important as Rachel Carson’s classic Silent Spring”* and Deep Economy, his “deeply thoughtful and mind-expanding”** exploration of globalization, helped awaken and fuel a movement to restore local economies.
Now, for the first time, the best of McKibben’s essays—fiery, magical, and infused with his uniquely soulful investigations of modern life—are collected in a single volume. Whether meditating on today’s golden age in radio, the natural place of biting black flies in our lives, or the patriotism of a grandmother fighting to get corporate money out of politics, McKibben inspires us to become better caretakers of the Earth—and of one another.
*The Plain Dealer (Cleveland )
**Michael Pollan
Publishers Weekly
Collected here are 44 trenchant essays written for various publications over the past 25 years by an astute observer of contemporary life and the environment. In some, McKibben reflects on personal experiences; in others, he discusses the sources of his environmental activism. Many of the pieces deal with global warming-the subject of McKibben's first book, The End of Nature, and the folly of endless growth-the theme of his more recent Deep Economy.All have something to say that is worth hearing, but it is the collection's pervasive sense of hope for the world that sets apart these provocative, beautifully written essays. Though McKibben worries about consumerism and the environment, he sees reason for optimism, too, rejoicing in the simple spirituality he finds in his hometown church, the popularity of old-fashioned state fairs, the return of forests to the eastern United States, the transformation of a town in Brazil into a haven for pedestrians, the success of sustainable farming in Cuba and the recent involvement of evangelicals in the environmental movement. "There are all sorts of sweet things in this world," McKibben writes, "many of which are us, and many of which are not." Thankfully, McKibben has borne witness to them with grace and style. (Mar. 4)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationEditorials
From the Publisher
“McKibben has just edited The Bill McKibben Reader, an anthology of forty-four essays on topics as diverse as being arrested at a demonstration, spending time with writer Wendell Berry and putting his Christian faith into action.”—Susan Larson, The Times Picayune (New Orleans)"Those who think in shades of green shouldn't miss The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life, a compilation of 44 previously published works from the author of The End of Nature. The essays, collected over two and a half decades, contain surprising turns of logic—in one McKibben argues for the reintroduction of wolves to the Adirondacks while comparing the embattled animals to SUV's—as well as humor and a refreshing pragmatism."—Adirondack Life
"Collected here are 44 trenchant essays written for various publications over the past 25 years by an astute observer of contemporary life and the environment. . . . All have something to say that is worth hearing, but it is the collection's pervasive sense of hope for the world that sets apart these provocative, beautifully written essays."—Publishers Weekly
"A welcome anthology whose constituent pieces, all well written, retain every bit of their urgency."—Kirkus Reviews
Publishers Weekly
Collected here are 44 trenchant essays written for various publications over the past 25 years by an astute observer of contemporary life and the environment. In some, McKibben reflects on personal experiences; in others, he discusses the sources of his environmental activism. Many of the pieces deal with global warming-the subject of McKibben's first book, The End of Nature, and the folly of endless growth-the theme of his more recent Deep Economy.All have something to say that is worth hearing, but it is the collection's pervasive sense of hope for the world that sets apart these provocative, beautifully written essays. Though McKibben worries about consumerism and the environment, he sees reason for optimism, too, rejoicing in the simple spirituality he finds in his hometown church, the popularity of old-fashioned state fairs, the return of forests to the eastern United States, the transformation of a town in Brazil into a haven for pedestrians, the success of sustainable farming in Cuba and the recent involvement of evangelicals in the environmental movement. "There are all sorts of sweet things in this world," McKibben writes, "many of which are us, and many of which are not." Thankfully, McKibben has borne witness to them with grace and style. (Mar. 4)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationReaders familiar with McKibben's work won't want to miss this eclectic collection of essays gleaned from books and periodicals published between 1982 and 2007. Most of the 44 essays come from a diverse array of magazines, including The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Outside, Gourmet , and Christian Century . One of the first to sound the alarm on global warming in his 1989 book, The End of Nature , McKibben continues his crusade against a consumerist society more concerned with individual desires than community good. Essays are loosely divided into categories that include consumerism, activism, the changing planet, the meaning of community, and the sufficiency of nature. In a poignant essay about his grueling year of Nordic ski training, McKibben describes learning the meaning of endurance as he witnesses the graceful decline of his father to cancer, while his own body turns into a racing machine. Readers new to McKibben will be entertained, informed, and perhaps even inspired to make the positive changes that McKibben desires for the world. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries.-Maureen J. Delaney-Lehman, Lake Superior State Univ., Sault Ste. Marie, MI
Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.An active life indeed-and, as prolific author/environmentalist McKibben (Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, 2007, etc.) writes, even a charmed one. McKibben got out of college in the early years of the Reagan administration and fell immediately into the welcoming arms of the New Yorker, whose editor, William Shawn, sent him out to live on the streets with the army of homeless that sprang up during that time. He escaped the "velvet prison" when new owner Si Newhouse arrived and Shawn was forced to resign, in the meantime having become aware of the physical realities of the world-that water comes from somewhere, that food doesn't just magically appear, that everything connects to everything else. The result, ever since, has been a string of books, sometimes middling (Hope, Human and Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth, 1995) and sometimes quite fine (Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously, 2000), that reckon with the real world in the strictest sense of the term. McKibben has emerged as a sharp but courtly social critic whose surveys are at once obvious and subtle: the experiment with watching 1,700 hours of cable TV that led to The Age of Missing Information (1992), for instance, that revealed to him the source of our autism in the medium's insistent message, "You are the most important thing on earth." Well, you're not, says McKibben. The earth scarcely acknowledges us, but it needs our help all the same. As this collection of book excerpts and magazine pieces reveals, he has been well ahead of the curve in recognizing that fact and spreading the word: A decade ago he was arguing that globalwarming-an appellation that sounds pleasant enough-needed "a new, scarier name," such as "Hell on Earth," while two decades ago he was writing presciently of the various strains of damage that would yield what he called "the end of nature."A welcome anthology whose constituent pieces, all well written, retain every bit of their urgency.