Tag: books

The uncompromising environmentalist behind the Sierra Club

The uncompromising environmentalist behind the Sierra Club

In The Man Who Built the Sierra Club, Robert Wyss details how David Brower transformed the Sierra Club into America’s most prominent environmental organization, in the process elevating the conservation movement into a national political force. Wyss portrays a true believer who fought relentlessly to protect the natural world. He succeeded, Wyss says, “because he made people care.” And he did so by becoming a deft public-relations pioneer.

Review: “The uncompromising environmentalist behind the Sierra Club”

High Country News, February 5, 2018

Review: Bargaining for Eden

Review: Bargaining for Eden

Writer Stephen Trimble watched Snowbasin, a small-time ski hill outside Salt Lake City, transform into another glitzy resort and wondered why. His book, Bargaining for Eden, which I reviewed for Orion Magazine in its Jan/Feb 2009 issue, offers introspection on how we utilize and live on our lands, set in contrast with the biography and actions of the reclusive billionaire behind the remaking at Snowbasin.

(I mostly read this book while traveling through Mexico via bus, and so it will forever be linked in my mind with the Chiapas rainforest, the smell of bus toilets and the Spanish-dubbed version of Santa Clause 2.)

Anywho, check out the full review at Orion’s website. Here’s the first graf:

What drives individuals and corporations to erect mega-malls and luxury resorts in place of open meadows and sleepy communities? It is quite literally the million-dollar question. Money, however, is usually only part of the answer. As Stephen Trimble writes in Bargaining for Eden, “Caught between dreams, we are all greedy, and we are all generous. How then do we create a structure for our communities that expresses our altruism more than our self-interest?”

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