A Road Runs Through It: Reviving Wild Places
Thomas Reed Petersen, Editor (Johnson Books / $17.50)
The U.S. Interstate System spans 43,000 miles and is often considered the largest public works project in the world. Yet it pales in comparison to the more than 500,000 miles of roadways on public lands; the vast majority of these roads are rarely used, poorly maintained and a danger to wildlife. In this essay collection, which benefits the Montana-based nonprofit Wildlands CPR, Edward Abbey, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen and 25 other writers make an impassioned case for Wildlands’ mission: to restore public lands to wilderness by removing unnecessary roads and limiting motorized vehicle access. As Phil Condon notes in the final essay, “The wild is its own quiet engine … waiting for each of us to take a few steps away from the road. And hear it.” It’s time to start listening: The most remote spot in the contiguous United States is just 20.3 miles from a road.
—Beth Duris
Sippewissett: or, Life on a Salt Marsh
Tim Traver (Chelsea Green / $22.50)
Like blades of eelgrass, author Tim Traver’s childhood is rooted in a salt marsh—specifically the Sippewissett salt marsh of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He spent countless hours there, crabbing, clamming, swimming, and searching for what lay beneath the mud and the muck of Sippewissett. But as development and climate change threaten this delicate ecosystem, Traver must confront not just the slow death of his beloved marsh but also the loss of his barefoot summers on the dunes. In prose that is at once scientific and melodic, Traver ponders big questions about the land, who loves it and how much. Often, he finds small answers in the teeming life at the ocean’s edge that he calls home.
—Jennifer Winger
Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century
Alex Steffen, Editor (Harry N. Abrams / $37.50)
Tired of doom and gloom environmentalism? Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century offers an alternative. Edited by Alex Steffen, founder of the popular green-lifestyle Web site worldchanging.com, the book demonstrates that “the tools, models and ideas for building a better future” are at hand. This generation’s Whole Earth Catalog? Perhaps, but Worldchanging is more than a road map of lifestyle choices; it is an innovative look at today’s environmental and social justice issues, offering 600 pages of practical, real-world solutions, including green building and “giving well.” If you’re looking for pragmatic ways to make the Earth a better place, Worldchanging does more than champion changing light bulbs and recycling—it challenges us to change the world.
—Scott Edward Anderson
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