A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement.

• Author: Akula, Vikram

Environmentalism has come of age. What was launched more than a century ago by a handful of preservation-minded naturalists, and what swept across America as activists rallied on Earth Day 1970, is today a powerful, professional mainstream movement.

But success is a double-edged sword. When a movement becomes institutionalized, it risks losing the very ideals that inspired its creation. Philip Shabecoff's A Fierce Green Fire, The American Environmental Movement leaves one with the feeling that perhaps environmentalism is in such danger.

Shabecoff, a veteran New York Times reporter who now runs the news service Greenwire, does not speak to the question directly. If anything, his account is an affirmation of where the movement is going. He gives us a thorough, readable, and, at times, interesting description of American environmentalism.

Those new to the movement will find the book a useful history. Those more familiar with environmentalism will enjoy the novel-like descriptions and behind-the-scenes details that only a seasoned journalist could provide. Those concerned about how the movement will handle its newfound success, though, may be troubled - not so much by what is in this book as by what is left out.

Shabecoff divides environmentalism into three waves. The account of the first wave, which takes the reader from the emergence of the movement in the early 19th century to the middle of the 20th, is somewhat slow going. But Shabecoff's engaging portraits of the movement's founders pull the reader through. He gives us, for instance, the "bearded, mystical Scotsman...the nation's archpriest of wild nature," John Muir. Muir, who lived around the turn of the century, launched the preservation movement that seeks to protect places for their wildness and beauty.

Shabecoff also relates the philosophical debates of the time, many of which are reflected in today's policy battles. Muir's preservationist ideals, for instance, conflicted with the emerging conservation ethic of Gifford Pinchot, the chief forester under President Theodore Roosevelt. Conservation, which seeks efficient and sustainable use of public lands, ultimately won the day, and has guided government policy ever since.

Shabecoff also brings us inspiring excerpts from first-wave philosophers such as Henry David Thoreau and fascinating accounts of conversations between the likes of mountain man Daniel Boone and naturalist and renowned bird artist John James Audubon. One of the best...