A new shade of green.

• Author: Mark, Jason
• Position: American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau - The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems - Book review

American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau

Edited by Bill McKibben

The Library of America. 1,047 pages. $40.

The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems

By Van Jones

HarperCollins. 235 pages. $25.99.

T he righteous indignation is unmistakable in the writer's voice. Brand name companies, desperate to push their products, have plastered the highways with billboards and banners. The "advertising fraternity" is ruining the countryside, whose charm rests on being a place free from "the associations of every day concerns and troubles and weaknesses." The writer is adamant: "No man ought to advertise in the midst of landscapes or scenery, in such a way as to destroy or injure their beauty.... It is outrageously selfish to destroy the pleasure of thousands for the sake of a chance of additional gain."

If it weren't for the arch-Victorian prose, the lines could be confused for a contemporary complaint. Yes, the freeway clutter seems to worsen by the year, but this is a pollution problem that has been with us for quite a long time. So who is this uncompromising defender of nature? That well-known nineteenth century environmentalist ... P. T. Barnum. Uncovering unlikely gems, such as a circus huckster's screed against advertising, is one of the pleasures of any anthology, and in that respect the recent collection of environmental writing, American Earth , doesn't disappoint. Edited by author-activist Bill McKibben, the book starts with Henry Thoreau and over the course of more than a thousand pages hits all of the high notes of environmental literature--authors such as John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Jane Jacobs, and Barry Lopez. Scattered among these marquee names are contributions from artists who aren't always thought of as environmentalists. There are song lyrics by Marvin Gaye, a cartoon from R. Crumb, poems by W. S. Merwin and Mary Oliver, an Earth Day dispatch from former Times reporter Joseph Lelyveld, and even a Philip K. Dick excerpt. The result is an intellectually thorough and entertaining volume that, in addition to offering some first-rate writing, is also as good an introduction as any to the history of the environmental movement.

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Or, I should say, the U.S. environmental movement, for this is a strictly domestic affair. In his introduction, McKibben argues that "environmental writing is America's single most distinctive contribution to the world's literature." Of course, the spread of ecological thinking has been an international effort, and a broader anthology would have to include voices such as the English poet Wordsworth, the Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, the Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, or...