Author: Phillip Shabecoff
URL: Find it at your local library.
Date: revised edition, 2003


Notes:
At a Glance: Environmental correspondent for the New York Times Phillip Shabecoff documents “[the environmental] movement, its long history, its progress, and its possible future. It is about my conviction that environmentalism, despite its limited successes, offers the best hope that we will be able to save ourselves from the grave dangers we have created by our destructive use of the natural world” (xiv).

Best for: A wide, perhaps more news-oriented audience. Shabecoff presents the history of the environmental movement in an anecdotal, journalistic style, utilizing secondary sources to trace the past and anticipate the future.

Standout Features: Shabecoff uses his own reporting throughout the second half of the book, thus becoming his own primary source. Shabecoff lends the work the authenticity of someone who has "been there," as well as someone who fought for the position of "environmental correspondent" when, as he notes, there had been no such thing.

Keep in Mind: The potential for leftist bias is strong, if not inevitable. Just a warning.

What should be noted is the fact that this is a revised edition of a volume written in the late 80s, early 90s. I'd recommend reading the preface for Shabecoff's feelings on "having" to revise for a new edition.

Shabecoff anticipates readerly objections: “Just a few words about what my book is not. It is not a work of historical scholarship. I am a journalist, not a historian. I use chiefly secondary sources to describe the settlement of the continent and the Native American societies encountered by the Europeans and to trace the rise of environmentalism and place it in its cultural context. In the early chapters, I draw heavily on the inspired modern scholarship” of various historians. “Later chapters rely primarily on my own reporting, particularly from the nearly fifteen years I spent following the issue as environmental correspondent for the New York Times” (xvi).

Shabecoff pointedly states that his "task is to present the news—the news of an emerging social force and how it is likely to affect our time and the future” (xvi).