Polit~ol Geogrqhy, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 319.
1995
Book review
Green H&toy. A Reader in Environmental
Literature, Philosop& and Politics, Derek Wall
(ed.), Routledge, 1994,273 pp. ISBN 0 415 07925
A naked female provides the disturbing cover
illustration for this stimulating collection of
essays and verse; her body appears to be
corrupted by forest fruit and fungi (it is ‘Edith’ by
Emmet Gowin) and whilst she is young the pose
is classical. I will not attempt to allegorize the
picture except to say that notes of flawed beauty
and violence are bound to surround the
relationship between our species and Nature.
Derek Wall identifies the niche for such a book:
‘Green activists, their opponents and the ever
watchful news media argues, and I agree, that
both green activists and the rest of society must
learn of the antiquity of concern about our
environment so that such concern can take its
place alongside that for our neighbour, Wall is,
however, not solely a concerned academic and
so the collection has been gathered to enable us
to ‘Read, enjoy .-and act’ (p. 13).
Other books have traced the history of
ecological thought without moving beyond the,
albeit stimulating, arguments which rage within
science between reductionism and holism. An
author of such works, Donald Worster, is much
quoted by Wall in his helpful Introduction to
each of the 19 chapters. These contain 95
carefully selected extracts by a range of authors
whose catholicity can be judged by the fact that
Percy Shelley ‘wins’ with three entries; Lewis
Mumford, John Muir, Peter Kropotkin and
William Blake have to make do with two each!
As a litmus test of the collection the reviewer
took the order of chapter themes and its
suitability for encouraging the action desired by
the Editor, not least among students of Environ-
mental Science and Environmental Policy. Whilst
the order is not linearly historical we do begin
with the impact of prehistoric humans; our
limitless demands on our environment took
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over early on from the celebrated balance of
contemporary indigenous peoples living in
extensive groups bound by tribal cultures. We
then have the writings of those who foresaw (or
did they?) the horrors of industrialization and
urbanization; notably John Evelyn’s ‘Fumifu
gium’ and we are invited to pin the blame on the
normal candidates, e.g. Christianity and Science,
brought together the Francis Bacon’s ‘Enlarging
of the Bounds of Human Empire, to the Effecting
of all Things possible’ (falls now like a sexist joke
in the Staff Common Room!). In the New World
we saw the rotten apple of avarice cored again by
modernist heroics (see James Fenimore Coop-
er’s extract) and socialists queued up to praise
the triumph of welfare (other than the one who
accuses the socialists and liberals of wrecking
the globe to provide it for humans!).
After this I am less sure about how Wall
structured his argument-perhaps there is
none. Certainly the eloquence of the collected
authors never loses strength but I would have
preferred the science and religion theme to
continue through the Industrial Revolution and
for art to have had a section of its own. However,
chapters on Ecofeminism and Spirital Awaken-
ings are lodged next to Literary Roots before a
‘clean exit’ is made through three sections on
politics.
Such criticisms are, however, minor. Wall has
achieved an incredible mix of the scholarly and
the useful; the book is comprehensive enough to
become the basis for a course on its own (with
‘Environmental Values’ as the accompanying
journal). I would particularly like to recruit to
such a course the student who recently asked me
(after 20 heartfelt lectures) whether my environ-
mental activism was ‘just a hobby’! For him and
many others are the disturbances of ‘Edith’
suitable misery.
Malcolm Newson
Professor of Physical Geography, Universi~ of
Newcastle upon TJW