Verlyn Klinkenborg, author and New York Times editorial writer, digs into the American Earth anthology at Book Forum. From Henry David Thoreau, writing from Concord in 1837, to book editor Bill McKibben, writing from the Yosemite backcountry last year, American Earth is a collection of essays, speeches, and poems about nature and the environment. More than a hundred writers contributed. Klinkenborg enthuses:

This is an anthology, then, of the writing that gets produced when reasonable men and women fight off the extremes of protest and despair to which they’ve been driven by the devastation of this planet. That makes this a practical-minded collection, commendably light on the vaporous spirituality, the blank stare, found in so much nature writing. This is literature for a cause, a cookbook for getting something done, a partial archive of the documents that shaped ecological awareness as we know it.

Keep reading here.

[Thanks Jacket Copy]