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The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life
by Bill McKibben
Holt Paperbacks, 2008
Self-described author-educator-environmentalist
Bill
McKibben is characteristic of much environmental writing
today: he practices outside of academic institutions, he
lives what he preaches (namely, outdoors), and he promotes
activism and political involvement to counter the environmental
problems on which he focuses. He is, in effect, a good person
to have around, a voice of reason in an age of an overabundance
of (dis)information. McKibben's potential reach is aided
by the accessibility of his writing, owing in part to his
existence outside academia, but also to his frequent contributions
to The New Yorker, Mother Jones, New
York Review of Books, and Harper's. This book
culls 44 essays from these and other publications, making
the collection a fitting addition to his eleven other books.
McKibben's focus is on BIG issues:
global warming, globalization (or, more accurately, its
counter, local economies), genetic engineering, and the
mass media. The ideas he proffers in his essays and books
come from some surprising places, most notably from using
himself as a test-case. For The
Age of Missing Information, he watched one day
of television on over 90 cable channels (with a little help
with some friends with VCRs), and for part of his most recent
book Deep
Economy he and his family ate only local foods
for a year, not as easy a feat as it sounds. From these
scenarios McKibben experiences things that he otherwise
might not have or could only have speculated upon, and therefore
the deep insight that comes from experienced would be missing.
Like Wendell Berry, a farmer who writes about agrarian life,
McKibben practices what he preaches, as they say, maybe
not to the extreme of Berry (but who does?) but enough that
we value his insights and take them to be the voice of honesty.
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