The first study to link America's nature writing tradition to the development of its environmental organizations.
About the Author :
DANIEL J. PHILIPPON is an associate professor of rhetoric at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where he is also director of the Program in Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Ethics. He is editor of a critical edition of Mabel Osgood Wright's The Friendship of Nature and coeditor of the anthology The Height of Our Mountains.
Review :
Conserving Words richly evokes the larger social context of American nature writing in the era between Roosevelt and Abbey. Daniel Philippon's skill in interweaving the literature with the friendships, letters, official reports, and public debates that informed it makes this book both illuminating and delightful.
Philippon does an extraordinarily thorough and lucid job of telling the life stories of these five writers, focusing on their involvement in the environmental movement. . . . In seeking to discern the political and social impact of environmental writing, Conserving Words makes an important contribution to one of the central issues in contemporary ecocriticism.
Gets beyond the surface appeals of nature writing which is ordinarily lumped together by most readers.
Philippon shows in meticulous fashion how his five writer-activists played integral, complex roles in the development of these important organizations, and how often these people and their organizations interacted.
Writers who write about a need to protect the environment and readers who revere them should have high praise for Philippon's Conserving Words.
A readable, lucid examination of how five Americans shaped the environmental movement through their writing . . . Making a significant contribution to the relatively new field of environmental humanities, this book—though classed as natural history—contains so much biography and anecdote that it will appeal to readers across many disciplines.
A valuable overview of the development of Progressive-era conservation and modern-day environmentalism . . . Conserving Words is an extremely valuable book for its case studies and for its thought-provoking Introduction and Conclusion.
[An] excellent analysis for the eco-critic and academic.
