Frederick Buell

Gebundenes Buch

From Apocalypse to Way of Life

Environmental Crisis in the American Century

Beschreibung

The first Green Wave of the 1960s created a flood of apocalyptic visions in literature and film, from "The Population Bomb" to "Soylent Green," along with a torrent of political activism that launched Earth Day and the Green Party. Today, even as we more fully apprehend the dimensions of our planet's decay, we have become perversely accustomed to the sword that hangs over us. "From Apocalypse to Way of Life" is the most stirring, comprehensive account of the environmental crisis since Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring." In vivid prose, Frederick Buell illustrates the growing complexity of our ecological catastrophe as well as the suffocating political and cultural forces that blunt our response to it. In some quarters, the prophecies of doom have produced a Chicken Little syndrome: If the sky has not yet fallen, why should we believe it will? Buell counters with the hard facts about contemporary threats to human health--deforestation freshwater depletion, ocean pollution, biodiversity loss, synthetic hormones--while tracing the expressions of environmental apocalypse in popular culture. With passion and eloquence, "From Apocalypse to Way of Life" shows us the crisis that is staring us in the face, and explains why we can no longer see it.

Autor

Frederick Buell teaches English and cultural studies at Queens College/CUNY. He is the author of NationalCulture and the New Global System and W.H. Auden as aSocial Poet. He has also published a collection of poetry, Full Summer.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Routledge
• Seitenzahl: 410
• Erscheinungstermin: 24. Februar 2003
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 235mm x 157mm x 27mm
• Gewicht: 742g
• ISBN-13: 9780415934077
• ISBN-10: 0415934079
• Artikelnr.: 21485654

Rezensionen

'Has the over-used rhetoric of the 'end of nature' only deadened our imagination to the very real environmental apocalypse around us? Buell asks very tough questions with intellectual precision and unflinching courage.' - Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear

'This is an admirably scholarly, but not at all academic, portrait of American society through the last 40 years of the "post-Carson" world, living in-and with-environmental crisis and its social, political, ecological, and cultural consequences. Thorough and intellectually subtle.' - Kirkpatrick Sale, author of The Green Revolution and Rebels Against the Future

'It is entirely possible, as Frederick

Buell points out, that we won't take the steps necessary to ward off environmental apocalypse. But at the very least we can fulfill our other human duty, to bear witness both to the beauty of the present earth and to its degradation. Buell carefully catalogues those witnesses, and in so doing adds some important glosses of his own to this necessary task.' - Bill McKibben, author of Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age

'Intelligent, passionate, clearly written (and thus excellent for teaching) and challenging, they make powerful contributions to understanding both The Mess We're In and the ways in which we've thought about that mess From Apocalypse to Way of Life is, quite simply, a brilliant book. This is an excellent treatment of the interconnections among politics, (pseudo) science and economics, and ideology.' - Roger S. Gottlieb, Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute

'An immensely thought-provoking book of impressive scope and depth, From Apocalypse to Way of Life should be read by anyone seeking to understand what it means to live--as we are undeniably living--amid perpetual crisis.' - Daniel J. Philippon, University of Minnesoty, ISLE

'This is a fascinating book: a must-read for anyone anywhere who needs a good explanation of the environmental crisis we have learned to inhabit.' - Local Environment