Great New Wilderness Debate

Description:

The Great New Wilderness Debate is an expansive, wide-ranging collection that addresses the pivotal environmental issues of the modern era. This eclectic volume on the varied constructions of "wilderness" reveals the recent controversies that surround those conceptions, and the gulf between those who argue for wilderness "preservation" and those who argue for "wise use."

J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson have selected thirty-nine essays that provide historical context, range broadly across the issues, and set forth the positions of the debate. Beginning with such well-known authors as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, the collection moves forward to the contemporary debate and presents seminal works by a number of the most distinguished scholars in environmental history and environmental philosophy. The Great New Wilderness Debate also includes essays by conservation biologists, cultural geographers, environmental activists, and contemporary writers on the environment.

Brief description: J. BAIRD CALLICOTT is a professor of philosophy at the University of North Texas. He is coeditor, with Michael P. Nelson, of The Great New Wilderness Debate and The Wilderness Debate Rages On (both Georgia), and coauthor, with Nelson, of American Indian Environmental Ethics: An Ojibwa Case Study.

Review Quotes:

A rich collection of wilderness voices that previews the shape of environmentalist discourse in the ongoing debate about how we will treat the nonhuman world in the twenty-first century.