Book description
As an antidote to the destructive culture of consumption dominating
American life today, Scott Russell Sanders calls for a culture of
conservation that allows us to savor and preserve the world, instead
of devouring it. How might we shift to a more durable and responsible
way of life? What changes in values and behavior will be required?
Ranging geographically from southern Indiana to the Boundary Waters
Wilderness and culturally from the Bible to billboards, Sanders
extends the visions of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Rachel
Carson to our own day. A Conservationist Manifesto shows the crucial
relevance of a conservation ethic at a time of mounting concern about
global climate change, depletion of natural resources, extinction of
species, and the economic inequities between rich and poor nations.
The important message of this powerful book is that conservation is
not simply a personal virtue but a public one.
"A Conservationist Manifesto is a rich book and like a rich
wine or rich dessert, it is meant to be savored. Sanders sees beyond
the mass destruction of consumerism and prophetically calls us to the
redemptive work of conserving creation and connecting deeply with our
neighbors and the places in which we live." -Englewood Review of Books
Scott Russell Sanders, Distinguished Professor of English at
Indiana University Bloomington, is the author of 20 books of fiction
and nonfiction, including Writing from the Center (IUP, 1995), Hunting
for Hope, and A Private History of Awe. Sanders is winner of the
Lannan Literary Award, John Burroughs Essay Award for Natural History,
AWP Award in Creative Nonfiction, and the 2009 Mark Twain Award. He
lives in Bloomington, Indiana.
