Consistent with its mission to inform, educate, and inspire action on behalf of wild nature, the Foundation for Deep Ecology has long supported a book-publishing program. Between its first title, Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry (published by Sierra Club Books in 1993), and its latest, Plundering Appalachia: The Tragedy of Mountaintop-Removal Coal Mining (released by Earth Aware Editions in fall 2009), the foundation has conceived, produced, and funded a series of large-format books on pressing ecological issues. Following in a tradition pioneered by legendary conservationist David Brower who used exhibit format books to support the Sierra Club’s advocacy work in the 1960s, FDE staff and outside colleagues have modernized the format, producing award-winning books to inspire activism. Typically, the foundation partners with leading experts on its book projects, grants copies of the book to nonprofits working on a particular issue so that they can be incorporated into education and outreach campaigns, and sometimes makes related grants to support that work.
FDE is not a retail outlet for the books it produces on environmental themes. They are distributed to the bookstore trade by respected commercial and nonprofit publishing houses, and typically are available wherever books are sold.
The foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals.
Plundering Appalachia:
The Tragedy of Mountaintop-
Removal Coal Mining
Plundering Appalachia is a searing exposé, in words and images, of the greatest ecological calamity now being wreaked upon America, an outrage justified by the desire for “cheap” power. Mountaintop removal is strip mining on steroids—a radically destructive form of surface mining whereby coal companies bulldoze the forest, decapitate the peaks with explosives, push the shattered rubble into adjacent valleys, and destroy the ecologically crucial headwater streams that had been there before. With large-format photography and engaging writing, Plundering Appalachia illuminates Big Coal’s assault on the people and wildlife of the region, includes first-person testimonies from coalfields residents about life in shadow of mining operations, dissects the coal industry’s role in the energy economy and its contribution to global warming, and celebrates the growing resistance to mountaintop removal and the myth of “clean coal.”
Contributors: Edited by Tom Butler and George Wuerthner, foreword by Douglas Tompkins. With essays by Wendell Berry, Judy Bonds, Ross Gelbspan, Denise Giardina, Richard Heinberg, Mary Anne Hitt, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., David Orr, Carl Pope, Erik Reece, Vivian Stockman, and others.
Copublished with Earth Aware Editions, fall 2009.
Paperback, $39.95, ISBN: 978-1-60109-050-8
Hardcover, $49.95, ISBN: 978-1-60109-054-6
For more information visit www.plunderingappalachia.org.
Wildlands Philanthropy:
The Great American Tradition
In Wildlands Philanthropy, veteran conservation writer Tom Butler and world-class landscape photographer Antonio Vizcaíno take readers on a visually spectacular tour of natural landmarks from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and around globe. With more than 350 pages, 170 color photographs, and a large-format design with exquisite production values, Wildlands Philanthropy is a book grand enough to tell the inspiring stories of people who saved extraordinary places. From Muir Woods National Monument to Acadia National Park, from beloved icons to obscure natural areas, the forty parks, refuges, and sanctuaries featured in the book represent the incredible diversity of wildlife habitats that have been saved through private initiative during the past century. The amazing people who invested their passion and wealth to secure these scenic treasures come from every walk of life and every corner of the country, suggesting that everyone—regardless of means—can join this great American tradition of individual action on behalf of wild nature.
Contributors: Essays by Tom Butler, photography by Antonio Vizcaíno, and a foreword by Tom Brokaw.
Honors: Benjamin Franklin Award for best coffee table book; Nautilus Book Awards grand winner.
Copublished with Earth Aware Editions, fall 2008.
Oversized hardcover, deluxe slipcased edition with bonus DVD, $125, ISBN-13: 978-1-601090-20-1
Trade edition paperback, $39.95, ISBN-13: 978-1601090591
Publication date: March 2010.
For more information visit www.wildlandsphilanthropy.org.
Thrillcraft:
The Environmental
Consequences
of Motorized Recreation
The growing popularity of motorized recreational vehicles such as jet skis, dirt bikes, four-wheelers, snowmobiles, dune buggies, swamp buggies, rock crawlers, etc.—collectively termed thrillcraft—has become a major threat to the American landscape. Thrillcraft: The Environmental Consequences of Motorized Recreation explores the ecological, economic, political, and cultural effects of this mounting crisis with a focus on public lands. Broad-ranging essays by scientists, economists, activists, social critics, and others outline the many ways thrillcraft attack and degrade America’s natural heritage. More than one hundred graphic photographs document how this motorized assault is destroying ecosystems from the Florida Everglades to the Alaskan tundra. Thrillcraft also examines the cultural roots that have fostered such a cavalier attitude toward nature. Many Americans, from childhood, are taught to treat public lands as outdoor gymnasiums, where they increasingly search for challenges using machines, rather than their own muscles and minds. Unfortunately, these thrills are often acquired at the expense of the land and the silence and beauty of nature enjoyed by others. Thrillcraft offers a clarion call to take back our wildlands, our culture, and our peace and quiet from this growing nuisance. Charting a vision for the future, the book tells the stories of successful campaigns where motorized recreation has been reduced or eliminated from public lands.
Contributors: Edited by George Wuerthner; with essays by Rick Bass, Tom Butler, Philip Cafaro, Dominick DellaSala, David Havlick, James Howard Kunstler, Richard Mahler, Thomas Michael Power, Paul Sutter, Bethanie Walder, Howie Wolke, and others.
Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology, distributed by Chelsea Green, November 2007.
Hardcover, $60, ISBN: 978-1-933392-66-0
For more information visit www.stopthrillcraft.org.
Wildfire:
A Century of Failed Forest Policy
Wildfires have helped shaped North America’s landscapes since the dawn of time. They are a force that we cannot fully control, and thus understanding, appreciating, and learning to live with wildfire is ultimately our wisest public policy. With more than 150 dramatic photographs, Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy covers the topic of wildfire from ecological, economic, and social/political perspectives while also documenting how past forest policies have hindered natural processes, creating a tinderbox of problems that we are faced with today. More than 25 leading thinkers in the field of fire ecology provide in-depth analyses, critiques, and compelling solutions for how society can coexist with wildfire. Using examples such as the epic Yellowstone fires of 1988, the ever-present southern California fires, and the Northwest’s Biscuit Fire of 2002, the book examines the ecology of these landscapes and the policies and practices that affected them and continue to affect them, such as fire suppression, prescribed burns, salvage logging, and land-use planning. Overall, the book aims to promote the restoration of fire to the landscape and to encourage its natural behavior so it can resume its role as a major ecological process.
Contributors: Edited by George Wuerthner; with essays by Stephen J. Pyne, Mollie Matteson, Thomas R. Vale, Les Aucoin, Gary Snyder, Dominick DellaSella, Timothy Ingalsbee, Andy Kerr and others. Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology, distributed by Island Press, 2006.
Paperback, $45.00, ISBN: 1-59726-070-3
Hardcover, $75.00, ISBN: 1-59726-069-X
The Wildfire Reader:
A Century of Failed Forest Policy
The Wildfire Reader presents, in an affordable paperback edition, the essays included in Wildfire, offering a concise overview of fire landscapes and the past century of forest policy that has affected them. The Wildfire Reader covers a broad range of ecological, economic, social, and political perspectives on one of nature’s most potent forces, and the past century of failed attempts to control these wild events. Through photographs and essays by scientists, media critics, firefighters, and conservation activists, the book challenges the view of wildfire as a universally destructive force, offering a more balanced view that wildfire is crucial natural process that contributes to healthy ecosystems.
Contributors: Edited by George Wuerthner, with essays by Stephen J. Pyne, Mollie Matteson, Thomas R. Vale, Les Aucoin, Gary Snyder, Dominick DellaSella, Timothy Ingalsbee, Andy Kerr and others.
Published by The Foundation for Deep Ecology, distributed by Island Press, 2006.
Paperback, $27.50, ISBN: 1-59726-087-8
The Selected Works of Arne Naess
The Foundation for Deep Ecology conceived and funded this monumental project to collect, revise, and publish some sixty years of writing by one of the most radical and sagacious philosophers of the twentieth century, thereby bringing the full range of Naess’s work to the contemporary English-speaking audience. Arne Naess’s philosophical discourses—especially his ecophilosophical writings—are among the most important works on environmental and social ethics of the last fifty years. Untold numbers of writers, thinkers, philosophers, and activists have been influenced by his ideas, although they are often unaware of the source of the influence. Born in Oslo in 1912, Naess was a philosopher, mountaineer, and environmental activist who perhaps is best known for his characterizations of the “deep, long range” and the “shallow” ecology movements. Naess compares the shallow movement with band-aid patches or reforms that ultimately fail to address the philosophical, social, and political roots of the ecological crisis. Conversely, the deep ecology movement stresses the importance of addressing the fundamental causes of the crisis.
Under the editorial direction of Professor Harold Glasser, Naess’s works have been updated and adapted, volume by volume, to meet contemporary standards for philosophical publishing. The ten-volume collection covers a huge landscape of philosophical discourse and social thought, including the philosophy of science, empirical semantics, skepticism, Gandhi and Spinoza, peace studies, democracy, and environmentalism.
Contributors: Harold Glasser, Series Editor; Alan Drengson, Associate Editor; Bill Devall and George Sessions.
Published by Springer, The Netherlands, 2005.
Hardcover, Volumes 1-10, $2,300.00,
ISBN: 978-1-4020-3727-9
Fatal Harvest:
The Tragedy
of Industrial Agriculture
Fatal Harvest comprehensively documents the destructive effects of the current industrial food system, offering a thoughtful critique of monoculture farming, genetic engineering, pesticide use, irradiation, and other aspects of corporate agribusiness. To increase public awareness about the ecological, cultural, economic, and health ramifications of the global industrial farming system, FDE collaborated with the International Center for Technology Assessment and its Center for Food Safety (CFS) to produce the book. CFS founder and executive director Andrew Kimbrell— author, attorney, and activist—spearheaded the research team and project. Leading experts on sustainable agriculture contributed essays and photographs. From shattering myths about the conventional food system to cataloging its impacts (issue by issue, and crop by crop) to providing an alternative for ecological agriculture, Fatal Harvest makes a powerful case for diversified, organic farming techniques as well as for the restoration of local resourcefulness, including agrarian and wild values. The book’s final section offers a variety of perspectives on efforts to integrate wildlife-friendly practices with organic production, as well as developing more regionally diverse systems of production and distribution. The book’s innovative graphic design teaches the reader to look at an agricultural landscape and recognize the differences between an industrial approach versus truly ecological agriculture, which uses nature as measure and where conservation is a consequence of production.
Contributors: Edited by Andrew Kimbrell; with essays by Wendell Berry, Jerry Mander, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Vandana Shiva, Monica Moore, Wes Jackson, Alice Waters, Gary Nabhan, David Ehrenfeld, and others.
Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology, distributed by Island Press, 2002.
Paperback, $45.00, ISBN: 1-55963-941-5 (Out of print)
Hardcover, $75.00, ISBN 1-55963-940-7 (Out of print)
The Fatal Harvest Reader
A concise version of the larger book suitable for college course adoption, The Fatal Harvest Reader gathers the essays from Fatal Harvest, which comprehensively describe the unsustainable nature of the globalized industrial food system.
Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology, distributed by Island Press, 2002.
Contributors: Edited by Andrew Kimbrell; with essays by writers including Wendell Berry, Jerry Mander, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Vandana Shiva, Monica Moore, Wes Jackson, Alice Waters, Gary Nabhan, and David Ehrenfeld.
Paperback, $19.95, ISBN: 1-55963-944-X
Welfare Ranching:
The Subsidized Destruction
of the American West
Despite extensive documentation about the ecological, human health, and climate change impacts of a meat-based diet, livestock production has drawn limited scrutiny from environmental organizations, government agencies, and the public at large. Welfare Ranching illuminates the ecological damage domestic livestock cause to Western public lands, analyzes the grazing system’s economic absurdity, and considers how sound public policy has been circumvented by the cowboy myth’s tenacious grip on the public imagination. The book also addresses global livestock issues and the Midwest feedlot system, which dominates American agriculture. The effects of livestock grazing are subtle and less obvious to the untrained eye than an open pit mine or clearcut. Many of the ecological changes associated with livestock production occurred a century ago, and society has accepted the altered landscape as normal. Few people realize that the naked desert washes they see across the Southwest were once robust streams shaded by cottonwoods or willow, or that sagebrush-covered valleys in Montana may have had a nearly continuous cover of grass a century ago. The effects of livestock grazing—biodiversity loss, soil erosion, watershed pollution—are cumulative rather than immediate. With conservative estimates showing that federal taxpayers subsidize over $1 billion in direct costs to the ranching industry every year, Welfare Ranching gives this important environmental issue the attention it deserves, and is a centerpiece of a larger educational campaign linking livestock production to water pollution, species endangerment, and habitat loss.
Contributors: Edited by George Wuerthner and Mollie Matteson; with essays by Edward Abbey, Joy Belsky, Andy Kerr, Christopher Manes, Thomas M. Power, T.H. Watkins, and others.
Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology, distributed by Island Press, 2002.
Paperback, $45.00, ISBN: 1-55963-943-1
Hardcover, $75.00, ISBN: 1-55963-942-3
For more information visit www.publiclandsranching.org.
La Tragedia del Bosque Chileno
(The Tragedy of the Chilean Forest)
Adrianna Hoffman, one of Chile’s leading conservationists, a former executive director of the the Chilean forest advocacy group Defensores del Bosque and former head of Chile’s National Environmental Commission (CONAMA), states in her introduction to La Tragedia del Bosque Chileno that the book Clearcut inspired her to produce a photo-format volume on the sad plight of Chilean forests. FDE, along with the Weeden Foundation and various other foundations and funders from around the world contributed the financial resources that allowed Defensores del Bosque to publish an incisive critique of contemporary forestry practices in Chile, and articulate a positive future vision for native forest conservation and restoration. This book, similarly influential but longer and more comprehensive than Clearcut, covered effects to Chilean forest ecosystems, incuding negative trends in soil health, biodiversity, and beauty. Its 400+ pages of photos and essays carefully document the destructive practices of an extractive industrial economy, and propose alternatives that are restorative and sustainable.
Contributors: Edited by Adrianna Hoffman; with essays by Carlos Ceuvas, Sara Larraín, David Ehrenfeld, Juan Pablo Orrego, Jerry Mander, Chris Maser, Reed Noss, Vandana Shiva, Michael Soulé, Douglas Tompkins, and others. Felipe Orrego, photo coordinator.
Published by Ocho Libros Editores, Ltda., 1998. (In Spanish only)
Clearcut:
The Tragedy
of Industrial Forestry
Clearcut was the first major book project conceived, funded, and produced by the Foundation for Deep Ecology. The goal was to create a visually compelling activist tool exposing the savagery of industrial logging practices on both public and private lands. With more than a hundred dual-page spreads depicting industrial forest carnage from Georgia to Maine, and California to Alaska, Clearcut presented a dramatically different view of North America’s forests than coffee table books had presented up to that time. Clearcut took readers behind the “beauty strips”—those scenic sections of lush forest along roads in the United States and Canada that forestry companies leave intact, masking from view the devastation beyond. The book clearly established that rapacious logging was a pressing issue in North America, not just in the Amazon and other parts of the tropics. Second, it packaged evidence of an outlaw industry’s ecological crimes in a format widely accessible to activists, policymakers, and the general public. Finally, it put the forest products industry on the defensive: in 1995 the American Forest and Paper Association published a look-alike answer to Clearcut entitled A Closer Look. That book attempted to discredit Clearcut and put forth the preposterous argument that current industrial forest practices are beneficial to forests because they mimic natural events, such as wildfires and hurricanes. Clearcut was the centerpiece of a national outreach and educational campaign, with FDE distributing 12,000 copies at no charge to conservation activists, policymakers, and the media.
Contributors: Edited by Bill Devall, with essays by Reed Noss, Dave Foreman, Chris Maser, Colleen McCrory, Ed Grumbine, Herb Hammond, Mitch Lansky, and others. Photos edited by Edgar Boyles.
Copublished with Sierra Club Books and Earth Island Press, 1994 (first edition, paperback and hardcover), 1995 (second edition paperback).
ISBN: 0-87156-494-7 (Out of print)
