This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West

Author: Ketcham, Christopher

Color: Sky/Pale blue

Edition: 1st Edition

Number Of Pages: 432

Details:

“A big, bold book about public lands . . . The Desert Solitaire of our time.” —Outside A hard-hitting look at the battle now raging over the fate of the public lands in the American West--and a plea for the protection of these last wild places The public lands of the western United States comprise some 450 million acres of grassland, steppe land, canyons, forests, and mountains. It's an American commons, and it is under assault as never before. Journalist Christopher Ketcham has been documenting the confluence of commercial exploitation and governmental misconduct in this region for over a decade. His revelatory book takes the reader on a journey across these last wild places, to see how capitalism is killing our great commons. Ketcham begins in Utah, revealing the environmental destruction caused by unregulated public lands livestock grazing, and exposing rampant malfeasance in the federal land management agencies, who have been compromised by the profit-driven livestock and energy interests they are supposed to regulate. He then turns to the broad effects of those corrupt politics on wildlife. He tracks the Department of Interior's failure to implement and enforce the Endangered Species Act--including its stark betrayal of protections for the grizzly bear and the sage grouse--and investigates the destructive behavior of U.S. Wildlife Services in their shocking mass slaughter of animals that threaten the livestock industry. Along the way, Ketcham talks with ecologists, biologists, botanists, former government employees, whistleblowers, grassroots environmentalists and other citizens who are fighting to protect the public domain for future generations. This Land is a colorful muckraking journey--part Edward Abbey, part Upton Sinclair--exposing the rot in American politics that is rapidly leading to the sell-out of our national heritage. The book ends with Ketcham's vision of ecological restoration for the American West: freeing the trampled, denuded ecosystems from the effects of grazing, enforcing the laws already in place to defend biodiversity, allowing the native species of the West to recover under a fully implemented Endangered Species Act, and establishing vast stretches of public land where there will be no development at all, not even for recreation.

Reviews:

Praise for This Land:

"Ketcham’s important book is an urgent cry to expose the greed, stubbornness and neglect that is harming public lands . . . he has written a psalm to nature and a manifesto to stop the forces that are threatening a territory that stretches from Colorado to the Pacific Coast."  —Los Angeles Times

"A rollicking and unsparing look at the threats to our public lands . . . part reportage, part history, part backcountry travelogue, the book is full of righteous anger and reverence for wild spaces . . . brings the fighting spirit and conservation vision of great writers like Edward Abbey, Rachel Carson, and Bernard DeVoto into the 21st century."  —Outside

"[An] encyclopedic exposé . . . [Ketcham] uses darkly humorous stories to illuminate the political, ideological, and physical threats to America’s parks, forests, rivers, and monuments." —The New Yorker

"Ketcham is a muckraking activist . . . his brutally clear reporting supports his view . . . This Land is a catalog of depredations wrought by grazers, drillers, miners, loggers and the holders of public office who abet them, betraying their duty to the public trust in favor of money and political power . . . [Ketcham’s] book is ultimately a call to arms." —The New York Times Book Review

"Raw and unrestrained, Ketcham's work goes to the heart of this increasingly virulent national crisis." —2019 National Outdoor Book Awards (Honorable Mention, Natural History Literature)

"Ferocious . . . [a] stunning book . . . What makes  This Land so pressing and so painful is that it drains any reservoirs of political naïveté you may have left. It reminds us that myt...

EAN: 9780735220980

Release Date: 16-07-2019

Languages: English

Item Condition: New

Binding: Hardcover