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TREES AND PEOPLE

A contribution to the debate over professional forestry's environmental impact by someone who believes that people take better care of trees than nature does. The US Forestry Service—and professional forestry in general- -has come under heavy fire in recent years for, among other sins, the irresponsible destruction of trees. Jordan, who has worked for 40 years in the forest products industry, argues that environmentalists and government regulations are standing in the way of healthy, sustainable forests. He takes as a hopeful sign President Clinton's 1993 Forestry Conference, which attempted to find a common ground between conflicting environmental and economic demands. Some kind of resolution is necessary, Jordan argues, if the forest-products industry is to continue to fulfill the American Dream by supplying cheap housing and consumer goods. In 1993, Jordan asserts, 129,000 people were busy writing 66,000 pages of federal regulations, many of which were contradictory. Worse still, in his view, Congress is designating countless acres as national wilderness or protected parkland. Nature rules in these areas, states Jordan, causing ``catastrophic `clearcuts' through the devastating ravages of wildfires, hurricanes, insects, disease and old age,'' while in the hands of private industry these same areas would have watershed protection, erosion control, care of wildlife and plant habitat, recreational opportunity, and, most important, stewardship of a valuable renewable raw material. He calls for a national campaign on the part of the forest-products industry to spread the word about its successes, combat its negative public image, and cultivate grassroots support. Jordan is an articulate and fervent advocate of sustainable forestry, and his perspective on the issues is refreshingly different, but he fails to adequately address such major environmental concerns as the loss of genetic diversity among forest trees. A valid comment, but far from the final word on the fate of our forests. (Photos, not seen)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-89526-483-8

Page Count: 269

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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