The Environmental Moment

The Environmental Moment is a collection of documents that reveal the significance of the years 1968-1972 to the environmental movement in the United States. With material ranging from short pieces from the Whole Earth Catalog and articles from the Village Voice to lectures, posters, and government documents, the collection describes the period through the perspective of a diversity of participants, including activists, politicians, scientists, and average citizens. Included are the words of Rachel Carson, but also the National Review, Howard Zahniser on wilderness, Nathan Hare on the Black underclass. The chronological arrangement reveals the coincidence of a multitude of issues that rushed into public consciousness during a critical time in American history.

David Stradling is professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of Making Mountains: New York City and the Catskills and The Nature of New York: An Environmental History of the Empire State and editor of Conservation in the Progressive Era.

"It is a representative collection that can supplement a textbook for American environmental history courses. . . . He rightly sees the years 1968-1972 as pivotal for the modern environmental movement. Recommended."

"The Environmental Moment is lively and eclectic and does an impressive job of combining classic documents with less well-known ones to get readers thinking about this seemingly familiar topic in unfamiliar ways."—William Cronon, from the Foreword

"A fascinating collection of some of the most compelling arguments in the late 1960s and early 1970s about the environmental crisis. It makes clever use of images, cartoons, PSAs, letters, and testimony."—Char Miller, author of Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism

"Concentrating on a period of upheaval and change, years when environmentalism developed as part of larger social and cultural currents, The Environmental Moment gives students an in-depth look at environmentalism emerging, affecting, and being shaped by other interests in American society and the economy."—Thomas R. Dunlap, editor of DDT, Silent Spring, and the Rise of Environmentalism