About this item
Most of us think that in order to be environmentalists, we have to love nature. Essentially, we should be tree huggers -- embracing majestic redwoods, mighty oaks, graceful birches, etc. We ought to eat granola, drive hybrids, cook tofu, and write our appointments in Sierra Club calendars. Nature's splendor, in other words, justifies our protection of it. But, asks Benjamin Hale in this provocative book, what about tsunamis, earthquakes, cancer, bird flu, killer asteroids? They are nature, too.For years, environmentalists have insisted that nature is fundamentally good. In The Wild and the Wicked, Benjamin Hale adopts the opposite position -- that much of the time nature can be bad -- in order to show that even if nature is cruel, we still need to be environmentally conscientious.
About the Author
Benjamin Hale is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the recipient of a Provost's Fellowship, a Michener-Copernicus Award, and the Bard Fiction Prize. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in "Harper's Magazine," "Conjunctions," and "The New York Times," among others. He grew up in Colorado and now lives in New York.