| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

From Apocalypse to Way of Life: Environmental Crisis in the American Century. By Frederick Buell. (New York: Routledge, 2003. xviii, 390 pp. $31.95, ISBN 0-415-93407-9.)

Since the days of Rachel Carson, the City University of New York professor Frederick Buell argues in this unique text, a sense of crisis has driven America's reaction to environmental degradation. While an initial fear of an impending apocalypse produced a wave of environmental legislation, more complex, global problems grew. New interpretations of crisis—"more deepened, diversified and domesticated" (p. xviii)—followed, ironically sharpening America's awareness of the problem's gravity even as they diminished faith in effective action. Today environmental crisis is so woven into the fabric of our society that it is part of the new normal, paradoxically allowing the conservative forces of reaction to prevail. The future is uncertain, Buell concludes, but grasping the dynamic nature of public perceptions is critical to avoiding any sense of impotence or fatalism that surely spells ultimate environmental calamity.

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