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Reviews
IN THE THICK OF IT: MY LIFE IN THE SIERRA CLUB
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by J. Michael McCloskey
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| Island Press, Washington, D.C., 2005. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 414 pages. $29.99 cloth. |
| It is fair to say that in the post-World War II era few if any Oregon natives have played a larger and longer role in the modern environmental movement than J. Michael McCloskey. Born in Eugene and a graduate of the University of Oregon School of Law, McCloskey rose through the ranks of the movement, from co-chair of the conservation committee of the Obsidians hiking club during the 1950s to the longest-tenured executive director of the Sierra Club — the nation's preeminent environmental organization. Students of conservation history and current activists in environmentalism will appreciate the recently published memoirs of his thirty-eight-year career with the Sierra Club. |
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In the Thick of it begins with a local focus but quickly becomes a story of national and international scope. This is not a history of regional conservation. There are discussions of significant Pacific Northwest debates from 1961 through 1964, when McCloskey served as the region's first field organizer for conservation work, including his efforts to protect the Mt. Jefferson area and the North Cascades. The historical details provided for many of these broader campaigns, however, are quite thin. McCloskey's emphasis there and through much of the book is on national political strategy and his own development in and contributions to that arena. |
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McCloskey moved to San Francisco and became conservation director for the Sierra Club in 1965, then succeeded David Brower as executive director in 1969. He served in that post until 1987, spanning what he calls the "'glory days' of the environmental movement, when we wove the fabric of modern environmental thought and law.... with dizzying speed" (p. 364). Several chapters give emphasis to specific efforts, such as those to create Redwood National Park and to protect Mineral King in California, and to the shift within the movement to international campaigns. Perhaps partially in rebuttal to critics who say environmentalists in those years devoted too much energy to wilderness preservation, McCloskey explains that, once he became leader of the club, he spent little time on traditional wilderness debates. Much of the material focuses on shifting priorities, divisions within the movement, and the author's own efforts to mediate and build bridges between various factions, an approach McCloskey calls "my usual practice" (p. 349). In describing his experiences, he provides a rich list of anecdotal encounters with a fascinating array of people, including James Watt, Cecil Andrus, Tom McCall, and Jimmy Carter. |
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The strongest analysis in McCloskey's book covers the years since the mid-1980s, when he served as the club's chairman. His recollections of various presidential administrations are quite revealing, particularly accounts of the "bittersweet years" of the Clinton presidency (p. 324). There is extensive discussion on the globalization of environmentalism during these years. Readers get an inside view of the debates and challenges — both internal and external — of the environmental movement, its personalities, and its issues during the 1990s. McCloskey here strongly defends the political strategies he developed and championed during the 1970s, opposing new efforts at collaborative conservation. He describes himself in the years prior to his retirement in 1999 as increasingly isolated from the younger leadership in the club and from the broader movement. Partially, he credits this to the difference between their experiences in an era of political deadlock and his development during a time of extraordinary political consensus. "I was a product of times that few now could even imagine," he observes (p. 356). |
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In the Thick of it is a very chatty, informal book, which is both a strength and its greatest weakness. Although it covers a fascinating array of events and personalities, the memories are mainly anecdotal. This is not an introspective account, and overall it does not emphasize the broader historical context of personal experiences, with some valuable exceptions in the final chapters. The references in the book cite almost exclusively works composed by the author himself. It is not the purpose of this volume to document the development of modern environmentalism — that is available from other scholarly sources, including some earlier articles by McCloskey — but the book does serve as a colorful complement to the study of political strategizing and historical eras within that movement. |
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| Kevin R. Marsh
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| Idaho State University |
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