by Robert Omstein
and David Sobel
Simon & Schuster, 1987
301 pp. $19.95
By Carol Gluck. Princeton, 1985. 407 pp. $12.50
By Horace Freeland Judson. Johns Hopkins,
1987. 266 pp. $9.95
By Alex Shoumatoff.
Univ. of N.M., 1987. 211 pp. $10.95
CLEANINGUPTHECHESAPEAKE
Before sunrise on Chesapeake Bay, some 4,300 watermen are already offshore in their boats- raising crab pots near Annapolis, hauling nets near Solomons, dredging up mollusks off Tilghman Island. Since the 19th century-the heyday of Bay fishing-Chesapeake watermen have supplied U.S. markets with up to half the annual harvest of oysters, clams, and blue crabs.
Lately the catch is getting skimpy. This year, oystermen will bring fewer than one million bushels to market, c...
by Robert W.Crandall
"It's one of the greatest success stories in American history," said Russell E. Train, former administrator of the US.Environmental Pro-tection Agency (EPA).
Train's enthusiasm in 1976 over the cleanup of the Great Lakes may have been excessive, but it was not wholly unwarranted. In 1965, Lakes Erie, Michigan, and Huron were so polluted that hundreds of beaches were closed. Fish perished in waters choked with algae, and raw sewage washed up on the shores.
Today, E...
Trade with its Money, its credit, its Steam, its Rail- roads, threatens to upset the balance of Man, and establish a new, universal Monarchy more tyrannical than Babylon or Rome."
Ralph Waldo Emerson's cri de coeur in his Journals (1840) reflected the fear among 19th-century naturalists that the rise of industry was threatening the American wilderness.
the late 19th century, a new breed of "conservationists," notably George Perkins Marsh, author of Man and Na-ture (1864), was beginning...