Subtitled An Encyclopaedia of Works, Authors and Themes, this book covers about 230 authors, 220 published works, and around 35 themes. The authors include Robert Hooke (17th century scientist), John Clare (poet), Jane Goodall (primatologist), Plato (philosopher), Pliny the Elder (early vulcanologist and naturalist) and Ursula LeGuin (novelist). Books include Blueprint for a Green Economy, Studies on Glaciers, Guide to Gaia, and The Monkey Wrench Gang. All in all, this book is an interesting mixture of policy, science, campaigning, green philosophy and fiction. The themes run from agriculture to wildlife conservation and include environmental activism, human ecology, and the simple living movement. In all three strands some of the entries are unexpected, but on reading the entry its relevance is made clear. Authors’ interests and works are described. There are short evaluative reviews of the works. The theme entries outline the problems and introduce the leading authors on the subject and the more important works.
It is a very “dippable book”: this review is based entirely on dipping into it during meals. Within a week I had sampled enough to review the book without having to make time to read sections based on rough stratified sampling methods, as I usually do with strictly reference books our editor sends me. Initially, as I unpacked this book I feared it might be too green or too sentimental for me, but my first reading showed these fears were groundless. The entries are of good quality, clear and fair.
Sections are cross‐referred, there is a full contents list and list of entries by strand, and there is an index that picks up authors’ works and topics mentioned in the sections. It is an incredibly easy book to use and is an ideal public and school library book. I would also include it in the lending collection so that people can take it home and dip about until something really catches their interest and they want to borrow one (or more) of the works mentioned. In addition to the library uses mentioned, this book will be of use to those writing popular or introductory works on the environment as a source of references.
