From Apocalypse to Way of Life

The first Green Wave of the 1960s created a flood of apocalyptic visions in literature and film, from The Population Bomb to Soylent Green, along with a torrent of political activism that launched Earth Day and the Green Party. Today, even as we more fully apprehend the dimensions of our planet's decay, we have become perversely accustomed to the sword that hangs over us.From Apocalypse to Way of Life is the most stirring, comprehensive account of the environmental crisis since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. In vivid prose, Frederick Buell illustrates the growing complexity of our ecological catastrophe as well as the suffocating political and cultural forces that blunt our response to it.In some quarters, the prophecies of doom have produced a Chicken Little syndrome: If the sky has not yet fallen, why should we believe it will? Buell counters with the hard facts about contemporary threats to human health--deforestation freshwater depletion, ocean pollution, biodiversity loss, synthetic hormones--while tracing the expressions of environmental apocalypse in popular culture.With passion and eloquence, From Apocalypse to Way of Life shows us the crisis that is staring us in the face, and explains why we can no longer see it.