The Ragged Edge of the World

January 1, 2011

A veteran journalist recalls his travels through the world's dwindling wild places.

Linden (The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations, 2006, etc.) has spent 30 years chasing environmental stories for Time, National Geographic and the New York Times on the remote frontiers of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, where traditional cultures and modernity meet. "I never imagined that my visits to the ragged edge of the world were a farewell tour," he writes. Amid tiny glimmers of hope, he chronicles the worldwide loss of ecosystems and cultures. Thousands of indigenous tribes manage to live on in the face of an onslaught by consumer society, but their cultures wither and die. In Polynesia, for instance, modernity has wiped out ways of life that tied Polynesians to the sea and one another. In many societies, indigenous shamans can no longer compete with the technological magic of the consumer society. Perhaps saddest of all, writes Linden, tribes that decide they do not enjoy living in the market economy cannot return to their former life in the wildlands because the forests, animals and rituals that sustained them have disappeared. Each chapter focuses on a specific place, including New Guinea, where modernity arrived after World War II; war- and epidemic-ridden sub-Saharan Africa; and Antarctica, where global warming is unfreezing time and harming creatures. The author notes that modern tourists begin appreciating some cultures just before they disappear—e.g., the continuing flocking of New Age seekers to Machu Picchu, which supposedly sits atop a giant crystal. One day, writes Linden, humankind may wake up to the disastrous consequences of capitalism's "skewered incentives" to reap short-term profits. In the meantime, some form of traditional culture endures in distant places where tribes hang on and the local ecology retains continuity with the past.

A well-rendered but disheartening tale of a life's work documenting the "human and animal detritus left behind in the aftermath of the advancing armies of the consumer society."

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2011

Award-winning environmental journalist Linden (The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations) has spent 30 years reporting on the impact of modern environmental stressors on wildlands and traditional communities around the globe. Here he relates how some cultures resist while others succumb to modern pressures. Traveling to the rain forests of Borneo and to the Amazon, the Antarctic, and Africa, Linden provides firsthand accounts of cargo cults in New Guinea, practices of Pygmy tribes in Africa, and conservation efforts in Cuba--some of which show positive responses to deforestation and loss of habitat for wildlife, while others reveal the downward spiral to extinction for rain forests and many animal species. He highlights cultural extinction as much as environmental devastation to habitats. VERDICT Linden provides an original look at globalization and its impact on various cultures and species throughout the world. Anyone interested in global environmental issues will find this book informative. Highly recommended for its readability and content.--Gloria Maxwell, Metropolitan Community Coll.-Penn Valley, Kansas City, MO

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2011
Lindens life as a roaming journalist began in 1971 when he went to Vietnam as a conscientious objector and realized that the bigger story involved the ragged edges of the world, the places where wildlands, indigenous cultures and modernity collide. Linden has reported on environmental and cultural destruction ever since in eight previous books and numerous articles. Now, in this reflective chronicle, he return to places years after his original sojourns and writes with assured clarity, rueful humor, and deep concern about the erasures modernity brings. Linden describes big changes in the Arctic, cargo cults in New Guinea, and Cubas unique and vulnerable wildlife habitats. In Africa, he ponders the fate of the pristine Ndoki rainforest, marvels at Pygmy culture, and talks about imperiled great apes with Jane Goodall. Lindens involving and provocative dispatches and discerning long view offer piercing insights into how very difficult it is to protect ecosystems and traditional cultures, and how terribly impoverished we will be as so many wondrous species and invaluable forms of indigenous knowledge, much far beyond science in understanding nature, vanish.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)