Conserving Words

Conserving Words richly evokes the larger social context of American nature writing in the era between Roosevelt and Abbey. Daniel Philippon's skill in interweaving the literature with the friendships, letters, official reports, and public debates that informed it makes this book both illuminating and delightful.

* author of Reading the Mountains of Home *

Philippon does an extraordinarily thorough and lucid job of telling the life stories of these five writers, focusing on their involvement in the environmental movement. . . . In seeking to discern the political and social impact of environmental writing, Conserving Words makes an important contribution to one of the central issues in contemporary ecocriticism.

* University of Nevada, Reno *

Gets beyond the surface appeals of nature writing which is ordinarily lumped together by most readers.

Philippon shows in meticulous fashion how his five writer-activists played integral, complex roles in the development of these important organizations, and how often these people and their organizations interacted.

Writers who write about a need to protect the environment and readers who revere them should have high praise for Philippon's Conserving Words.

A readable, lucid examination of how five Americans shaped the environmental movement through their writing . . . Making a significant contribution to the relatively new field of environmental humanities, this book—though classed as natural history—contains so much biography and anecdote that it will appeal to readers across many disciplines.

A valuable overview of the development of Progressive-era conservation and modern-day environmentalism . . . Conserving Words is an extremely valuable book for its case studies and for its thought-provoking Introduction and Conclusion.

[An] excellent analysis for the eco-critic and academic.