Hope's Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land

Rating:
Summary: Engaging and memorable
Review: Hope's Horizon is an engaging reading experience and if you have never read a book on environmental issues, this may be a good place to start.? It is hard to sugar coat the environmental problems we face and Ward doesn't do that although there is wit and humor,too.? Rather, the author wants to inspire by telling stories of groups and indiviuals who don't accept the normal limits and are forging ahead with projects that are bold, visionary, and instructive.?Terry Tempest Williams calls Chip Ward "one of the smartest, wittiest, and most truthful voices writing in America" and says he has identified a failure of empathy and imagination at the heart of our environmental crises. That's a good summary of his underlying point of view.?
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The book is arranged in three parts dealing with a new paradigm for conservation, the movement to remove dams, and the struggle to keep nuclear waste off of the West's deserts.? It is?really three books in one?and you can read them out of order depending on your interest and they still make sense.? The writing is lyrical and memorable - a worthy successor to his classic book, "Canaries on the Rim."

Rating:
Summary: Inspiring and well written
Review: I picked this book up, hot off the press, at a conference on wilderness at the University of Utah. I couldn't put it down. Unlike so many other books on environmental issues that are either dry or grim, this one is lively, witty, colorful, and lyrical. Above all, it is inspiring. People who care about the quality of life on earth get caught up playing defense, so it is refreshing to hear about those who have bold and proactive ideas who are going forward. I like it when an author makes me see the world differently and this book did that. Ward's first book, "Canaries on the Rim," is a gem - a classic - that never got the attention it deserves. I hope this one is widely read.

Rating:
Summary: Funny, Sad, a little Incomplete.
Review: This is a book I find very amusing - the writing style is just great, even the saddest, most trajic subjects are trreated with humor. Who can ignore a chapter entitled 'First, they killed John Wayne'. And the chapter is on the radiation problems in Southern Utah from the above ground nuclear tests.

This is a book I find very sad - 80% of the cast of the movie 'The Conqueror' (starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan) died of cancer, perhaps from filming down wind of the nuclear tests. But this testing was fifty years ago. Eventually the governments of the world got together and ended such testing.

This is a book that I find incomplete. Yes, anyone in their right mind would be opposed to having a nuclear waste storage area or a chemical weapons incinerator in their back yards. But what I don't hear is an alternative. There's a nuclear power station in New York, just 30 miles up the Hudson from New York City. Do we just leave the stuff there as an inviting target for another World Trade Center type attack. What would an airplane crashing into the storage area do? Or, do we leave the chemical munitions, now old and leaking in storage areas just off the end of the runway in Denver waiting for an airplane to land short.

I rate this book quite highly, it's well worth your time to help understand the problems. I'd also like to see a couple of chapters on solutions, not just on the problems.