Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers ed. by Scott H. Slovic, Terrell F. Dixon (review)

388 Western American Literature Yet this is about much more than family history and one family’s connec­ tion to a particular piece of land; it is also Jordan’s attempt to understand herself, understand what shaped her. The book details Jordan’s movement through loss and the grieving process. Loss figures prominently in the book; besides the sudden and haunting death of her mother,Jordan also depicts the loss of land and rural life. Through this loss she comes to realize how easilywe are taught to castaside our sense ofplace. Besides lossand grief, however, there are moments ofjoy and new starts, such asJordan’s exuberant (maybe a little sentimental) description of calving. And the book ends on a positive note: Jordan’smarriage in the Iron Mountain Community House, surrounded byher community family. Just like Jordan’s first book, this graceful and beautiful memoir about families and place will staywith me. BETSYWARD Utah State University Being in the World: An Environmental Readerfor Writers. Edited by Scott H. Slovic and Terrell F. Dixon. (NewYork: Macmillan, 1993. 726 pages, $19.50.) This book is designed to be a reader for both introductory and upper level creative non-fiction writing classes or as a text for an environmental studies course. Slovic and Dixon have taken great care to select pieces, the majority from this century, written by experts on the environment who are also master stylists. The text is divided into four broad sections (Nature: “Out There,” Human Visitors, Belonging to the World, and Abstractions: Thinking about the Environment) which in turn are divided into three or four chapters each. Each chapter contains usually six essays written by writers known for their focus on nature, like EdwardAbbey, Peter Matthiessen, and BarryLopez, and otherwellknown writers, not necessarily known for nature writing, who have also written about nature in theirwork—Alice Walker, EudoraWelty, Maxine Kumin, Lewis Thomas,Jack Kerouac, andJoan Didion. Each chapter has an introduction that sets the tone and points readers to some ofthe characteristics theycan expect to find in specificworks. Each selectionwithin the chapter has a lengthy head note that talks about the author’swork. Questions for discussion follow the text that address both content and stylistic issues. Suggested topics for writing and further thought follow the questions. The head notes do an excellentjob of placing the text within the topic of the chapter and within the cultural milieu of the author’s life and work. The questions at the end are thoughtful, and the stylistic questions are particularly insightful. The suggestions for writing are not greatly different from those found in any reader, but they are specific to each selection, which is helpful. Further, for varied use the book contains rhetorical and geographical tables of contents in addition to a topical one. Reviews 389 This is an excellent book. It provides wonderful models of writing for students at any level to read and to examine and also gives readers a broad overview of environmental writing that, though generally positive, is varied in mood and style. I feel certain that whether students read the entire text or read selectively, when they are finished, they will have a good grounding in current thinking and writing about the environment. EDGAR H. THOMPSON Emory & Henry College BRIEFNOTICES Wildmen, Wobblies and WhistlePunks: StewartHolbrook’sLowbrowNorthwest. Edited and Introduced byBrian Booth. (Corvallis: Oregon State UniversityPress, 1992. 320 pages, $24.95.) As a logger, journalist, historian, and well-known storyteller, Stewart Holbrook—a high school dropout—believed in “non-stuffed shirt history.”In this book, editor Brian Booth has collected two dozen ofHolbrook’sbest pieces about the “lowbrow”Northwest, Holbrook’s adopted home. Included are sto­ ries about scandals, crimes, forest fires, Wobblies and other radicals, dogooders , underdogs, scoundrels, fanatics, schemers, and dreamers. The Best Western Stories ofEd Gorman. Edited by Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg. (Athens: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1992. 131 pages, $26.95.) Editor Bill Pronzini calls Ed Gorman a renaissance writer because of his wide-ranging work: suspense novels, detective fiction, fantasy/science fiction, erotica, horror, even how-to articles. This book, though, focuses on Gorman’s Westerns, which possess many of the same noir qualities as his other work. Gorman believes in furthering...