Every day, new books arrive in the offices of Utne Reader. It would be impossible to review all of them, but a shame to leave many hidden on the shelves. In “Bookmarked,” we link to excerpts from some of our favorites, hoping they’ll inspire a trip to your local library or bookstore. Enjoy!
Arctic Alaska has quickly become the most contested land in recent U.S. history. It’s home to vast natural resources and a precariously balanced–and highly threatened–ecosystem. In this excerpt from the collection Arctic Voices (Seven Stories Press, 2012), writer Nancy Lord gives an account of a gathering of Yup’ik Elders facing the troubles of thinning ice in the Bering Sea.
In the late 1970s, the residents of St. Louis, Michigan, found their community in the middle of a Superfund site–an area of land and water deeply contaminated by Velsicol (formerly Michigan) Chemical. Years later, with the cleanup largely failing, a citizen taskforce took on responsibilities of rebuilding. In Civic Empowerment in an Age of Corporate Greed (Michigan State University Press, 2012), professor Edward C. Lorenz evaluates several case studies in community development–perhaps the solution to rising, damaging corporate irresponsibility. In this excerpt from the book’s introduction, Lorenz begins the argument that communities are the agents of civic reform.