ABSTRACT
This chapter considers popular non-fiction books that focus on environmental themes and issues. These works emerge from the tradition of American nature writing, which traces its origins to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, and includes writers such as Edward Abbey, Aldo Leopold, and John Muir (Johnson-Sheehan & Morgan, 2008; Killingsworth, 2005). My analysis, however, focuses on books that are specifically and explicitly polemic, works that join together aspects of popular science writing, nature writing, and deliberative political appeals. The works considered here constitute a genre, one that was largely initiated by Silent Spring in 1962 (Killingsworth & Palmer, 1996; Waddell, 2000a; 2000b).
