From Apocalypse to Way of Life

Frederick Buell teaches English and cultural studies at Queens College/CUNY. He is the author of NationalCulture and the New Global System and W.H. Auden as aSocial Poet. He has also published a collection of poetry, Full Summer.

• Preface: The Decade of Crisis Section I: Contesting Crisis 1. The Politics of Denial 2. Taking Crisis Seriously? Section II: Elaborating Crisis An Introductory Caution 3. Natures in Crisis, Part 1: An Inventory of the External World 4. Natures in Crisis, Part 2: Deepening Intimacies 5. Environmental Crisis as Social Crisis 6. Crisis History: From Prophecy to Risk, From Apocalypse to Dwelling Place Section III: Imagining Crisis 7. The Culture of hyperexuberence 8. Environmental Crisis in Popular Fiction and Film 9. Taking Crisis Seriously: Environmental Crisis and Contemporary Literature Appendix 1

'Has the over-used rhetoric of the 'end of nature' only deadened our imagination to the very real environmental apocalypse around us? Buell asks very tough questions with intellectual precision and unflinching courage.' - Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear'This is an admirably scholarly, but not at all academic, portrait of American society through the last 40 years of the "post-Carson" world, living in-and with-environmental crisis and its social, political, ecological, and cultural consequences. Thorough and intellectually subtle.' - Kirkpatrick Sale, author of The Green Revolution and Rebels Against the Future'It is entirely possible, as Frederick Buell points out, that we won't take the steps necessary to ward off environmental apocalypse. But at the very least we can fulfill our other human duty, to bear witness both to the beauty of the present earth and to its degradation. Buell carefully catalogues those witnesses, and in so doing adds some important glosses of his own to this necessary task.' - Bill McKibben, author of Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age'Intelligent, passionate, clearly written (and thus excellent for teaching) and challenging, they make powerful contributions to understanding both The Mess We're In and the ways in which we've thought about that mess From Apocalypse to Way of Life is, quite simply, a brilliant book. This is an excellent treatment of the interconnections among politics, (pseudo) science and economics, and ideology.' - Roger S. Gottlieb, Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute'An immensely thought-provoking book of impressive scope and depth, From Apocalypse to Way of Life should be read by anyone seeking to understand what it means to live--as we are undeniably living--amid perpetual crisis.' - Daniel J. Philippon, University of Minnesoty, ISLE'This is a fascinating book: a must-read for anyone anywhere who needs a good explanation of the environmental crisis we have learned to inhabit.' - Local Environment