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Four parts constitute this strangely inviting, awkwardly assembled book about seeking ecological balance in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens in the face of capitalism’s worst suburban expressions and manifestations, epitomized by Wal-Mart. In addressing how to sustain a sense of place and community, the parts’ essays investigate farmers as environmental stewards; farm markets as suburban versions of city markets; regional symbolic culture in local urban centers; and a search for environmental meaning through seasonal celebrations. The work is highly derivative. The young author’s (and her associate-author sister’s) broad reading across a range of disciplines and genres has led to almost indiscriminate borrowing of theory, conceptual frames, and pithy quotations from ecologists, geographers, political ecologists, environmental philosophers, and numerous popular environmental essayists. Many academic readers will dismiss this book despite geographer Yi-Fu Tuan’s introduction, and many general readers will miss the significance of an introduction by the scholar who inspired the book in the first place. In the end, the book offers no prescription, but, as Tuan notes, a good bit of hope that youth and community will effect its own social movement for ecological balance. Summing Up: Recommended. General collections.

J. S. Wood, University of Southern Maine
Choice, May 2006