Overview

When Dave Foreman woke up staring down the gun barrels of FBI agents, he had traveled a long and winding road from Washington, D.C. lobbyist to leader of the country's most loved and hated radical environmental group. Susan Zakin tells the story of the radical environmental group Earth First! against the backdrop of the larger history of U.S. conservation, digging deep into a neglected corner of American history. Zakin's fast-paced narrative is thoughtful and occasionally lyrical, as she gives the conservation movement its rightful place in American history. In this 25th Anniversary edition, updated and revised to reflect the challenges posed by the Trump administration, Zakin shows us that we've been here before, when previous presidents appointed corrupt officials to head the agencies tasked with protecting Americans' land, water, and health. What's different now is the widespread nature of corruption, which reaches to the highest levels of government. Widely adopted as a university text, Zakin's book has been called a primer on how to face our predicament with wit and courage.

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9780692149713

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Brilliant and irreverent, tough and funny...the most thorough and thoughtful survey of the American environmental movement. -- THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR Zakin responds to this rowdy group in kind with her raucous, snappy, freewheeling narrative -- a perfect fit with her subject...informative and serious as it is a delight to read, [Coyotes and Town Dogs] contains enough speech excerpts, thoughts, facts, and inspirations to call to action the next generation of environmental rowdies. -- BOOKLIST Catches the rowdy, passionate utopianism of the first non-elite generation of environmentalists. They changed the game, and woke a lot of people up. -- GARY SNYDER, TURTLE ISLAND, THE PRACTICE OF THE WILD Reading Susan Zakin's Coyotes and Town Dogs, a sprawling, rollicking and, ultimately, melancholy history of Earth First!, is like spending a week around a campfire with its hard-core buckaroos, drinking heroic quantities of beer, singing scatological songs and plotting the next foray into eco-sabotage. -- PHILIP SHABECOFF, LOS ANGELES TIMES In crisp, clear and often sharply funny prose, Zakin alternates the Earth First! story with a knowledgeable overview of American environmentalism and judicious tidbits of gossip. It's a fascinating, sometimes hilarious, sometimes appalling tale. Whatever you think about Earth First!, this book may well change your mind. -- COLETTE BANCROFT, ARIZONA DAILY STAR A primer on how to face our Earth's predicament with wit and courage. -- BILL MCKIBBEN, FOUNDER 350.ORG

Author Information

Susan Zakin grew up in New York City and attended Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Her work has appeared in magazines, newspapers, and literary journals, including Vogue, Salon, GQ, The New York Times, and Orion. She is the founder of the Cowgirls & Pirates, a safari company dedicated to working with communities to preserve nature and culture.

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