The Use and Misuse of Land

The Use and Misuse of Land

The Quiet Crisis
by Steward I. Udall
Holt, Rinehart and Winston

God’s Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of America’s Landscape
by Peter Blake
Holt, Rinehart and Winston

Stewart Udall’s book is a brief, sobering history of land use in this country. Americans have rarely treated the land with care and intelligence, much less that Indian “reverence” Udall reminds us of. National expansionism has meant reckless overgrazing and the crudest destruction of forests and wildlife. Land management and preservation came slowly and against the opposition of the many Congressmen Teddy Roosevelt outmaneuvered in his years as White House conservationist. Even the establishment of the Forest Service and national park system could amount only to a holding action for those many areas which had been ransacked for what they were ...