Orion Magazine - March-April 2008

the British Empire’s use of Iraq as a testing ground for paci>cation by poison gas and aerial bombardment ( tactics heartily endorsed by Winston Churchill) are also excellent, if derivative. Elsewhere, ideology gets the better of Davis as he peddles class-war clichés and tags the likes of Mel Gibson and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Nazis. He’s prone to mistakes when dis-

cussing >gures he dislikes: California Republican Tom McClintock becomes “Paul,” Ed Meese is called Nixon’s attorney general (he was Reagan’s). Such ?aws aside, however, Davis’s polemics are rousing and heartfelt, and when his facts are in

order readers of all persuasions ought to >nd them compelling.

—Daniel McCarthy

Announcing the
Second Annual
Orion Book Award

The Orion Book Award is conferred annually to an outstanding literary book that is ecological in context and has as its foundation the human relationship with the natural world.

Go to www.orionmagazine.org to see the list of nominees and to vote for the Orion Readers’ Choice Award, which is new this year. Only books published in 2007 are eligible for the 2008 award.

Ever wonder what it looks like under a cranberry bog? Or from a cattle trough, looking up the nose of a bull? Photographer Alex Kirkbride traveled the country photographing in, around, and underneath the water for his book American Waters (David & Charles Publishers, 2007). The most surprising image? From a gutter in New York City as a yellow cab splashes by: “. . . so I put on my wetsuit and walked out onto the street dressed for water work. . . . Even in this city people were very confused seeing a diver walking through the village.” Indeed.

Last year, the Orion Book Award was given to Wild: An Elemental Journey, by Jay Griffiths (Jeremy P. Tarcher), with honorable mentions to: The Lives of Rocks: Stories, by Rick Bass (Houghton Mifflin); Inferno, by Charles Bowden, photographs by Michael P. Berman (University of Texas Press); Returning to Earth, by Jim Harrison (Grove Press); and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan (The Penguin Press).