LAST STAND: A Riveting Expose of Environmental...

LAST STAND: A Riveting Expose of Environmental Pillage and a Lone Journalist’s Struggle to Keep Faith by Richard Manning (Penguin: $10; 179 pp.) . A former reporter for the Montana Missoulian, Richard Manning lost his job because he blew the whistle on two major logging companies violating environmental regulations. Despite official declarations that they were harvesting trees at a sustainable rate, the companies clear-cut an area approximately the size of Delaware. Manning examines the issues involved in the controversy he generated in a thoughtful account that is refreshingly free of the self-righteous posturing the book’s subtitle suggests. He writes with an intense love for the complex reality of the wilderness, rather than the popular, idealized vision: “The mythology of our time as it is presented on post-cards, coffee-table books, tree-lined streets, and public relations campaigns is that we are a nation that loves trees. The reality is that we are a nation that cuts its trees.”