The Ragged Edge of the World

January 3, 2011
Mingling memoir with reportage, Linden (The Winds of Change), a veteran environmental correspondent to National Geographic and the New York Times, offers profound if desultory observations on civilization's encroachment on ecosystems and their indigenous populations from the Arctic to Borneo. Linden's preoccupations are philosophical as well as pragmatic: how can New Guineans maintain their traditional culture while accepting valuable aspects of modernization? what does chimpanzees' use of sticks as weapons tell us about humanity and our intrinsic nature? Some of the essays are affectionate albeit meandering reminiscences, such as a fond recollection of a trip to Cuba's pristine Alejandro de Humboldt National Park, one of the "very few ‘timeless' places left on the planet." Linden writes that in these vignettes "lie truths beyond statistics and theory," but their rambling structure frequently makes their significance hard to fathom. Linden does pull the various strands together in a final commentary on the overwhelming stress on species and ecosystems and an introduction to his own proposal for an affordable, self-policing, and in his opinion, achievable continental-scale conservation plan.