Bill McKibben is one of the most effective and widely-respected writers on environmental issues today. Starting with The End of Nature in 1989, he’s written and published a long line of powerful works that make complex environmental issues accessible to a general audience.

Douglas Bevington’s The Rebirth of Environmentalism comes at a very important moment. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest in U.S. history. Then another in Michigan. Heat waves and record temperatures across the South and along the East Coast. Massive fires in Russia, that ripped into wheat supplies and sent prices soaring. Floods in Pakistan that have displaced at least 20 million people, one-fifth of that country’s population.