Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2018 -

This is an extraordinary book about extraordinary phenomena--the emotion, dedication, and ritual involved in "radical" environmental and animal-rights activism as a sacred duty and engagement. Pike (comparative religion, California State Univ., Chico) reveals how powerful emotional experiences with nature and animals during youth generate such spiritual ecology activism. Her study is not limited to literature, although an extensive bibliography documents it. Her book is also based on firsthand observation and even participation in such activism as well as its associated art and music. That includes communicating with jailed activists. This is a most captivating and exemplary study of the highest quality that explores the largely neglected component of spiritual ecology--the emotional underlying the intellectual and action components. Moreover, it is even more relevant because such activism will only increase with the growing frustration and grief generated among many by the continuing radical exploitation, desecration, and destruction of nature given exploding population and economic pressures, rampant capitalism and consumerism, current political regimes, and their contribution to the reality of global climate change. These activists place a value and priority on nature far beyond the usual myopic, anthropocentric, utilitarian view.Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries.