Encyclopedia of the U.S. Government and the Environment

Gr 10 Up—After an introduction that covers the history of American thinking on the environment and mentions figures from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Barack Obama, this thorough set boasts essays on myriad aspects of the government's early, current, and future relationships to natural resources. Hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries, a few of them complemented by black-and-white photos, then address people, national and international legislation and treaties, places, events, landmark cases, government agencies, popular works, and more. Students will appreciate the primary documents, such as an excerpt from the Endangered Species Act of 1973, that are sprinkled throughout, as well as the often-extensive online and print references after each entry. Though the chronology doesn't replace Chris J. Magoc's Chronology of Americans and the Environment (ABC-CLIO, 2011), this is a minor issue in an otherwise valuable work.