A Land on Fire: the Environmental Consequences of the Southeast Asian Boom.

James David Fahn, Westview Press, 2003, $27.50 list

What the rest of the world has learned from America is the desire for personal wealth and material comforts. What the rest of the world has apparently not learned from watching America is that these pursuits, without careful planning, generally lead to permanent environmental damage.

Nowhere is this failure to learn from others' mistakes currently more evident than in Southeast Asia. Developing nations there have experienced alterations in both economic and social structure at an incredible speed; this "growth," combined with a sorry lack of foresight by both corporations and citizens, has resulted in an intensely accelerated environmental decline. In A Land On Fire, journalist James Fahn chronicles the devastating effects corporate and personal greed have had in this part of the world. Focusing primarily on Thailand, where he spent nearly 10 years as a correspondent at The Nation, an English daily newspaper in Bangkok, Fahn covers a wide range of environmental problems in such areas as transportation, oil exploration, and agriculture.

While Fahn writes with a journalist's attention to detail and sources, he extends beyond unbiased detachment. With an evident love and appreciation for not only the country but also the culture and people, Fahn brings compelling insight into the difficulties of meshing Western values with Eastern culture, and will make you question the very root of human interaction with nature.