America's Rainforests.

America's Rainforest, by Karen Kane and Gerry Ellis (photographer). NorthWord Press, P.O. Box 1360, Minocqua, WI 54548 (1991). Large format, 142 color photos, 160 pp. Hardcover, $45.

To encourage "readers" to look at pictures and skip the text validates the growing illiteracy of the electronic age, but that would be the kindest thing for this book. Too bad, because when it comes to rainforests, Americans need to redirect at least some energy into understanding the endangered remnants of the North American rainforest. We have the great spotted owl controversy, of course, but I said understanding-more light and less heat.

In this book-better than in most that are currently available-Gerry Ellis's photos convey the visual feel of the forest, its wildlife, and its seasons. The problem comes when Ellis' wife, Karen Kane, produces a prose that is often more feeling than fact. More self-indulgence than revelation. Hers is a poorly informed feeling, the kind that will only fuel even more poorly informed debate. Like the lovers of certain deserts, alpine meadows, arctic wildlife refuges, and coral reefs, Ms. Kane claims she loves, "The rarest and most spectacular wilderness on earth. " Popular environmental prose more and more resembles advertisements for soft drinks and automobiles.

Perhaps to give her subject wider appeal, Kane has included large areas that are hardly rainforest. This leads her to say of the Douglas-fir in the Cascade Range, "It is soaked with 50 to 60 inches of rain each year." That's about the same as Jackson, Mississippi. And while maintaining that 85 percent of the rainforests have disappeared, she can also say it rivals any forest on earth in size and splendor." Then she goes on to say it has been reduced to fragmented islands." To say that "once the ancient forest is cut it will never return," implies that nature only does things one time. Kane herself admits that the Douglas-firs are not climax growth at all.

It is one thing to say that each species in an ecosystem plays a role (also obvious), but very dubious to conclude that "their interrelatedness is paramount to their survival." This is a non sequitur. If nothing could survive outside its native habitat, there would be no pigeons in Kansas, no honey bees in America, no horses in Wyoming, and no human beings outside of Africa.

Like emotional proponents of rainforests everywhere, Kane also trots out the argument that these are important carbon sinks that slow down the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. Yet, truth be told (though I oppose applying it), we might lock up more carbon dioxide by cutting the slow-growth mature trees and encouraging new forests. Meanwhile, ensconcing the old-growth's fine lumber in durable houses and furniture, we would keep that carbon locked up too. I float this idea only to show that Ms. Kane is doing more feeling than thinking.

Besides being poorly informed, the prose is often childish. Do we need to be told that "coastal rainforests accommodate trees which flourish in damp conditions?" Nor does she do nature any favors by her constant personification. Moist breezes perpetually caress the coastline." The forest "exudes a sense of strength and permanence." When the winds blow in, "they embrace a rainforest canopy full of character, reflecting the years spent rooted to the earth." The easiest and cheapest trick of any sentimental writer is to endow a subject with human traits. In the end, it shows the writer's inability to respect nature on its own terms. If nature had the emotions she assigns it, nature would be insulted.

The publisher rightly gives a full page of biography to the photographer and only 75 words to the writer. Perhaps it is proof that television has doomed the written word, when beautiful spectacle makes beastly logic and prose irrelevant.

Amazonia, by Loren McIntyre. Sierra Club Books, 730 Polk St., San Francisco, CA 94109 (1991). Color photos, 184 pp. Hardcover, $40.

Loren McIntyre, photographer and author of this pictorial essay, displays his talents through impressive photographs of sprawling mountain ranges, an airplane dwarfed by a monstrous waterfall, young Indian women playing amid a blur of butterflies, or a somber cloud of smoke rising from a burning forest.

The text is understandably image-oriented, and McIntyre, though not at all naive about the specters of deforestation, industrialization, and the dwindling Indian population, tends to gloss over these realities. Still, perhaps his approach is appropriate in a piece of work that seeks simply to chronicle and appreciate beauty rather than analyze and suggest solutions. With exceptional photography and entertaining and informative writing, Amazonia is a book well worth experiencing. - SUSAN L. BLOOR