BOOKS RECEIVED.

GREEN LAND, BROWN LAND, BLACK LAND: AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF AFRICA, 1800 - 1990

James C. McCann. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999. [phone]. 201 pp. $24.95 Paperbound.

James C. McCann provides a synthesis of evidence and a narrative of Africa's environmental history over the past two centuries. In a book accessible to undergraduates and nonspecialists, Professor McCann argues that far from being pristine and primordial spaces, Africa's landscapes were created by human activity. This argument contrasts with the idealized notions of an African Eden commonly held in the West and in Africa itself. It also confronts more recent alarm about degradation of Africa's natural and human resources by examining the historical evidence of environmental change. Key topics within the book are the effects of population growth and disease, agricultural change, the state of natural resources, and the changing role of the state in how Africans have managed and changed their own landscapes.

THE MORNING AFTER EARTH DAY: PRACTICAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS

Mary Graham. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999. [phone]. 153 pp. $36.95 Hardbound, $14.95 Paperbound.

The Morning After Earth Day explores how policymakers, business executives, and citizen groups are fighting novel political battles and sometimes making peace with surprising compromises. As Mary Graham shows, practical approaches are resolving today's environmental conflicts and providing clues for future policy. But core dilemmas remain. They include how to reconcile environmental protection with respect for private property, how to balance federal and state authority, and how much to rely on behavioral versus technological change. Only by reclaiming the debate about these dilemmas from extremists and confronting them head-on, Graham argues, will the nation build a solid foundation for the next generation of environmental policy.