| Summary: | Environment : why read the classics? presents six important essays by some of the world's leading environmental thinkers on six of the most emblematic books ever written on the environment. The books--Walden; A sand county almanac; Small is beautiful; Silent spring; The limits to growth; and Our common future--taken together have been hugely important in the development of global environmental awareness, activism and policy. The essayists--Viriato Soromenho-Marques, J. Baird Callicott, Jose Lima Santos, Tim O'Riordan, Satish Kumar and Marina Silva--invite readers to reflect on these ground-breaking works and examine their historical importance, as well as what they should mean to us today and what relevance they will have to future generations. The six essays in this book are the result of a series of conferences organised in Lisbon by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation with the support of the American Embassy in Portugal. Its raison d'etre was to revisit the ideas that have shaped the environmental movement, seeking inspiration to deal with what looks like a very challenging future. The significance of such timeless concepts is now more apparent than ever, and these evergreen books are full of ideas that retain their spark even in our difficult times. This is what makes them classics.
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