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The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest | 
 enlarge | Author: Andrew Revkin
Publisher: Island Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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You Save: $2.50 (10%)
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Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 576402
Media: Paperback
Pages: 344
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 1559630892
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.7516092
EAN: 9781559630894
ASIN: 1559630892
Publication Date: September 30, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
"In the rain forests of the western Amazon," writes author Andrew Revkin, "the threat of violent death hangs in the air like mist after a tropical rain. It is simply a part of the ecosystem, just like the scorpions and snakes cached in the leafy canopy that floats over the forest floor like a seamless green circus tent." Violent death came to Chico Mendes in the Amazon rain forest on December 22, 1988. A labor and environmental activist, Mendes was gunned down by powerful ranchers for organizing resistance to the wholesale burning of the forest. He was a target because he had convinced the government to take back land ranchers had stolen at gunpoint or through graft and then to transform it into "extractive reserves," set aside for the sustainable production of rubber, nuts, and other goods harvested from the living forest. This was not just a local land battle on a remote frontier. Mendes had invented a kind of reverse globalization, creating alliances between his grassroots campaign and the global environmental movement. Some 500 similar killings had gone unprosecuted, but this case would be different. Under international pressure, for the first time Brazilian officials were forced to seek, capture, and try not only an Amazon gunman but the person who ordered the killing. In this reissue of the environmental classic The Burning Season, with a new introduction by the author, Andrew Revkin artfully interweaves the moving story of Mendes's struggle with the broader natural and human history of the world's largest tropical rain forest. "It became clear," writes Revkin, acclaimed science reporter for The New York Times, "that the murder was a microcosm of the larger crime: the unbridled destruction of the last great reservoir of biological diversity on Earth." In his life and untimely death, Mendes forever altered the course of development in the Amazon, and he has since become a model for environmental campaigners everywhere.
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| Customer Reviews:
Inspirational account of the struggle to save the Amazon October 24, 2007
Brian Allen (Manistee, MI USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is a tremendous education about Chico Mendes,and all the political and personal efforts to protect the Brazilian Amazon. If you are interested in this subject, upon reading this book its almost like finishing an excellent college course on it.
Chico Mendes was born into a poor, rural Amazonia family of rubber trappers and from these very humble beginnings educated himself and worked his way to becomming a worldwide focus of attention on the plight of the Amazon rainforest and it's guardians. Like Ghandi, he was a charismatic selfless leader of the poor that faced the continual violent opposition, here from ranchers and the corrupt local militia, and he also responded with successful non-violent actions.
This well researcherd book provides and important perspective from the Brazilians. It is their country and the whole world has been making demands on their Amazon forest because of it's global importance both environmentally and economically. Imagine the political stuggle in the United States if all of Europe and Asia were trying to get us either to save all the forests of the Pacific Northwest (or the grasslands of the plains, or the forests of the east)or some of them were paying us money, and foreign aid to build roads to increase logging or improving the agricultural output of the area. The development and struggle to manage the land use of the Amazon is very complex and the author, Andrew Revkin has illustrated it well.
I have always wanted to protect the Amazon, its forests, birds and animals but I now also see the importance to protect it's people both indigenous and the extractive specialists that Chico Mendes had represented. This book has shown how difficult that is with the pressure of the needs of all the other citizens of Brazil.
An excellent book, you will be glad you have read it.
Entire coverage and understanding the amazon and brazil. June 15, 2008
T. A. Coskuner (New Jersey, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It is a shocking reality that gives you entire understanding about amazon and its' people and environment. You will get lost in this beautifully written very sad real story. Thanks to andrew revkin. This book seriously today, needs stronger marketing to reach out to more people especially to the big-heads who runs the global economy and money. One thing that is very important for our world: This book tells a story that still continues today and will unfortunately continue in the future, for this reason mr. revkin needs to update the book and continue writing about what has been happenning there now! Because even after the loss of Chico Mendes, things are still hot there, his soul never gave up I believe. And now Ms. Marina Silva quit her position recently and we want to know how things are going to shape for the future of brazil. If ever this reaches to mr. revkin. Must-read book.
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