The Ragged Edge of the World : Encounters at the Frontier Where Modernity, Wildlands and Indigenous Peoples Mee T

A pioneering work of environmental journalism that vividly depicts the people, animals and landscapes on the front lines of change's inexorable march. A species nearing extinction, a tribe losing centuries of knowledge, a tract of forest facing the first incursion of humans-how can we even begin to assess the cost of losing so much of our natural and cultural legacy? For forty years, environmental journalist and author Eugene Linden has traveled to the very sites where tradition, wildlands and the various forces of modernity collide. In The Ragged Edge of the World , he takes us from pygmy forests to the Antarctic to the world's most pristine rainforest in the Congo to tell the story of the harm taking place-and the successful preservation efforts-in the world's last wild places. The Ragged Edge of the World is a critical favorite, and was an editors' pick on Oprah.com. Aspecies nearing extinction, a tribe losing the last traces of an accumulation of centuries of knowledge, a tract of forest virtually untouched since prehistoric times facing the first incursions of humans--how can we begin to assess the cost of the increasing disappearance of so much of our natural and cultural legacy? While these losses occasionally garner headlines, the pressures on earth's remaining wildlands and tribal peoples are unremitting and mounting