Books in Brief: The User’s Guide to the Protection of the Environment

The User’s Guide to the Protection of the Environment, by Paul Swatek (Ballantine, 312 pp., $1.25).

Paul Swatek is the least offensive ecologist I’ve yet met— or read, for which I am grateful. He is in dead earnest about protecting America from pollution, waste, extravagance, individual initiative and, to his great credit, from the unintentional stupidity leading so many of us to make the wrong choices in myriad purchases in just about every facet of our lives: shelter, gardening, energy use, water use, waste disposal, food, cosmetics, toiletries, clothing, transportation, even recreation. The User’s Guide is subtitled “The Indispensable Guide to Making Every Purchase Count,” and if the superlative is questionable, the seriousness of the author’s purpose is not. This is no handbook for Plucking Your Own Uncontaminated Boysenberries, designed for the brown-rice brigade. And though it is shot through with the expectable dislike for The System—what you or I might refer to as “development,” Mr. Swatek calls “fall[ing] prey to urban sprawl”; Ralph Nader’s hysterical diatribes are, to Mr. Swatek, “Ralph Nader’s careful exposes,” and the like— The User’s Guide is indeed quite helpful, carefully documented, as radical as Consumer’s Report, and, most importantly (and pleasantly), a true labor of love. I doubt that two out of a thousand sesame-seed and biodegradable peanut butter kiddies will get through fifteen pages; it’s that exciting. But it’s the very best such book on the market and deserves your attention.

DB

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D. J. C. Brudnoy

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The User’s Guide to the Protection of the Environment, by Paul Swatek (Ballantine, 312 pp., $1.25).

Paul Swatek is the least offensive ecologist I’ve yet met— or read, for which I am grateful. He is in dead earnest about protecting America from pollution, waste, extravagance, individual initiative and, to his great credit, from the unintentional stupidity leading so many of us to make the wrong choices in myriad purchases in just about every facet of our lives: shelter, gardening, energy use, water use, waste disposal, food, cosmetics, toiletries, clothing, transportation, even recreation. The User’s Guide is subtitled “The Indispensable Guide to Making Every Purchase Count,” and if the superlative is questionable, the seriousness of the author’s purpose is not. This is no handbook for Plucking Your Own Uncontaminated Boysenberries, designed for the brown-rice brigade. And though it is shot through with the expectable dislike for The System—what you or I might refer to as “development,” Mr. Swatek calls “fall[ing] prey to urban sprawl”; Ralph Nader’s hysterical diatribes are, to Mr. Swatek, “Ralph Nader’s careful exposes,” and the like— The User’s Guide is indeed quite helpful, carefully documented, as radical as Consumer’s Report, and, most importantly (and pleasantly), a true labor of love. I doubt that two out of a thousand sesame-seed and biodegradable peanut butter kiddies will get through fifteen pages; it’s that exciting. But it’s the very best such book on the market and deserves your attention.