Greening the media /

Greening the Media presents the dismal truth about just how damaging media is to both the environment and to the people at the bottom of the heap who keep it running. This applies to all consumer media--from print to electronics. Maxwell (Queen's College, CUNY) and Miller (Univ. of California, Riverside) do this very concisely, without providing any exit by offering one type of media as better than another. The book devotes separate chapters to various population groups and media types. It starts by looking at consumers, then specifically at paper media, movies and electronic media, workers, and bureaucrats. Then it changes direction to explore the possibilities of environmental citizenship. As a brief, well-referenced work that pulls together many threads into one coherent picture, it is an excellent addition to any collection, but is best taken with a grain of salt. The authors are honest about their politics to the point of disrupting their message. They are prone to needless sniping, and their final chapter, in providing a fictional narrative toward a solution, does more to diminish those who are already making up pieces of their proposed grand path of enlightenment than to provide any clear, realizable solution. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals. P. L. Kantor formerly, Southern Vermont College