(1) Charles Park, a mineral engineer, looking for copper in Glacier Peak Wilderness in the Cascades. Park believes that, "Minerals are where you find them. The quantities are finite." So you go & get them wherever they are located. McPhee goes with them as they hike through the mountains.
(2) Charles Fraser, developer of Hilton Head Island's Sea Pines Plantation, who has obtained 3000 acres on undeveloped Cumberland Island. Fraser has bent over backwards in previous developments to preserve as much of the original landscape as he could, but he considers all environmentalists to be "druids" who will sacrifice people to save trees.
& (3) Floyd Dominy, United States Commissioner of Reclamation and devoted dam builder. McPhee brings them together to walk the Glen Canyon Dam. As McPhee says, dams cause a visceral reaction among environmentalists because, "Humiliating nature, a dam is evil..." .
By bringing these men of starkly different viewpoint together & letting them speak for themselves, McPhee presents us with a dialogue that is pretty balanced. It is a significant contribution to our understanding of how the two sides in the preservation vs. development debate came to be so absolutist. As Brower says at one point: "Objectivity is the greatest threat to the United States today." But one finishes the book wondering if making totally subjective judgments and arguments has really helped the environment or cause of environmentalism.
GRADE: B+
A particular treat is for readers of Reisner's Cadillac Desert, who learned about an entertainingly bold dam-builder, Floyd Dominy. Here, McPhee places him and David Brower at the scene of Brower's greatest disappointment - a dam that he "allowed" to be built. The results, and the tone of the conversation between them, may be suprising.
For readers who want an introduction to McPhee without the focus of this book, Table of Contents (the title of another book) is a good place to start.