Fen, Bog and Swamp
A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
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4.7 • 7 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
*Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and Literary Hub!* A Finalist for the 2022 NBCC Awards in Nonfiction, the 2023 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award, and the NEIBA 2023 New England Book Award*
From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx, this riveting deep dive into the history of our wetlands and what their systematic destruction means for the planet “is both an enchanting work of nature writing and a rousing call to action” (Esquire).
“I learned something new—and found something amazing—on every page.” —Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land
A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth’s survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit.
In a vivid and revelatory journey through history, Proulx describes the fens of 16th-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire, and America’s Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. She introduces the early explorers who launched the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and writes of the diseases spawned in the wetlands—the Ague, malaria, Marsh Fever.
A sobering look at the degradation of wetlands over centuries and the serious ecological consequences, this is “an unforgettable and unflinching tour of past and present, fixed on a subject that could not be more important” (Bill McKibben).
“A stark but beautifully written Silent Spring–style warning from one of our greatest novelists.” —The Christian Science Monitor
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pulitzer winner Proulx (Barkskins) sounds the alarm on the place of Earth's wetlands in the climate crisis in this stunning account. In an attempt to "understand some of what has disappeared," Proulx lays out how "the history of wetlands is the history of their destruction." They've largely been drained for agricultural and housing purposes, she writes, and continuing that trend risks calamity, as wetlands' peat layers contain huge quantities of methane and carbon dioxide that will be released if they're destroyed. Her dire warnings are leavened with glimpses of potential hope, but the bigger picture is bleak: "The world needs the great swamps we have drained away and the few that still exist but the human impetus to develop and drain continues," she writes. Proulx's prose is, as ever, stunning—in bogs, "black pools of still water in the undulating sphagnum moss can seem to be sinkholes into the underworld," and the Earth's peatlands "resemble a book of wallpaper samples, each with its own design and character—some little more than water and reeds, others luxuriously diverse landscapes of colors we urban moderns never knew existed." This resonant ode to a planet in peril is tough to forget.
