cover image Chronicling the West: Thirty Years of Environmental Writing

Chronicling the West: Thirty Years of Environmental Writing

Michael Frome. Mountaineers Books, $16.95 (239pp) ISBN 978-0-89886-475-5

If the late Edward Abbey often assembled a crew of cantankerous, monkey-wrenching environmentalists in his novels, Frome's environmental journalism reflects a persona as gentlemanly and intelligent as a Washington diplomat's, which only makes sense. During his mid-60s tenure as conservation columnist for Field & Stream magazine, Frome wrote firsthand of Washington's environmental shell games. Like Abbey and Wallace Stegner and other both established and younger writers, Frome refused to quit pointing fingers and naming names until he felt that important environmental concerns were no longer being sloughed off as second-rate issues. Frome and his editor were fired during a highly publicized editorial shake-up at the magazine. From Field & Stream, Frome moved on to Defenders of Wildlife, where he remained until 1982. He finally left the capital for the quieter environs of Idaho and finally Western Washington University, where he taught until his 1995 retirement. Far from a sentimental look back at better times, this collection offers environmental criticism at its best. It's unfortunate that so much of Frome's work is as germane today as when it first appeared. Such pieces as 1979's ""Who's Managing the Managers While They Manage the Wolves?"" predate Rick Bass's chronicling of The Ninemile Wolves (1993), but Frome's convictions and curiosities transcend such scrawny ideas as politics and time. (June)