The Abstract Wild
Much contemporary environmental literature names as enemies of the wild  corporate agriculture, logging, mining, and ranching. For mountain guide/philosopher  Jack Turner, these will not do. He dislikes even more the abstractions that divorce us  from the natural world, which cause us to create pseudo-wild locales like Yellowstone  National Park and Grand Canyon, places that resemble nothing so much as Disneyland.  Wilderness advocates who do not make themselves at home in the wild, he believes,  cannot hope to understand the object of their desires, for only from that  "complete immersion in place over time" can there arise the  "wisdom that cannot emerge from tourism in a relic wilderness." This  sometimes blistering, provocative book is an eco-radical manifesto of a kind, and every  reader concerned with wilderness issues should pay attention to it.