America's Environmental Report Card, 2nd Edition: Assessing Progress & Sustainability | MIT Press | Eco-Friendly Education & Policy Reference

Kristine Hale, in her review of another book by Mr. Blatt, "America's Food," says it reads like a long book report chock-full of numbers without as much a focus on narrative as a book by, say, Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, or Eric Schlosser. Similarly, Mr. Blatt's "America's Environmental Report Card" is very much an info dump book, appropriate for someone wanting an all-encompassing introduction/starting point to the state of environment and environmental policy in America. As pointed out by other reviewers, too, despite being a run-down, it is far from being a dry text, rather a highly accessible breeze through of a book without skimping on the scholarly. That said, there are moments in the book where the author does express an unusual degree of passion, so that some pages of the book do not feel as dispassionate. I do not mean to suggest that Mr. Blatt is weak at those points, but he certainly reads as more argumentative rather than simply giving an issue report. For example, in the chapter on "Soils, Crops, and Food," he goes into a lengthy discussion about the environmental costs of meat and dairy, crafting a detailed argument for abolishing the production of both, which struck me as an unusual position certainly worthy of the attention given it. Relatedly, it is one of the two times Mr. Blatt actually uses the term immoral, the other being in his discussion of how states handle trash disposal (i.e., exporting the issue instead of handling it responsibly and sustainably).In short, expect an info dump, but not a so-uncompromisingly-dull-and-dispassionate-even-a-scholar-will-yawn slog through.