I read John Gatta’s inspirational and informative study with pleasure and excitement. He is onto something of great value here, as he looks for what he calls ‘transformative grace” in certain key texts. He identifies a significant, if not central, American tradition, the Green Jeremiad, and he tracks it lovingly, rightly seeing a testimony of faith in each of these works: faith in the readers who come to these pages with expectation, with moral attentiveness, alert to the possibilities of change. This is a deeply serious and important book.
— Jay Parini, Middlebury College; author of Borges and Me: An Encounter
A jeremiad is, in fact, hard to write: it can easily turn brittle and shrill. John Gatta has, uniquely I think, understood and appreciated this form, and this book hence offers a sweeping sense of how so many have tried to communicate the bad news about our earth's future.
— Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
John Gatta possesses a unique and important voice of lamentation, addressing a sobering subject in a lucid, compelling, and even graceful way. A distinguished scholar of American literature, Gatta models the imagination, moral integrity, and faithful assurance we need if we are to face and resolve the environmental crises that threaten our planet, and thus life itself.
— Matthew Wickman, Brigham Young University
Praised be the writer whose literary imagination stirs us to care about the natural world now being pulled to pieces before our eyes! In this engrossing book, John Gatta examines the history and power of America’s “Green Jeremiad,” the works of fiction and non-fiction which stirs us to grieve humanity’s collective assault upon the living world and to imagine – and fight for – the restoration and protection of as much as we possibly can.
— Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, co-editor of Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis