Books that question the conventional wisdom on the environment

A year and half ago the novelist Michael Crichton came up with a list of books that question the conventional wisdom on the environment.

One title on his list:

The Culture Cult by Roger Sandall

In "The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays," anthropologist Roger Sandall explores romantic primitivism--the myth of Eden and the Noble Savage. Mr. Sandall's histories of utopian communities (Robert Owen's New Harmony, John Humphrey Noyes's disastrous Oneida) are vivid, and his portraits of leading primitivists, from Rousseau to Mead to Levi-Strauss, are sharply drawn. This ignorant nostalgia for our tribal past ignores the truly horrific reality of tribal initiation, warfare, mutilation and human sacrifice.

Read about the other titles.

And learn what Roger Sandall is reading in March 2007.

--Marshal Zeringue