Most of us watch with mild concern the fast disappearing wild spaces or the recurrence of pollution-related crises such as oil spills, toxic blooms in fertilizer-enriched rivers, and the increasing violence in our own country. Best known as a novelist, but also an accomplished journalist, Joy Williams has a great gift for inducing guilt trips. No one is safe: in the opening pages of Ill Nature , she implicates every First Worlder in creation for causing the death of the natural world, the victim of our material urges. She writes that the thousands of new digital television towers being erected today, for example, are responsible for the deaths of millions of songbirds that unwittingly slam into them or their guylines in midflight; by extension, anyone who owns a digital TV set is partly to blame for this unforeseen episode in the larger ecological crisis, no matter how well-intentioned those viewers may be. Turning a sharp eye on ecotourists, zoogoers, hunters, politicians, developers, expectant mothers, carnivores, conservatives, liberals, and just about anyone else who crosses her path, Williams decries the rapid loss of the wild, which in her eyes is no mere abstraction. Sometimes hyperbolic, but more often right on target, she argues that it will take more than a few cosmetic fixes to mend all the wounds that the environment has sustained. Dystopian to the last (as she writes, "You are increasingly looking at and living in proxy environments created by substitution and simulation," and not the real world at all), Williams brings plenty of heat to the page--and plenty of light, too. --Gregory McNamee Adult/High School-These 19 essays were first published (some in different form) in magazines as diverse as Esquire and Mother Jones. Alternating long essays with short ones, Williams looks at the state of nature and the destruction wrought upon it by humans from rich nations-and the inexcusable obliviousness of those people to what they are doing. She charms with wit and passion: as she says in the last essay, "Why I Write," "The good piece of writing startles the reader back into Life." These are, by that standard, good pieces of writing. The title of one chapter, "Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimps," conveys something of Williams's freewheeling style. "The Case Against Babies" (another knockout) might come as a revelation to many young women, even as it outrages some of their parents. "The Killing Game" is probably the best-known piece here because of the hate mail it provoked when first published. There are no "pros and cons" here: wrong is wrong, as every child knows (and many teens have not yet forgotten), and Williams knows her own mind. Though the subjects are often distressing, many teens will identify strongly with her moral outrage at injustices and cruelties inflicted upon the defenseless, and will be heartened to find a writer who so effectively expresses so much of what they feel. The book has a hideous cover but readers who get past its off-putting face will be rewarded-whether they hate it or love it-with a truly colorful reading experience. Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. This is not a comfortable book; nor can it be cast aside as just another tiresome list of environmental ills. In this collection of essays, Williams decries the ecological devastation caused by development, technology, and an out-of-control population. She minces no words in her treatment of hunters, wildlife managers, scientists who use animals in research, and a general public addicted to consumerism. Her writing is heavy with sarcasm and irony. It is also compelling, and the ten chapters go quickly. Williams is a seasoned writer, the author of several works of fiction (The Quick and the Dead) as well as nonfiction and recipient of a National Magazine Award for Fiction. Although the chapters "Sharks and Suicide" and "Hawk" diverge from her environmental theme to follow other musings, as a whole the work is effective and will likely leave the reader angry, frustrated, distressed, or depressed, which is, after all, her intent. Highly recommended for environmental and general collections.DMaureen J. Delaney-Lehman, Lake Superior State Univ., Sault Ste. Marie, MI Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. Sharp and satiric in her novels, which include The Quick and the Dead [BKL O 1 00], Williams is even fiercer in her essays. She will not soft-pedal or sweet-talk; she means to incite, rattle, and pique. Extremely well informed, Williams writes, in a froth and a fury, about the ravaged state of nature. In "Safariland," she both marvels at the wonder of elephants and vanquishes the fantasy that wildlife still roams free in Africa. Williams calls the Everglades the Neverglades because that great wilderness is no more. She cuts through the self-serving rhetoric hunters spin to justify their lust for blood; questions extravagant artificial insemina