Defending Giants

"Eloquent, inspiring, eminently readable nonfiction with precious lessons for those fighting the ever-greater environmental destruction wrought by corporate greed. . . . A tale fully relevant to here and now."—Robert James Parsons, Truthout

"Speece's work on this local battle is an excellent contribution to the larger historiography of the environmental movement."—James G. Lewis, Western Historical Quarterly

"[A] wonderfully written, extremely engaging story. Speece continually pushes his history in a variety of important directions. It is these broader connections, linking ecologies and economies, locals, lawyers, and loggers, and a relatively small forest in northern California to the nation's capital in Washington, D.C., that make Defending Giants an important book."—Neil M. Maher, American Historical Review

"A reminder of the power of the traditional approaches to historical research. . . . Books like Defending Giants remind the reader of the insight to be gained by focusing on specific historical actors. Indeed, environmental history is, at its heart, the interactions among people and nature, as this dramatic account of environmental politics reminds us."—Darren F. Speece, Environmental Values

"Speece's book is well argued, and he navigates a diverse body of sources with a skilled hand. . . . Apt and insightful, he tackles head-on the complexity of the Redwood Wars while making a strong case for their enduring significance."—Daniel Rinn, Environment and History

"We need more histories of important examples of nonviolent resistance and creative campaigning, and Defending Giants is a much-needed model of careful and serious reporting and analysis that fills this void. It also brings back to life the story of some of the most committed and capable environmentalists I've ever known, people who worked on a scale as epic as the forests they fought for."—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

"Defending Giants is a complicated story elegantly told, one full of fascinating characters with nuanced political positions that sometimes got lost in the heat of battle. More than that, it is a book that demonstrates how our easy resort to caricature has obscured the substance of what happened behind the North Coast's Redwood Curtain in the late twentieth century. Darren Speece has given us a history of environmental activism that simultaneously demonstrates the power of direct action protest to bring stakeholders to the table and ponders the importance of mediated compromise. At a moment when our environmental politics are deeply polarized, that might be the most useful contribution of all."—Paul Sutter, from the Foreword