Paul Lindholdt – författare

From Lake Coeur d’Alene to its confluence with the Columbia, the Spokane River travels 111 miles of varied and often spectacular terrain—rural, urban, in places wild. The river has been a trading and gathering place for Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. With bountiful trout, accessible swimming holes, and challenging rapids, it is a recreational magnet for residents and tourists alike. The Spokane also bears the legacy of industrial growth and remains caught amid interests competing over natural resources.The contributors to this collection profile this living river through personal reflection, history, science, and poetry. They bring a keen environmental awareness of resource scarcity, climate change, and cultural survival tied to the river’s fate.

A chief innovation of Explorations in Ecocriticism is to push ecological criticism beyond its focus on literary studies to engage with other arts and culture. One chapter closely examines the pictures commissioned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to valorize its big dam projects. Previously, no one has written about the large art collection that toured the nation under the auspices of the Smithsonian in the early 1970s, when the Bureau of Reclamation was under fire and new environmental regulations were becoming law. Another chapter, “An Iconography of Sabotage,” previously published in France as part of a Paris symposium, looks at the pictorial dimension of saboteurs throughout American history, with a special emphasis on the IWW and Earth First! The book draws extensively on the social sciences. Ecology and environment are treated too often as technical topics that go over the heads of lay readers. Many Americans care about air and water quality, the extinction of species, and the unfortunate politicization of science. But they also find the discourse daunting, the details exceedingly complex. By leavening such heavy subjects with current events, Explorations in Ecocriticism makes environmental issues accessible to lay readers and offers routes to sustainability in the United States today.

Never in human history has travel been so accessible to so many. But amid an escalating climate crisis that threatens the homes of vulnerable people across the world, has the human cost of trekking the globe become too high? Paul Lindholdt links firsthand narratives with research about the travel trade, telling stories of his reluctant voyages while arguing that carbon-intensive trips abroad may be offset if adventurers come to know and love the landscapes closer to home. Tourism may be the planet's largest industry, but Interrogating Travel advises readers to stay mindful of the consequences of their journeys, whether visiting local getaways or some of Earth's most remote locations.