The Great Bay: Chronicles of the Collapse

After devouring this entire book in two sittings, I felt that my presence on Earth had been given a fresh context. The Great Bay, is a richly visionary work. As its title indicates, The Great Bay chronicles a collapse of earth's bio systems. The weight, and drama of this collapse is given power through Pendell's unique sensibility which encompasses poetry, science, ecology, myth and the ability to create and carry history, compellingly, through literally thousands of years after a collapse that has returned a greatly reduced human species to paleolithic dimensions. Pendell doesn't take any short cuts or cheap sci fi routes toward making this story credible and magnetic. The foundations of this collapse are taken from contemporary evidence and given further force by the author's capacity to connect them with the alchemy of climate, atmospheric shifts, geographical history and human events depicted by assorted characters. The Great Bay has a Robinson Crusoe, journal like flavor to its form but its setting is no desert island with the barefoot imprint of Man friday at its core. After finishing this work, I felt my life had been given a necessary place....that of a man cleverly guided into the environmental reality of a failed civilization. Yet it is Pendell's version of human survival that most powerfully shines light upon the lack of intelligence and heart that informs corporate exploitation and the destiny it has inflicted upon so many species including our own. Ultimately, human ingenuity, even at a hunter and gatherer level, trivializes the most grandiose dreams of corporate culture.