Fresh Water Seas: Saving the Great Lakes

Ron Goldsmith is a professor of Geography at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute.

Weller, executive director of the Great Lakes Coalition, is probably
best known as author of the widely acclaimed Acid Rain: The Silent
Crisis. Fresh Water Seas surpasses his earlier work in many ways, and
provides an important and eminently readable profile of the Great Lakes
ecosystem.

This relatively short book gives an extremely lucid history of the
interactions between human society and the environments of the Great
Lakes region. The book begins with the physical processes that shaped
the region. Then it takes the reader from the early stages of European
settlement to the postwar onslaught of industrialization. In the
concluding section, Weller discusses the emergence of a serious movement
to protect the Great Lakes ecosystem and its recovery strategy.

This environmental analysis is thorough and balanced. For the most
part, the author avoids the pessimism that has trapped so many
environmental writers. Success stories are presented along with the
failures, and are characterized by a sense of guarded optimism.

There are noteworthy comparisons between Fresh Water Seas and Great
Lakes, Great Legacy? (The Conservation Foundation and the Institute for
Research on Public Policy, 1990). Fresh Water Seas gives an exceptional
historical overview of the ecological transformation of the Great Lakes;
the other book is a more technical and scientific assessment. Readers
now have access to superlative information on this fragile and unique
biome.