{"product_id":"the-burning-season-the-murder-of-chico-mendes-and-the-fight-for-the-amazon-rain-forest-9781559630894","title":"The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"In the rain forests of the western Amazon \" writes author Andrew Revkin  \"the threat of violent death hangs in the air like mist after a tropical rain. It is simply a part of the ecosystem  just like the scorpions and snakes cached in the leafy canopy that floats over the forest floor like a seamless green circus tent.\" Violent death came to Chico Mendes in the Amazon rain forest on December 22  1988. A labor and environmental activist  Mendes was gunned down by powerful ranchers for organizing resistance to the wholesale burning of the forest. He was a target because he had convinced the government to take back land ranchers had stolen at gunpoint or through graft and then to transform it into \"extractive reserves \" set aside for the sustainable production of rubber  nuts  and other goods harvested from the living forest. This was not just a local land battle on a remote frontier. Mendes had invented a kind of reverse globalization  creating alliances between his grassroots campaign and the global environmental movement. Some 500 similar killings had gone unprosecuted  but this case would be different. Under international pressure  for the first time Brazilian officials were forced to seek  capture  and try not only an Amazon gunman but the person who ordered the killing. In this reissue of the environmental classic The Burning Season  with a new introduction by the author  Andrew Revkin artfully interweaves the moving story of Mendess struggle with the broader natural and human history of the worlds largest tropical rain forest. \"It became clear \" writes Revkin  acclaimed science reporter for The New York Times  \"that the murder was a microcosm of the larger crime: the unbridled destruction of the last great reservoir of biological diversity on Earth.\" In his life and untimely death  Mendes forever altered the course of development in the Amazon  and he has since become a model for environmental campaigners everywhere.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45960386773045,"sku":"ByrdShop_1559630892","price":22.19,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781559630894.jpg?v=1788285707","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-burning-season-the-murder-of-chico-mendes-and-the-fight-for-the-amazon-rain-forest-9781559630894","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}