In the Thick of It: My Life in the Sierra Club Review

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In the Thick of It: My Life in the Sierra Club ReviewMichael McCloskey has had a huge influence on conservation and environmentalism in America, and he's truly eligible to be the subject of an informative biography. Unfortunately, he should have had someone else write it. I am a volunteer officer with Sierra Club, active at both the local and state levels, with an interest in the organization's history. For that reason I was attracted to this autobiography of the man who served faithfully with Sierra Club and other important groups for some 40 years, and was one of the Club's most influential Executive Directors. However, even I had trouble keeping up my interest as this book dragged along, and I can't imagine any general reader (who may very well crave knowledge about conservationist history) being able to hold more than a polite semi-interest. This is because McCloskey's story, as told by himself, becomes an interminable list of brief reports, presented strictly in chronological order. Milestones and achievements are presented monotonously with an unchanging focus toward their importance and influence, or lack thereof, and there are very few deeper insights or analyses of historically important trends in conservation.
Granted, there are a few useful tidbits here and there, especially in Chapter 13 in which McCloskey discusses how environmentalists can build alliances with labor, minorities, the poor, and business interests; while in a few other places he has some good advice on the specific financial and tax challenges face by non-profit advocacy groups. But on the other hand, most of the book dwells on minutiae of dubious usefulness, most notably the tedious coverage of several decades of internal power struggles within the Sierra Club leadership - passing strife that now means little to current Sierra Club members and even less to the interested layperson. McCloskey is also regularly prone to an underlying, yet subtle, self-righteousness. Once again, McCloskey is immensely influential in American conservationism, he was a strong leader of an important organization, and his lifetime of accomplishments is ripe material for a biography. But in the form of a self-aggrandizing autobiography, his story does not receive the insight and analysis that could be delivered by a professional biographer or historian. [~doomsdayer520~]In the Thick of It: My Life in the Sierra Club Overview

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