"Against the backdrop of national trends, Ruin and Recovery traces the evolution of the public movement to conserve Michigan's forests, fish and wildlife in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the environmental movement that demanded cleanup of the state's air and water in the 1960s and 1970s. Both movements put Michigan on the nation's map as a leader in environmental protection.

The current Michigan generation faces a similar challenge in protecting Michigan's agricultural, ecologically valuable and scenic lands from sprawling urban development.".

"Through the vivid personalities of the state's conservation and environmental leaders and their dramatic struggles, Ruin and Recovery illustrates that a public clamor for conservation has always been the primary force in Michigan's national leadership. It also documents the boom-and-bust nature of the state's policies toward its natural resources, which has prompted public outrage and successful reform movements.".

"Michigan today has the largest public forest system of any state east of the Mississippi River and has dramatically reduced toxic air and water pollution from 1960s levels. These achievements are no accident. Ruin and Recovery puts in context for the first time in one volume the conflicts that had produced the state's environmental progress - and the trends that challenge that progress in the early decades of the twenty-first century."--BOOK JACKET.