Spirit of the Environment: Religion, Value, and Environmental Concern, edited by both David Cooper and Joy Palmer, is the “last in a trilogy of volumes on environmental thought” and encompasses concepts that do not easily fit in with the mandates of the previous two books: The Environment in Question and Just Environments. This book is for those people who do not necessarily look to place aspects of their “relationship to the natural work” in to labels such as “‘scientific’, ‘ecological’ or ‘moral’”. Spirit of the Environment, which focuses upon the spiritual breadth of nature, covers the remaining label well, combining a broad scope of contributors who approach the subject in a variety of ways.

Although linearity is common practice when speaking of the history of cultural beliefs, it works well within the confines of the book. Purushottama Bilimoria’s chapter Indian religious traditions, begins with a description of the ways in which the first major civilization - the Indus Valley region with Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, “which peaked around 3000 BCE, [exhibited] a close symbiosis between nature and the Dravidic people” (Cooper 1998, p. 1). Bilimoria goes on to say that certain elements of practices from the Indus period, as well as other indigenous communities went on in to the Vedic period. Specifically, she states that “[i]n ecological terms, the Vedic hymns interweave a number of insights, from a primitive conception of a unique all-being” which everything else revolves around and is interwoven with (Cooper 1998, p.3). This beginning chapter concludes with remarks about how the early Indian religions of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism’s beliefs; including non-injury, and whole-ness; proceed in their essential forms, “continu[ing] to influence the discourse and aligned practices of environmentalism in much of South Asia” (Cooper 1998, p. 11). In a very readable format, Spirit of the Environment continues to present similar breakdowns of other religions, discussing to what extent environmental practices and concerns are ingrained in their essential teachings.

Moving away from specific religious categories, chapters look at philosophical views on environmental issues. Kay Milton brings out several interesting and relevant issues in her chapter The environment in traditional culture, stating that there are often people who express the belief that “non-industrial societies, usually described as ‘indigenous’ or ‘traditional’, have a better relationship with their environment than industrial societies do” (Cooper 1998, p. 86). Milton makes a clear argument for the importance of making distinctions between ideologies and actions, confronting the view that there is a ‘one-ness’ between indigenous people and nature. Milton does a fair job at describing these distinctions and breaking apart age-old views ad stereotypes of indigenous peoples, yet fails to give a sufficient amount of examples of particular indigenous groups’ beliefs in regard to the environment.

Lastly, Richard Smith’s Spirit of middle earth: Practical thinking for an instrumental age leaves readers with the ‘real world’ apart from heaven and hell. Smith attempts to bring in examples from ancient Greece, the Hopi, and Wordsworth. I find this concluding chapter to be lacking, in that it is not written using wholly readable terms. Smith uses too many obscure references and generalizations for his (albeit large) topic to be entirely cohesive. As a whole, Spirit of the Environment is generally readable, giving readers a brief, mostly-stereotypical look at the ways in which specific religions and other ways of thinking think about environmental issues.