National (U.S.)

By MIKE DUNNE

Two members of the Society of Environmental Journalists honored recently for their investigative reporting efforts say that digging through records and old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting helped them make good stories great.

Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette was the winner of the Scripps Howard Edward Meeman Award for environmental reporting – the third time he was so honored. His winning work focused on a coal silo permit that should not have been issued and was revoked thanks to his reporting.

Ever wonder what lies beneath your feet – what's down there in the ground on which we walk? The Toledo Blade's Tom Henry has an editor who asked that question and the result was an interesting look at what the government is doing – or not doing – to clean up gasoline spills from leaky underground tanks.

 Teddy's luckless, little-known trip makes a riveting tale

THE RIVER OF DOUBT: THEODORE ROOSEVELT'S DARKEST JOURNEY
 By Candice Millard  
 Doubledy, $26

 Climate change scientist paints a stark and vivid picture

THE WINDS OF CHANGE: CLIMATE, WEATHER AND THE DESTRUCTION OF CIVILIZATIONS By Eugene Linden 
Simon & Schuster, $26

Exploring the legacy of dams and human delusions of grandeur

DEEP WATER: THE EPIC STRUGGLE OVER DAMS, DISPLACED PEOPLE AND THE ENVIRONMENT Jacques Leslie 
Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, $15.75

Reviewed by NANCY BAZILCHUK 

A dam may not be forever, even if constructions like the Hoover Dam are expected to survive for a thousand years. A dam's environmental and social impacts, though, are enormous, extensive and essentially irreversible.

By JACKLEEN de La HARPE