Bozeman author and environmental journalist Todd Wilkinson will read from his new book, Last Stand: Ted Turner’s Quest to Save a Troubled Planet, at Elk River Books, 115 E. Callender St. in Livingston on Thursday, August 1 at 7 p.m.
The book evolved over two decades, Wilkinson says, tracking Turner’s emergence as one of America’s premier capitalist environmentalists. The Lyons Press describes Last Stand as “an exploration of Turner’s lesser-known but larger scale other life—his journey as a still-evolving green-minded iconoclast who is pioneering another new path forward in the twenty-first century. It chronicles Turner’s emergence as a new hybrid category of philanthropist-eco-humanitarian-capitalist.”
Wilkinson’s first book, Science Under Siege: The Politician’s War on Nature and Truth, told the stories of government scientists who found their work compromised by political expediencies. He has covered regional conservation issues for more than 25 years for publications ranging from the Christian Science Monitor to the Huffington Post.
Wilkinson told the Billing Gazette he approached the book as a journalist, interviewing Turner friends and confidantes including Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Al Gore, Kofi Annan, Jane Fonda, Tom Brokaw and Jane Goodall. “My goal was never to become his pal” Wilkinson said, adding that Turner agreed not to tamper with the text of the book.
“What we need most in these trying times is vision. This book is an example of the clarity of double-vision: Todd Wilkinson as a visionary writer and Ted Turner as his visionary subject,” says author Terry Tempest Williams. “The only thing more powerful than vision is action and that is what this remarkable story of a person in place gives us.”
Wilkinson’s reading is free, open to the public, and will be followed by a reception. For more information, call (406) 224-5802.
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