THE AGE BOOK OF THE YEAR
NON-FICTION
Back from the Brink: How Australia's Landscape Can Be Saved
Peter Andrews (ABC Books)

Fifteen books have been shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year awards. This is what the judges say about them.
Back from the Brink: How Australia's Landscape Can Be Saved
Peter Andrews
ABC Books

This is environmental writing at its most literate and accessible. In a methodical, lucid manner, Peter Andrews addresses the critical issues of land and water management in Australia. If our crisis is to be resolved, he suggests, we must raise our historical consciousness and understand the "original systems" of the Australian landscape as they relate to water movement and fertility.
Andrews' impassioned, empirical and systematic approach, outlined in this book, could actively facilitate the process of recovery. His arguments and research will help enlighten and persuade the general reader far more effectively than any alarmist, "doomsday" accounts

http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/prize-writing/2007/08/09/1186530539541.html