How to Save the Amazon
A Journalist’s Fatal Quest for Answers
In 2022, journalist Dom Phillips was murdered while reporting on environmental crimes in Brazil’s Javari Valley, killed by some of the same criminals destroying the Amazon rainforest. His friends and colleagues completed his in-progress book How to Save the Amazon, an important work of reportage.
The book begins with a biography of Phillips that explains how he went from being a music journalist in the UK dance scene to risking his life in Brazil. There, Phillips set out to explore the myriad threats the Amazon faces, including illegal fishing gangs, cattle ranchers cutting down forest, and years of bad government policies that range from outdated protections for land grabs to active denials of climate science. His book mixes substantial historical research with interviews with Brazilians from a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives, providing important context and a nuanced picture of how the situation got so bad. It also offers hopeful solutions—some garnered from conversations with Indigenous Brazilians about sustainability practices—describing actions that could stem the damage to, and even repair, the rainforest.
Phillips’s reporting drives the book, with early chapters written by him and weaving personal anecdotes and observations into the bigger picture. He describes the dangers—which he later experienced himself—affecting the Indigenous communities and others trying to live in the endangered rainforest. The later chapters are written using his notes, incorporating quotes and perspectives from his interviews in addition to research and context from other news sources to help finish the text.
How to Save the Amazon is a well-reported book about a serious crisis mixed with a fitting tribute to the man who lost his life investigating it.
Reviewed by
Jeff Fleischer
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
