Bruce Barcott

Reviewer Bruce Barcott takes a look at some eco-friendly commercial crusades from two unlikely sources: Shell Oil Company and the Evangelical Environmental Network.

The world’s largest desert has a reputation for being vast, barren and formidable. But a new book reveals that much of what we know about the Sahara is a mirage. Reviewer Bruce Barcott takes a look at “Sahara: A Natural History.”

Milford Beeghly built an empire and a science out of corn when, in the 1930s, he started working on hybrid seed corn. His grandson, Montieth McCollum, has pieced together a documentary of Beeghly’s successful, yet closeted, life. Bruce Barcott reviews “Hybrid: One Man’s Passion for Corn.”

The story of vinyl is making a debut on HBO Sunday May 5th. Judith Helfand takes viewers along on a personal odyssey to convince her parents to tear off the blue vinyl siding they just put on their house. Bruce Barcott reviews the film Blue Vinyl.

In the tradition of the mundane, Mark Kurlansky, author of Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, has now revealed empires, philosophies and traditions revolving around the common table salt. Bruce Barcott reviews Kurlansky’s latest book Salt: A World History.