"It has been well documented, most recently by psychiatrist Peter C. Whybrow, that while Americans are four times more affluent than during the '60s, we have shown no measurable gain in happiness. In fact the opposite is true: We are more depressed, more medicated, more frazzled than at any other time in our short history. The more we are anesthetized by material wealth, the farther we stray from our biophilic selves. We move from house to garage to car to work to mall to gym to house again with little regard to our ancestral homeland -- ancient savannas at the edge of vast forests."Wendell Berry observes in the Foreword to Reece's book that we know little about the new destruction. In part this is because it is hard to see it. Coal companies do not publicize what they are doing aside from touting a few efforts at "reclamation" resulting in scrub pasture where once the forest was.