While the conventional wisdom condemns it as an environmental nightmare, Manhattan is by far the greenest place in America, argues this stimulating eco-urbanist manifesto. According to Owen ("Sheetrock and Shellac"), staff writer at the "New Yorker", New York City is a model of sustainability: its extreme density and compactnessand horrifically congested trafficencourage a carfree lifestyle centered on walking and public transit; its massive apartment buildings use the heat escaping from one dwelling to warm the ones adjoining it; as a result, he notes, New Yorkers per capita greenhouse gas emissions are less than a third of the average Americans. The author attacks the powerful anti-urban bias of American environmentalists like Michael Pollan and Amory Lovins, whose rurally situated, auto-dependent Rocky Mountain Institute he paints as an ecological disaster area. The environmental movements disdain for cities and fetishization of open space, backyard compost heaps, locavorism and high-tech gadgetry like solar panels and triple-paned windows is, he warns, a formula for wasteful sprawl and green-washed consumerism. Owens lucid, biting prose crackles with striking facts that yield paradigm-shifting insights. The result is a compelling analysis of the worlds environmental predicament that upends orthodox opinion and points the way to practical solutions.