Danger in the Congo The unexplored Amazon Long perceived as a place of mystery and danger, and more recently as a fragile system requiring our protection, the tropical forest captivated America for over a century. In The Maximum of Wilderness, Kelly Enright traces the representation of tropical forests--what Americans have typically thought of as -jungles---and their place in both our perception of -wildness- and the globalization of the environmental movement.

In the early twentieth century, jungle adventure--as depicted by countless books and films, from...