A visit to a boot camp before the last Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Vermont opened the door for a special report on air pollution in San Diego by a webonly publication, voiceofsandiego.org

Reporter Rob Davis, who covers environmental issues for the Internet-based nonprofit news outlet, gives lots of credit to the special training and insights of the boot camp followed up by the annual conference. And, he also got help from fellow SEJ members.

 Jan Daniels has a new job as the founder/director of Eco Expressions, an environmental writing program based in San Diego, CA and Hailey, ID, that helps solidify the outdoor experience for students with scientific and creative writing. www.EcoExpressions.org
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In January, Scribner released Mark Harris' book on green burial, "Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial." See review on page 22.

THE WORST HARD TIME: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THOSE WHO SURVIVED THE GREAT AMERICAN DUST BOWL
By Timothy Egan
 Houghton Mifflin, $28

Reviewed by EMMA BROWN

When I bought Timothy Egan's "Lasso the Wind" last summer in Ashland, Ore., the bookstore owner chuckled and said, "Tim Egan, lucky guy, you know he covers the West for The New York Times?" I said yeah, that's a job I'd like to have. She shook her head and said, "He can write whatever he wants and no one back East knows whether he's telling the truth."

CARBON FINANCE

Sonia Labatt and Rodney R. White

Wiley Finance, $101.99

Reviewed by CRAIG SAUNDERS

Climate change has serious financial ramifications and opportunities for business. In their new book "Carbon Finance," University of Toronto professors Sonia Labatt and Rodney White describe the economic ABCs of climate change.

 THE WILD TREES: A STORY OF PASSION AND DARING

By Richard Preston
Random House, $25.95
Reviewed by NANCY BAZILCHUK 

Tree canopy research is still a young science, partly because it's difficult to get into the canopy to see what's there, and also because until recently, scientists hadn't thought to look.

 By JOE DAVIS 

Journalists writing about climate change got some help this fall when the Yale Project on Climate Change launches a new publication aimed at helping them communicate science – and communicate with scientists.

The Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media is published online, aimed mostly at an audience of journalists, but also at scientists, policymakers, and the general public.

The subject line of an e-mail is an underappreciated writing task.

We knock off dozens daily with little thought. And yet they carry every bit of the challenge and impact of a newspaper headline – a terse explanation of what's to come, with perhaps the added burden of hinting at the sender's personality.

Extend that concept and maybe a case can be made that the e-mail subject lines found on a listserv say something about its members.

By JACKLEEN de LA HARPE

 By MICHAEL MANSUR

This is the first issue of the SEJournal published since the passing of Mike Dunne, our assistant editor.

Each issue, Mike would assemble "The Beat" and an "Inside Story" on some outstanding work of journalism, probing the author about why he chose to lead with this fact. Or asking why he chose to organize a story in this certain way.