I can look back and see that right from the beginning my principal concerns have been biological and environmental (my first book, a collection of stories, is called Descent of Man, after all). On the surface, The Tortilla Curtain, may be about illegal immigration from Mexico, but the subtext explores our species’ impact on the environment. And, of course, in 2000, I published A Friend of the Earth, which deals with global warming and the ethics of ecotage.
