Susanna Hecht is professor in the School of Public Affairs and the Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Scramble for the Amazon and the Tropical Odyssey of Euclides de Cunha, and coeditor of The Social Lives of Forests: Forest Recovery in the Past, Present and Future, both forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press. Alexander Cockburn is coeditor of CounterPunch, and a regular columnist for the Nation and First Post. He has contributed to numerous periodicals including the New York Review, the London Review, Harpers, and the Atlantic Monthly, and is the author of several books, including Political Ecology, Corruptions of Empire, and The Golden Age Is in Us.