Henry David Thoreau is probably best known for his work as a nature writer and for the intense commitment to the wild he displayed in his work, a radical view which influenced generations of writers to come. Nature writing has a long history in American literature, and this list presents some books about the genre and some major works that are in the library collection. It represents a small slice of the diversity of the genre, as nature writers have been inspired by countless different places and things in highly individual ways. Combining observation, scientific insight, and imaginative interpretation, at its heart nature writing is about enriching our experiences of the world by opening our perceptions to an ecological and holistic way of seeing and by forcing us to consider the ethical implications of our relationship with the land and wildlife. For more books, visit the catalog online at library.thoreau.org.
Thomas J. Lyon, ed. This Incomperable Lande: A Book of American Nature Writing. (1989)
An analytical history and comprehensive anthology of American nature writing from the sixteenth-century to the modern day, highlighting the diversity of responses, perspectives, and forms within the genre. Twenty-two authors are represented, including Thomas Nuttall, Thoreau, John Burroughs, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, Barry Lopez, and John Hay.
Corey Lee Lewis. Reading the Trail: Exploring the Literature and Natural History of the California Crest. (2005)
Lewis offers new ways of exploring the intersection of ecology and literature in this survey of the works of John Muir, Mary Austin, and Gary Snyder, three authors whose writings have been significant in shaping America's environmental consciousness and which are deeply connected to particular ecological regions of California along the Pacific Crest Trail. By combining literary analysis with field studies of the places they wrote about, he delivers new insights and demonstrates the continued relevance of their ideas to today's discussion of ecological values.
John Muir. The Mountains of California. (1894)
Published two years after he founded the Sierra Club, this is the first collection of essays by John Muir, a pioneer in the field of literary natural history and one of the country's leading environmental activists. His energetic and precise writings celebrate the wildness and complexity of the Sierra Nevada mountains he dedicated his life to saving, and have shown to generations of readers the necessity of experiencing and preserving our natural heritage.
Aldo Leopold. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. (1949)
Forester, wildlife ecologist, environmental philosopher, and educator, Leopold articulated ideas in this writing that have come to be at the core of environmental ethics and aesthetics today. Building from insightfully written accounts of his own encounters with the wild in Sand County, Wisconsin as well as from experiences earlier in his life, it is a call for a fundamental reform in humankind's relationship to the land, one that extends our ethical sensibilities to encompass the whole of nature.
Rachel Carson. The Sea Around Us. (1950, rev. ed. 1961)
Combining a rigorous scientific perspective with rich and lyrical language, Carson's book is a guide to the world's oceans and the life in them. Hers is a holisitc view, concentrating on relationships and linkages, describing vast and complex natural systems, and dramatically illustrating how powerful natural forces continue to shape the rhythms of life on our planet: "a water world, a planet dominated by its covering mantle of ocean, in which the continents are but transient intrusions of land above the surface of the all-encircling sea."
Annie Dillard. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. (1974)
Over the course of a year, the author walks alone through the land surrounding Tinker Creek, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Roanoke, Virginia. Observing closely the changing of the seasons and the effects on the plants and animals there, her reflections on the nature of the world open into profound themes of life, death, meaning, identity, and the spiritual complexity of the universe. It is a testament to the challenge of experiencing the world in all its variety.
Wendell Berry. Recollected Essays, 1965-1980. (1981)
A pioneer on the subjects of sustainable agriculture and slow food, novelist, poet, essayist, and farmer, Wendell Berry here revisits some of his earlier writings in these eleven essays collected from The Long-Legged House, The Hidden Wound, A Continuous Harmony, The Unforseen Wilderness, and The Unsettling of America. Largely based on his life on his farm in rural Kentucky, he presents insights into humankind's relationship with the natural world, arguing for the need to learn from the complex patterns of nature and to pay attention particularly to local ways and wisdom as an alternative to the extractive and destructive practices of large scale agribusiness and of contemporary American culture.
David Mas Masumoto. Letters to the Valley: A Harvest of Memories. (2004)
David Mas Masumoto grows organic peaches and grapes on his farm in Del Rey, in the San Joaquin Valley of California. The essays in this collection originally appeared as a column in the Fresno Bee and take the form of letters to his family, friends, neighbors, and others. In them he writes about his experiences of the connections between food, work, family and place, experiences that illustrate the values needed to realize a sustainable society and to preserve a way of life in the rapidly changing context for family farms.
