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Nature Writing
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Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
Abbey's classic "celebration of the beauty of living in a harsh and hostile land" first published in 1968, with essays inspired by living at Arches National Monument in Utah, but going beyond to other topics in the high desert and mountains of the southwest.
A Touchstone Book (Simon & Schuster), 1990. 269 pages, about 5½ x 8½ inches, paperback. New.
Item #118. Shipping weight: 1.0 lb. Publisher's price: $14.00. Your price: $9.80
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Claude T. Barnes, The Natural History of a Mountain Year: Four Seasons in the Wasatch Range
The Wasatch Range of Utah forms a backdrop for many the largest cities of the state, including Ogden, Salt Lake City, and Provo. The author, a mammalogist and ornithologist who was also a general naturalist (and lawyer and businessman) made frequent field trips into them from the 20s to the 50s and kept a keenly observant record of his trips, and from them he has chosen the most interesting for each day of the year. Since the region has changed radically since then, the journals form an invaluable record of the way things were.
University of Utah Press, 1996. 385 pages, illus., about 5½ x 8½, paperback. New, bargain remainder.
Item #276. Shipping weight: 1.4 lbs. Publisher's price: $16.95. Your price: $4.00
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Frank Bergon, editor, The Wilderness Reader
An anthology of the writings of 26 conservationists including Abbey, Audubon, Austin, Bartram, Byrd, Carson, Fremont, Leopold, McPhee, Muir, Parkman, Powell, Stegner, Teale, and Thoreau.
University of Nevada Press, 1994 (originally published 1980). 372 pages, about 5 x 8½, paperback. New.
Item #266. Shipping weight: 1.5 lbs. Publisher's price: $17.95. Your price: $12.55
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Kit Chubb, The Avian Ark: Tales from a Wild-bird Hospital
"Bird lovers will find Kit Chubb's book vastly entertaining and informing. Others who read it will probably become bird lovers themselves."—Farley Mowat
Hungry Mind Press, 1995. 157 pages, about 6 x 9 inches, paperback. New.
Item #205. Shipping weight: 1.0 lb. Publisher price: $12.00. Your price: $4.00
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John Hay (editor), The Great House of Birds
An anthology of writings about birds, at least one dating back 2000 years though mostly from the last two centuries, and including contemporary authors. The selections range in length from about one to ten pages, and are grouped in six sections: 1) Flight, 2) The Language of Birds, 3) Art and Ritual, 4) Birds and the American Land, 5) Birds of the Sea, and 6) The Migrants. Each selection is introduced by the editor.
Noted authors reprinted in this collection include Mary Austin, Alexander Skutch, Konrad Lorenz, Pablo Neruda, Terry Tempest Williams, Henry David Thoreau, Donald Culross Peattie, Annie Dillard, Bernd Heinrich, E.O. Wilson, John Muir, Niko Tinbergen, Gary Nabhan, John James Audubon, Charles Darwin, Rachel Carson, Peter Matthiessen, Barry Lopez, and more.
Published by Sierra Club Books, 1996. 306 pages, about 6 x 8½ inches, bargain remainder hardcover. New.
Item #HAY-BIRDS. Shipping weight: 1.5 lbs. Publisher’s price: $24.00. Your price: $5.00
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Richard Headstrom, Adventures with a Hand Lens
“With an ordinary magnifying glass and this book as your guide, 50 adventures in close observation await you. These entertaining nature studies take you on field trips in and around your home, calling attention to interesting features of dozens of familiar or overlooked plants, insects and other animals, and common materials like cloth, quartz and the paper on which this book is printed.
“A great deal of basic natural-science theory and detail is presented in this delightful narrative. Flowers and grasses, fish scales, moth and [other] insect wings, egg cases, buds, feathers, seeds, leaf scars, moss, molds, ferns, common crystals are among the many structures examined, often comparatively. Many natural processes and behavior patterns are observed—seed dispersal and other methods of reproduction, protective coloration, rusting, symbiosis, fertilization of the soil, breathing and case-building of insects, and many others, all with only an inexpensive hand lens as equipment and with ‘specimens’ you probably pass by going for a walk. More than 200 labeled illustrations accompany the text.”
This book is directed toward kids in about the sixth grade and up, but can be used as a guide for teachers or parents for ideas on exploring with younger kids. Adults who happen to be true naturalists—who find the appeal of exploring everyday objects overcomes the slightly condescending tone of chapters titled (for example) “We See How Ants Keep Clean,” “We Spy on the Aphids,” and “We Turn Our Attention to Some Buds.” In fact, much of the terminology it introduces you to is quite technical, so despite the chapter headings, this book was written before the current practice of “dumbing down” books for kids or laypeople. There is truly much here for naturalists of all ages.
Published by Dover Publications, 1976. 220 pages, illus., about 5 x 8 inches, paperback. New.
Item #843. Shipping weight: 0.9 lb. Publisher’s price: $7.95. Your price: $4.50
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Bernie Krause, Wild Soundscapes:
Discovering the Voice of the Natural World
Includes an audio CD featuring sample soundscapes and narrated field techniques.
This book introduces “you to the exciting world of natural sound where you will learn to listen to creature choruses and discover the fun of creating nature sound recordings. Bernie Krause teaches you the tricks of a nature sound recordist’s trade, making it easy for you to encounter the natural wild in a totally new way.”
Wilderness Press, 2002. 168 pages, paperback, about 6 X 9 inches. Includes 55 minute long CD. New.
Item #79. Shipping weight: 1.0 lb. Publisher’s price: $19.95. Your price: $12.00
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Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac; and Sketches Here and There
Illustrated by Charles W. Schwartz.
The classic work of environmentalism and ecological consciousness: eloquent yet unpretentious, fine descriptions of wildlife interactions along with visionary reflections.
Oxford Paperbacks, first published 1949, and in paperback 1968; 55th printing. 226 pages, illus., about 5½ x 8 inches, paperback. New.
Item #102. Shipping weight: 0.8 lb. Publisher’s price: $12.95. Your price: $8.50
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John McPhee, The Founding Fish
This book is "a braid of personal history, natural history, and American history, in descending order of volume.
"Each spring, American shad—Alosa sapidissima—leave the ocean in hundreds of thousands and run heroic distances upriver to spawn. McPhee—a shad fisherman himself—recounts the shad's cameo role in the lives of George Washington and Henry David Thoreau. He fishes with famous ichthyologists and visits their laboratories; he takes instruction in the making of shad darts from a master of the art; and he cooks shad in a variety of ways, delectably explained at the end of the book. Mostly, though, he goes fishing for shad in various North American
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. 358 pages, about 5½ x 8¼ inches, paperback. New.
Item #969. Shipping weight: 1.4 lbs. Publisher’s price: $15.00. Your price: $9.00
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Alexander C. Martin, Herbert S. Zim, and Albert L. Nelson, American Wildlife & Plants: A Guide to Wildlife Food Habits: The Use of Trees, Shrubs, Weeds and Herbs by Birds and Mammals of the United States
A key tool for naturalists and ecologists, this book fills a niche occupied by no other. It gives a succinct summary of exactly what each of over 1000 species of birds and mammals eat, with special attention to plants used as food; and (in the second major section) what birds and mammals eat which genera of plants. Other books may list the general kinds of foods a particular animal eats, or give a general idea of how valuable a plant is as food for wildlife, but this book gets specific.
After about 40 pages of introductory material, the book is divided into two major sections: First, the wildlife entries, second the plant entries. The first part is divided into nine chapters, the first five of which divide bird species into convenient groups: waterbirds, marshbirds and shorebirds, upland gamebirds, songbirds, and birds of prey. The next three chapters are on mammals: fur and game, small, and hoofed browsers. The last chapter in the animal section briefly covers fish, amphibians, and reptiles in general terms. Most of the entries include range maps, and many include a detailed line drawing of the animal, and some include charts showing seasonal variations in proportions of plant foods eaten by each, based on studies of stomach contents. Plant foods are named and given ratings depending on how important each are to the species, annotated with seasonal variations and regional importance.
The next section covers plants useful to wildlife. They are listed by genus. The notes tell how many species belong to each genus and how many wildlife users they have. Then a list of bird and mammals species known to eat the plant is given, with ratings according to importance. As with the wildlife section, many entries are accompanied by line drawings and range maps.
A final chapter rates each wildlife plant genus according to value to wildlife. For example, among woody plants, oaks are used by more species of wildlife than any other. The rankings are further divided by region. In this section you learn, for example, that while oaks retain their number one ranking in the eastern and central states, they are ranked number two in the Pacific states and the Mountain-Desert region, replaced by pines.
Dover Publications, 1961 (first published 1951). 500 pages, illus., about 5½ x 8½ inches, paperback. New.
Item #480. Shipping weight: 1.7 lbs. Publisher’s price: $13.95. Your price: $7.25 (Out of stock; unlikely to restock)
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Peter Matthiessen, The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness
Penguin Nature Classics series
“For twenty thousand miles, Peter Matthiessen crisscrossed the South American wilderness, traveling from the Amazonian rain forests to Machu Picchu high in the Andes, down to the edge of the world at Tierra del Fuego and back. In the course of his journey he followed the trails of old explorers, encountered river bandits, wild tribesman, and the evidence of ancient ruins, and discovered a fossilized snout of a giant unknown crocodilian hidden in the depths of the jungle on the wild mountain rivers of Peru.
“Filled with observations and descriptions of the people and the fading wildlife of this vast world to the south, The Cloud Forest is Matthiessen’s incisive, wry report of his expedition into some of the last and most exotic wild terrains in the world.”
Penguin Books (Penguin Nature Classics), 1996 (first published 1961). 280 pages, illus., about 5 x 7½ inches. Paperback. New.
Item #226. Shipping weight: 0.8 lb. Publisher’s price: $16.00. Your price: $9.50
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Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
Penguin Nature Classics series
"In 1973 Peter Matthiessen and the field biologist George Schaller went to Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and, possibly, to glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. They undertook their trek as winter snows were sweeping into the high passes, and five weeks were required to reach their destination. For Matthiessen, a student of Zen Buddhism, there was a spiritual quest as well, for he hoped to find the revered Lama of Shey at the ancient Buddhist shrine on the Crystal Mountain. Any trip is an experience that tests the life of the traveler. But this one especially was a real passage, unfolding and revealing the narrator and his world."
Penguin, 1987 (first published 1978). 338 pages, about 5 x 7¾ inches, paperback. New.
Item #741. Shipping weight: 0.9 lb. Publisher's price: $15.00. Your price: $9.00
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John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf
Foreword by Colin Fletcher.
In 1867, after recovering from a blinding accident while employed in an Indiana factory, 28-year-old John Muir set off on a walk southwards, to botanize the woodlands of the post-war southeast, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, and from there to Cuba, Panama, and to San Francisco, California. This book contains selections from his journal of the time, with some appended works from letters to cover his entry into California.
In his Foreword, Colin Fletcher admits that despite (or because?) of being compared to Muir, he didn't, at first, take to Muir's writings, of which he never could read more than a few pages. But after about three decades of not reading Muir, he gave him another try and found the Muir revealed in these pages more to his liking, with Muir's own unpolished words revealing the man behind the labels he has been given.
Published by Sierra Club Books, 1992 (Third printing). 126 pages, about 5½ x 8¼ inches, paperback. New.
Item #185. Shipping weight: 0.8 lb. Publisher’s price: $10.00. Your price: $6.00
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Chris Highland, Compiler and Editor, Meditations of John Muir: Nature’s Temple
“John Muir’s exuberance for nature was the touchstone for his commitment to the earth and all its creatures. As naturalist, writer, and activist, Muir shaped the spiritual and physical boundaries of some of our most treasured national parks.
“Editor Chris Highland pairs 60 insightful Muir quotes [generally about a half to three-quarters of a page long] with selections [usually only one line] from other celebrated thinkers and spiritual texts.”
I’m very impressed at how the other quotes, which include examples from Biblical, Koranic, Buddhist, and Hindu works, as well as from individuals throughout history, add further dimension to Muir’s thoughts and experiences.
Published by Wilderness Press, 2001 (2003 printing). 145 pages, illus. with several evocative photos, about 4½ x 7 inches, paperback. New.
Item #114. Shipping weight: 0.5 lb. Publisher’s price: $11.95. Your price: $8.75
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Fred D. White, Editor, Essential Muir
The editor has extracted a selection of John Muir's writings (including some from periodicals that are not often reprinted in volumes such as this) and grouped them in five parts representative of the breadth of Muir's talents: 1) The Visionary Inventory. 2) The Wandering Minstrel. 3)The Nature Scribe and Rhapsode. 4) The Global Adventurer. 5) The Planet Steward.
Published by Santa Clara University and Heyday Books, 2006. 131 pages, about 5½ x 8½ inches, paperback. New.
Item #868. Shipping weight: 0.8 lb. Publisher’s price: $11.95. Your price: $7.25 (Out of stock; unlikely to restock)
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Gary Paul Nabhan and Stephen Trimble, The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places
"The geography and natural history of childhood begins in family, at home, whether that home is in a remote place or in a city. Many naturalists start their journeys on ditchbanks, in empty lots—in any open space just beyond the backyard fence. In our essays here, we consider the influences that natural settings, native plants, and wild animals have on toddlers and teenagers; on girls as well as boys; on families and community traditions; and on a variety of cultures, not just those characterized as 'the Western World.' Simply put, we are concerned about how few children now grow up incorporating plants, animals, and places into their sense of home." —From the authors' Preface.
Beacon Press, 1994. 184 pages, about 6 x 9 inches, paperback. New.
Item #450. Shipping weight: 1.2 lbs. Publisher's price: $14.00. Your price: $6.50
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Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-eye View of the World
Pollan "ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed
Published by Random House, 2001. 271 pages, about 5 x 8 inches, paperback. New.
Item #462. Shipping weight: 0.9 lb. Publisher’s price: $13.95. Your price: $9.25 (OUT OF STOCK, unlikely to restock this year)
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Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
"Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. Will it be fast food tonight, or something organic? Or perhaps something we grew ourselves? The question of what to have for dinner has confronted us since man discovered fire. But as Michael Pollan explains in this revolutionary book, how we answer it now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may determine our survival as a species."
Published by Penguin Books, 2007. 450 pages, about 5½ x 8¼ inches, paperback. New.
Item #559. Shipping weight: 1.3 lbs. Publisher’s price: $16.00. Your price: $10.00 (Out of stock)
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David Quammen, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction
"In my opinion, Quammen is the finest Natural History writer there is, and The Song of the Dodo is his most important work. In it, he draws on the findings of a rather obscure realm of science—island biogeography—and applies those findings to conservation principles worldwide.
"Basically, island biogeography is the study of life on islands, particularly the fauna. One basic tenet is that the smaller the island, the fewer species it will contain (less biodiversity), and the smaller the chance of harboring large creatures whose habitat requirements demand large areas. Despite the fact that speciation and evolution have taken some wondrous forms on islands, one theme stands out above everything else: Islands are a dead-end road; islands are where species go to die.
"Having exposed the reader to island biogeography and its findings, Quammen looks at wildlife conservation efforts on the mainland, and what he sees troubles him greatly—areas set aside as National Parks, Wildlife Refuges, sanctuaries, etc. These are all well-intentioned, he argues, but inadequate, especially for protecting large mammals, for what we are really doing is creating "islands" of disconnected, fragmented habitat. Even a 2.2 million acre "island" like Yellowstone will not naturally sustain a grizzly population for the long haul. Without connecting these sanctuaries, we're deluding ourselves.
"Quammen's brilliance is in taking these ideas out of academia and the general parlance of biology, and foisting them onto the general public through this book. Anyone to whom biodiversity means anything at all must read this book."—Joseph Belli, store supporter.
Touchstone, 1997. 702 pages, about 6 x 9 inches, paperback. New.
Item #742. Shipping weight: 2.5 lbs. Publisher's price: $20.00. Your price: $12.00
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C.L. Rawlins, Broken Country: Mountains & Memory
Finding a place of understanding in Wyoming's remote Salt River Range, while looking after a herd of sheep.
Henry Holt, 1996. 279 pages, about 6½ x 9½ inches, hardcover. New, remainder.
Item #513. Shipping weight: 1.7 lbs. Cover price: $25.00. Your price: $5.00 <
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Lester Rowntree, Hardy Californians: A Woman's Life with Native Plants
A 1936 classic, reprinted and expanded, is a chronicle of a remarkable adventuring woman who, at the age of 52 left a comfortable middle-class existence to travel the wildlands of California alone, studying wild plants, collecting and selling their seeds, and writing about their attributes and how to grow them in the garden. This new edition includes a bigraphical sketch about Rowntree's life written by her two grandsons (one of whom shares her name and both of whom have felt her influence in their careers as professors in the biological sciences). It also includes a table updating the botanical names in the work, and an essay by Judith Lowry on Rowntree's horticultural legacy. The original black and white photographs of the work have been reproduced anew from the author's original negatives (crisp, clear images that you appreciate all the more when you understand that Rowntree used a large format camera hauled into the mountains by burro!).
University of California Press, 2006. 308 pages, about 6 x 9 inches, paperback. New.
Item #20. Publisher's price: $19.95. Your price: $18.00 (Out of stock)
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John and Mildred Teal, Life and Death of the Salt Marsh
Audubon/Ballantine, 1969. 274 pages, about 4¼ x 7 inches, paperback. Used, good condition; pages yellowed but unmarked.
Item #JMTLD5. Shipping weight: 0.7 lb. Your price: $1.50
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Henry David Thoreau, The Illustrated World of Thoreau
Edited by Howard Chapnick; words by Thoreau, photographs by Ivan Massar. An album of contemporary (well, mid '70s) photographs arranged among passages from Henry David.
Grosset and Dunlap, 1974. 174 pages, about 8½ x 11 inches, hardcover. Used, dust jacket with a few minor rips.
Item #HB676. Shipping weight: 2.7 lbs. Your price: $6.00
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Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods
Dover, 1995 (originally published 1854). Unabridged. 216 pages, about 5 x 8 inches, paperback. New.
Item #94. Shipping weight: 0.8 lb. Publisher's price: $2.50. Your price: $2.25
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Scott Thybony, Wildfire
A bold photo-essay on wildfire in the west, that emphasizes how a hundred years of fire suppression have made forests even more susceptible to catastrophic fires. “Though fires have raged around the world since there was anything to burn, they have taken on a new meaning since humans have woven their settlement closer to the woods and wildlands. This book describes the drama and the fear, the heroism and the renewal, of this classic struggle between humans and nature.”
Western National Parks Association, 2002. 49 pages, illus., about 10 x 8 inches, paperback. New.
Item #492. Shipping weight: 0.8 lb. Publisher’s price: $8.95. Your price: $3.00 (only available copy has creased front corner)
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Marie Winn, Red-Tails in Love: A Wildlife Drama in Central Park
This book was in the news recently, when one of the subjects, a male red-tail called Pale Male, had his nest removed from an apartment building—much to the dismay of birders and some of the building's own residents.
"An amazing drama, as good as any soap opera and all the more remarkable since it is a true wildlife story."—Birding
Vintage Departures, 1999. 317 pages, about 5 x 8 inches, paperback. New.
Item #319. Shipping weight: 1.0 lb. Publisher's price: $13.00. Your price: $7.50
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Wolfgang Zuckermann, End of the Road: From World Car Crisis to Sustainable Transportation
Chelsea Green, 1991. 299 pages, about 6 x 9 inches, paperback. Used, very good condition except four pages bound and printed out of order (but all there).
Item #HB673. Shipping weight: 1.6 lbs. Cover price: $16.95. Your price: $1.50
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