A quiet quest for meaning in a rugged physical and psychic terrain.
Drawing on findings from leading health researchers as well as conversations with both chemical and organic farmers from coast to coast, Maria Rodale's Organic Manifesto irrefutably outlines the unacceptably high cost of chemical farming on our health and our environment. She traces the genesis of chemical farming and the rise of the immense companies that profit from it, bringing to light the government's role in allowing such practices to flourish. She further explains that modern organic farm...
Lyon Thomas J. : This Incomperable Lande (Penguin nature library)
by John Burroughs
For Ruth Ann Ingraham, spending part of her time in a cabin in the woods in southern Indiana becomes a journey of discovery--of herself and her place in the natural world. Suddenly freed from the urban daily grind, she is able to focus more intently on her surroundings. And she can look more deeply into herself and examine her beliefs. As they settle into the place, the passing of each day offers up simple truths as Ruth Ann and her husband repair the cabin, learn the contour and texture of the...
Hunter, naturalist, and conservationist, Jim Corbett is famous for slaying man-eating tigers and leopards in the Kumaon region of northern India. Frequently appealed to by the government of the United Provinces during the 1920s and the 1930s for help, Corbett is known to have shot nineteen tigers and fourteen leopards-all man-eaters. Corbett was encouraged to write about his hunting experiences by Roy E. Hawkins, manager of the Indian Branch of the Oxford University Press and a personal friend....
H.E. Bates's evocation of a year in the life of an English woodland has been reprinted to make a suitable gift for gardeners and nature lovers. Bates has an eye for every detail describing the sights and sounds of the countryside and the endless variety of plants and animals as each emerges in turn with the changing seasons. The text is complemented by Agnes Miller Parker's wood engravings, from full-page evocations of a fox stalking its prey to tail pieces showing a bunch of catkins or an owl a...
For half a century, David Stick has been writing books about the fragile chain of barrier islands off the North Carolina coast known as the Outer Banks. Two of his earliest, Graveyard of the Atlantic and The Outer Banks of North Carolina , were published by the UNC Press in the 1950s, and continue to be best-sellers. More recently, Stick embarked on another project, searching for the most captivating and best-written examples of what others have said about his beloved Outer Banks. In the process...
As any pet lover knows, a wagging tail or a tender purr can soothe the soul after a hard day. And sometimes, the presence of dogs and cats in our lives can do even more. In these delightful books, Callie Smith Grant collects stories that celebrate the dogs and cats in our lives--stories that touch our hearts, renew our spirit, and show us how God created these creatures for unique purposes. Well-known authors, as well as new voices, share their inspirational true stories of these otherwise ord...
Trees are the grandest and most beautiful plant creations on earth. From their shade-giving, arching branches and strikingly diverse bark to their complex root systems, trees represent shelter, stability, place, and community as few other living objects can. Enduring Roots tells the stories of historic American trees, including the oak, the apple, the cherry, and the oldest of the world's trees, the bristlecone pine. These stories speak of our attachment to the land, of our universal and eternal...
One of the great wonders of the natural world, the Grand Canyon has long enticed visitors to gaze down upon its expansive beauty. For others, it is best observed from the river that flows through its majestic walls. In The Hidden Canyon, renowned photographer and river guide John Blaustein and environmental hero and bestselling author Edward Abbey document their epic journey through the canyon from the vantage point of the Colorado River. Abbey's humorous and lyrical journal, accompanied by Blau...
The author of the New York Times bestseller Everything Is Perfect When You're a Liar returns with a deeper and even funnier new collection of essays about the pleasures and perils of living in Kelly Oxford's head. Kelly Oxford likes to blow up the internet. Whether it is with the kind of Tweets that lead Rolling Stone to name her one of the Funniest People on Twitter or with pictures of her hilariously adorable family (human and animal) or with something much more serious, like creating the hash...
Can Poetry Save the Earth?: A Field Guide to Nature Poems
by Mr John Felstiner
From Jonathan Franzen, one of our preeminent writers and thinkers, comes a brilliant, searing essay collection that calls for us to take better care of our planet and one another in these troubled times. The End of the End of the Earth is a collection of Jonathan Franzen's essays and speeches from the past five years, in which he grapples with the most important and heated ethical subjects of the day: environmentalism, capitalism, wealth inequality, race, technology and the role of art. He chal...
Organized in four sections corresponding to the seasons, this account by an Amish farmer of his life in Southern Ohio, celebrates his daily labours, his family and, most importantly, the flora and fauna of his 70 acre farm. He works his land with horses and without electricity. He describes the proper preparation of Sassafras tea, maple sugaring in late winter, chopping firewood in autumn and rejoices in the vast diversity of the birds.
One of the delights of life is the discovery and rediscovery of patterns of order and beauty in nature—designs revealed by slicing through a head of cabbage or an orange, the forms of shells and butterfly wings. These images are awesome not just for their beauty alone, but because they suggest an order underlying their growth, a harmony existing in nature. What does it mean that such an order exists; how far does it extend? The Power of Limits was inspired by those simple discoveries of har...