Book 263

A Sand County Almanac

by Aldo Leopold

Published 6 March 1968
First published in 1949 and praised in The New York Times Book Review as "a trenchant book, full of vigor and bite," A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land.

Written with an unparalleled understanding of the ways of nature, the book includes a section on the monthly changes of the Wisconsin countryside; another part that gathers informal pieces written by Leopold over a forty-year period as he traveled through the woodlands of Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona, Sonora, Oregon, Manitoba, and elsewhere; and a final section in which Leopold addresses the philosophical issues involved in wildlife conservation. As the forerunner of such important books as Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, and Robert Finch's The Primal Place, this classic work remains as relevant today as it was forty years ago.


Book 372

Round River

by Aldo Leopold

Published 2 November 1972
To those who know the charm of Aldo Leopold's writing in A Sand County Almanac, this collection from his journals and essays will be a new delight. The journal entries included here were written in camp during his many field trips--hunting, fishing, and exploring--and they indicate the source of ideas on land ethics found in his longer essays. They reflect as well two long canoe trips in Canada and a sojourn in Mexico, where Leopold hunted deer with bow
and arrow. The essays presented here are culled from the more contemplative notes which were still in manuscript form at the time of Leopold's death in 1948, fighting a brush fire on a neighbor's
farm. Round River has been edited by Leopold's son, Luna, a geologist well-known in the field of conservation. It is also charmingly illustrated with line drawings by Charles W. Schwartz. All admirers of Leopold's work--indeed, all lovers of nature--will find this book richly rewarding.