In Animal City our painful past is still painfully present
If I asked you to picture a “cow town,” you would probably picture a small town, surrounded by pasture, set far away from the big city. Yet in the 1800s, …
Nonfiction
Review: Building a Better World in Your Backyard
When it comes to nonfiction environmental books these days, I feel that we’re reaching “peek dystopia.” Or, at least I hope we are. Because it seems that between books about …
The best environmental books we’ve read in 2019
Looking back on the year, I’m happy to see that a novel that made our best books list in 2018 won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize: The Overstory by Richard Powers …
Book Review: Rescue Dogs: Where They Come From, Why They Act the Way They Do, and How to Love Them Well
Pete Paxton hesitated upon hearing the command, “Jump inside.” Inside the trench, which was more than one hundred feet long, six feet wide, and six feet deep, lay dogs in …
Book Review: Defending Giants: The Redwood Wars and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics
A decade ago, not long after moving to Oregon, I traveled to Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park where I entered an old-growth coast redwood forest for the first time. To …
Book Review: Gardenland: Nature, Fantasy, and Everyday Practice
When you hear the word “garden” do you picture something like this: Or do you picture something more like this: The fact that these are both “gardens” illustrates just how …
Book Review: The Humane Gardener
What in the world could be inhumane about gardening? Plenty, it turns out, thanks to this beautifully produced and incredibly important book by Nancy Lawson: The Humane Gardener: Nurturing a …
Review: Edge of Awe: Experiences of the Malheur-Steens Country
Funny how a word can change on you. When I moved to Oregon nearly a decade ago, I first heard about the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, about the Steens mountain …
Braiding Sweetgrass: Finding a way through environmental despair
At the ASLE conference earlier this summer I heard this book referenced in a number of sessions. And now, having read it, I realize why. Braiding Sweetgrass is a rich …
Allowed to Grow Old, Portraits of Elderly Animals From Farm Sanctuaries
By Isa Leshko Foreword by Sy Montgomery Essays by Gene Baur and Anne Wilkes Tucker University of Chicago Press, 2019 First, a disclaimer. While I wouldn’t call it a sanctuary, …