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 Publishers
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 …
Writing Opportunity: The Wallace Stegner Prize in Environmental Humanities
Here is an excellent opportunity presented by the University of Utah Press: The Wallace Stegner Prize will be awarded to the best monograph submitted to the Press in the broad …
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 …
What We’re Reading: September 2019
Midge Raymond This opinion piece in The Guardian shows in great detail why eating animals and animal products needs to be part of the conversation about climate change.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/08/ipcc-land-climate-report-carbon-cost-meat-dairy This opinion …
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 …
Notes from the ASLE Conference in Davis, California
ASLE is the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Every other year, the organization hosts a conference; this year it was at the University of California at …
Where the Crawdads Sing
Kya Clark, the protagonist in Delia Owens’ debut novel, Where the Crawdads Sing, knows little of the world beyond the remote sliver of North Carolina coastal marsh she calls home. …
Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment: And our irrational, insatiable, unsustainable desire to control nature
I feel ashamed to admit this, but until recently I had not read, end to end, Silent Spring. I had read parts of the book over the years and have …