Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, activist, author and orator, was also a gardener. In 1949 he published an article about growing pumpkins and in it he wrote: The ground was prepared –seed sown– and the planet cultivated by our own colored hands; and although the soil is American, it took no offense on the account of …
It’s time for an update on all the fascinating new books we’re heard about but don’t (yet) have time to read. Hopefully one or more of these titles will pique your interest… THE ENVIRONMENTAL UNCONSCIOUS: Ecological Poetics from Spenser to Milton By Steven Swarbrick Bringing psychoanalysis to bear on the diagnosis of ecological crisisWhy has …
When the U.S. Army set out to eliminate Native Americans, they first “eradicated the web of life that sustained them,” most notably by slaughtering all the buffalo that they depended on, then depleting the land itself with herds of imported cattle. “The genocide of the Amerindian peoples was the beginning of the modern world for Europe – bringing vast wealth to those countries.”
Never had the proverb You are what you eat came to mind so often as I was reading Frankenstein was a Vegetarian by Michael Owen Jones. The book encompasses a wide-ranging assortment of essays about subjects such as the last meals of death row inmates, the meals politicians choose to be photographed eating, and cultural …
DEFENSIBLE SPACES, stories by Alison Turner Torrey House Press February 2023 Fire! It’s everywhere in Alison Turner’s tightly knit collection of stories, from fireworks to a flaming ham, “a pink plastic hunk the size of a baby.” Everyone in the small post-mining community of Clayton, Colorado, elevation 8,236 feet, seems to have a lit cigarette …
As a fan of the Rachel Carson Center I was excited to see the recent launch of the first edition of Springs, their new environmental journal: The Rachel Carson Center (RCC) is pleased to announce the launch of Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review. Our new open-access online publication features peer-reviewed articles, creative nonfiction, and artistic contributions that …
If you were expecting a book called “Environment” to include an inspiring exploration of how trees communicate, poetic scenes of dolphins swimming gracefully through a blue ocean or an examination of sparkling lakes in gorgeous national parks, you’d be in for a downer surprise. The environmental overview that is Environment by Rolf Halden is instead—as the plastic …
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, February 2022 (Published in the UK as The Sea is Not Made of Water) Life Between the Tides is my kind of book. British author, Adam Nicolson, grandson of Vita Sackville-West, sets out to write about tide pools and the intertidal zone, but those subjects turn out to be just launching …
In 2016, we began compiling lists of the best books we read that year (new or old, it didn’t matter). And now here we are in 2021, and we’ve got another wonderful list of the best environmental books we’ve read this year. These may not be the books you’ll find in the top lists of …
Few people have done as much to protect whales and the waters they live in than Paul Watson. Founder of the Sea Shepherd Society, Watson has devoted a lifetime to quite literally going head-to-head with whalers in oceans around the world. Watson is also a powerful writer, with numerous books to his name over the …
Upon reading the synopsis, Richard Girling’s The Longest Story appears to take on an ambitious task: cover the relationship between humans and non-human animals throughout all of history in under 400 pages. Yet somehow Girling, a veteran environmental journalist, is successful. Though The Longest Story does almost exclusively favor Western humanity and culture, Girling provides …
In A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Bird of Prey Jonathan Meiburg has crafted an epic ode to the caracara, a long-overlooked (and often derided) group of birds who deserves more attention and more protection. There are about ten species of caracara and Meiburg takes us around …
Perhaps it is human nature to rank things. We rank cities and states and countries. We have the best restaurants and best movies; we even have best friends. And when it comes to our relationships with animals we share this planet with, there is a fair amount of ranking there as well, with the human …
Kim Stallwood has been on the forefront of the animal rights movement since the 1970s, giving him a unique perspective on where the movement has come from and where it is headed. In Growl, he shares his journey and insights learned along the way, from leadership of BUAV (now Cruelty Free Intl) in the UK …