Let me begin this review by saying that university presses and small presses have published some of the most creative and thought-provoking environmental literature I’ve read over the past few years. In this case, I want to praise the University of California Press for publishing the impressive work of author Christina Gerhardt and her collaborators, …
In Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet author Ben Goldfarb shines a light on the millions of animals who perish on our roads. There are four million miles of paved roads in the US on which a million animals die each year. Goldfarb notes the tragic irony of our road …
“An ideological descendant of the Gold Rush, the green rush serves as yet another get-rich-quick fantasy founded on the erasure of Native People …aptly named the green rush, this surge in cannabis production evokes gold-rush era ideology of manifest destiny, resource extraction, and wealth accumulation.” –Dr. Kaitlin Reed (p.123) Dr. Kaitlin Reed, a Yurok woman scholar, …
New this year from Milkweed Editions is a must-read essay collection of powerful Black nature writing. Originated and edited by Erin Sharkey, A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars is a stunning and needed anthology. These essays by eleven contemporary writers address the presence of Black people and their contributions not only …
Author Edwin Way Teale, a somewhat forgotten naturalist extraordinaire, was a pleasing lyrical writer who followed the seasons across America in cross-country car trips with his wife Nellie four times in his lifetime. These coast-to-coast meanderings across America resulted in four signature natural history books: North With The Spring (1951), Autumn Across America (1956), Journey Into Summer (1960), and the Pulitzer …
By Tom Comitta Coffee House Press, 2023 Reviewed by JoeAnn Hart “No words of my own can be added anywhere in the novel,” writes The Nature Book’s author, Tom Comitta, with a nod to the Oulipo group[1] and a whiff of Sol LeWitt[2], as he defines the constraints and rules of this extraordinary novel. Every …
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 …