St. Louis Blues: The Broken Heart of America
The cover of The Broken Heart of America by Walter Johnson features a nearly complete St. Louis Arch, known as the Gateway to the West. It was completed about six …
History
Book Review: Phoenix Zones by Hope Ferdowsian
Phoenix Zones: Where Strength Is Born and Resilience Lives by Hope Ferdowsian, MD, is among the many compassionate, powerful, inspiring books the world needs now. This slender book about trauma …
Review: In The Art of Earth Architecture everything old is new again
As an architectural enthusiast, I have long admired Louis Khan. When I first visited San Diego years ago, I made sure to visit The Salk Institute. To see how concrete …
Bird by Word: Two reviews of American Birds: A Literary Companion
As I finished reading American Birds: A Literary Companion I realized that there were two reviews I could write: the “typical American birder” review and the “atypical vegan birder” review. …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
LitHub’s climate change library
If we lived on this planet only one day a year then perhaps celebrating one “Earth Day” a year would make more sense. But as LitHub points out, every day …
The Great (Unknown) Pet Massacre
The title of this book almost begs incredulity. The Great Cat & Dog Massacre? When I first saw the book cover I struggled to imagine what the book was about …