Going to Seed, Essays on Idleness, Nature, & Sustainable Work

By Kate J. Neville Texas Tech University Press, 2024, The Sowell Emerging Writers Prize Winner I read Going to Seed right before the U.S election, when I was full of hope for the future of the earth, frantically writing postcards and going to purple states to canvass door-to-door, ready to usher in a woman president. …

Read more

North Woods, a novel by Daniel Mason

Random House, 2023 “Shivers of lust passed through his elytra as he found her scent grow stronger,” and there we are, in the head of an Elm Bark beetle, one of many POVs in the thoroughly enchanting novel North Woods by Daniel Mason. The beetle had been deposited in this wooded piece of land in …

Read more

Book Review: What a Bee Knows by Stephen Buchmann

In pollinator ecologist Stephen Buchmann’s What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees, the author makes a compelling case for why we need to pay closer attention to bees (and to protect them), offering stories and anecdotes from research and observation that highlight the fascinating lives of these extraordinary creatures.

Book Review: Entangled Life

Funny the difference a word makes. Restaurants generally don’t advertise “fungi” on their menus. But “mushrooms” and “truffles” are a different story. Even though they are the same thing. Which leads me to a book that took me out of the animal kingdom and into the fungi kingdom, a far more populous and less understood …

Read more

New and forthcoming environmental books (March 2024)

Here are some of the latest books to land on our desks. Please take a moment to scroll down and check them out! Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth by Margaret Klein Salamon with Molly Gage Overwhelmed by climate anxiety? Transform your angst into action to become the hero humanity …

Read more

Environmental Armageddon in Cannabis Country

“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, …

Read more

Book Review: A Darker Wilderness, edited by Erin Sharkey

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 …

Read more

Book Review: The wildflowers and mushrooms of North America

The wildflowers are in bloom here in Oregon. And while I love coming across them on hikes I’m mostly clueless about what exactly each flower is. I consult the iNaturalist app (which is excellent by the way) though I find myself feeling a bit guilty afterwards; I’d like to at least make an effort to …

Read more

Book Review: The Gatekeeper of America’s Seasons: Edwin Way Teale’s four iconic environmental books

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 …

Read more

Book Review: The Nature Book, a novel

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 …

Read more

Book Review: Where do you get your protein? This book is a good start…

There was a time, many years ago, when I believed that I couldn’t give up eating meat because I needed my protein. I was an athlete after all. I needed lots of protein — even though I had little idea what protein actually was. I only believed that it must have come from animals. I …

Read more

Item added to cart.
0 items - $0.00