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The Norton Book of Nature Writing/Field Guide
W. W. Norton is pleased to announce that The Norton Book of Nature Writing is now available in a paperback college edition. The definitive anthology of nature writing in English, this book has been significantly expanded and is now accompanied by a field guide of valuable resources for both teachers and students.
1135 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1990
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About the author
Robert Finch
77 books34 followersRobert Finch has lived on and written about Cape Cod for forty years. He is the author of six collections of essays and co-editor of The Norton Book of Nature Writing.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 6, 2022
I took a chance on a used copy of this book at an online bookstore for $6. It is a bit battered, showing its former life as a textbook, with lots of underlinings and marginal notes in three different hands, but all the pages are there and the binding is intact. As I looked through the table of contents I saw a number of writers I had never heard of, and others I knew but not in the context of nature writing, and I was sure that in its 900+ pages I would finds some interesting new authors and books to add to my reading list.
I was not disappointed. Like all anthologies it casts its net so widely that not all selections will be to everyone’s taste, but it was definitely worth my time. The writings take the reader from Africa to Alaska, from the deserts of the American Southwest to the rocky shores of New England, and across the globe. Some concentrate on a single small patch of land, some stretch their vision across entire continents. There are meditations on the consciousness of animals, and stories of hunting them for food or sport. Some use nature as a backdrop for tales of personal growth, and some go off to such weird places that I wondered if the authors were stoned when they wrote them (case in point, Loren Eiseley’s walk along a Mexican beach turning into his own personal mythology of the Star Thrower and the Eye Within the Skull).
There are also some selections that are beautifully written but scientifically wrong, although they reflected the best knowledge as of the time of their writing and remind us how much of what we think we know today is provisional or speculative. Science works by joining together bits and pieces of hard knowledge with plausible but uncertain associations and implications. A century from now people may roll their eyes and shake their head in wonder that we could have ever been so wrong about things like string theory or protein synthesis.
The writing styles are of course as varied as the authors themselves, ranging from intensely personal and emotive to hard analytical, but the book’s editors did a fine job gathering samples of the best of nature writing over the past few centuries. Below, I include some of the passages that I found most interesting, memorable, or beautiful.
- [Partridges] are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. (Henry David Thoreau, p. 174-175)
- Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight; and which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated. All other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our houses, but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western Isles, as old as mankind, and...will endure as long; for the decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives. (Henry David Thoreau p. 186)
- Time itself has gone on like this; the years have accumulated, first in drifts, then in heaps, and now a vast mount, to which the mountains are knolls, rises up and overshadows us. Time lies heavy on the world. The old, old earth is glad to turn from the cark and care of drifted centuries to the first sweet blades of green. (Richard Jefferies, p. 345)
- Under all the dulcet warmth of the face of things lurks the bitter spirit of the cold. Stand still for more than a few moments and the cold creeps with a warning, and then a menace into the breast. That is the bitterness that makes this morning of all others in the year so mournful in its beauty. (Edward Thomas, p. 367)
- At all times I love rain, the early momentous thunderdrops, the perpendicular cataracts shining, or at night the little showers, the spongy mists, the tempestuous mountain rain. I like to see it possessing the whole earth at evening, smothering civilization, taking away from me myself everything except the power to walk under the dark trees and to enjoy as humbly as the hissing grass, while some twinkling house-light or song sung by a lonely man gives a foil to the immense dark force. (Edward Thomas, p. 369)
- It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking [the moth] as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. (Virginia Woolf, p. 374)
- Now the aspens on the hill are all remarkable with the translucent membranes of blood-veined leaves. They are gold-brown, but not like autumn, rather like the thin wings of bats when like birds – call them birds – they wheel in clouds against the setting sun, and the sun glows through the stretched membrane of their wings, as through thin, brown-red stained glass. This is the red sap of summer, not the red dust of autumn. And in the distance the aspens have the tender panting glow of living membrane just come awake. This is the beauty of the frailty of spring. (D.H. Lawrence, p. 386-387)
- When the great earth, abandoning day, rolls up the deeps of the heavens and the universe, a new door opens for the human spirit, and there are few so clownish that some awareness of the mystery of being does not touch them as they gaze. For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars – pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time. Fugitive though the instant be, the spirit of man is, during it, ennobled by a genuine moment of emotional dignity, and poetry makes its own both the human spirit and experience. (Henry Beston, p. 398)
- Then time gathered again like a cloud, and presently the stars began to pale over an ocean still dark with remembered night. (Henry Beston, p. 399)
- Man is himself, like the universe he inhabits, like the demoniacal stirrings of the ooze from which he sprang, a tale of desolations. He walks in his mind from birth to death the long resounding shores of endless disillusionment. Finally the commitment to life departs or turns to bitterness. But out of such desolation emerges the awesome freedom to choose – to choose beyond the narrowly circumscribed circle that delimits the animal being. In that widening ring of human choice, chaos and order renew their symbolic struggle in the role of titans. They contend for the destiny of a world. (Loren Eiseley, p. 545)
- It has been said, and truly, that everything in the desert either stings, stabs, stinks, or sticks. You will find the flora here as venomous, hooked, barbed, thorny, prickly, needled, saw-toothed, hairy, stickered, mean, bitter, sharp, wiry, and fierce as the animals. Something about the desert inclines all living things to harshness and acerbity. The soft evolve out. (Edward Abbey, p. 686)
- The leopard lay on an open rise, in the shadow of a wind-worn bush, and unlike the lions, it lay gracefully. Even stretched on a tree limb, all four feet hanging, as it is as seen sometimes in the fever trees, the leopard has the grace of complete awareness, with all its tensions in its pointed eyes. The lion’s gaze is merely baleful; that of the leopard is malevolent, a distillation of the trapped fear that is true savagery. (Peter Matthiessen, p. 697)
- Though the Maasi have little faith in witchcraft, they recognize ill provenance and evil spirits, and a person dying is removed outside the fences so that death will not bring the village harm….Should someone die inside a hut, then the whole village must be moved, and it is said that the people listen for the howl of the hyenas, and establish the new village in that direction. The Maasai are afraid of death, though not afraid to die. (Peter Matthiessen, p. 705)
- The Mbugwe of the southern flats of Lake Manyara resort to rainmakers, and formerly, in time of drought, so it is said, would sacrifice an unblemished black bull, then an unblemished black man, and finally the rainmaker himself. (Peter Matthiessen, p. 706)
- If the sun were a golf ball in Boston, the Earth would be a pinpoint twelve feet away, and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would be another golf ball…in Cincinnati. (Chet Raymo, p. 789)
- In all societies, animals give our children images of order and diversity. We are teaching them to think, not just about food on the table or fangs in the bushes, but about ourselves. We are teaching them to separate human qualities from human beings, but not from life. Animals thus enable us to add the reach of the eye to the reach of the hearts. And that makes us braver and more patient with adversity in our own lives. It makes us better able to get along with one another. (Peter Steinhart, p. 814)
- the old joke about breakfast. ‘[The body] can be satisfied, the mind, never.’ Wallace Stevens wrote that, and in the long run he was right. The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, and God. The mind’s sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy. (Annie Dillard, p. 847)
I was not disappointed. Like all anthologies it casts its net so widely that not all selections will be to everyone’s taste, but it was definitely worth my time. The writings take the reader from Africa to Alaska, from the deserts of the American Southwest to the rocky shores of New England, and across the globe. Some concentrate on a single small patch of land, some stretch their vision across entire continents. There are meditations on the consciousness of animals, and stories of hunting them for food or sport. Some use nature as a backdrop for tales of personal growth, and some go off to such weird places that I wondered if the authors were stoned when they wrote them (case in point, Loren Eiseley’s walk along a Mexican beach turning into his own personal mythology of the Star Thrower and the Eye Within the Skull).
There are also some selections that are beautifully written but scientifically wrong, although they reflected the best knowledge as of the time of their writing and remind us how much of what we think we know today is provisional or speculative. Science works by joining together bits and pieces of hard knowledge with plausible but uncertain associations and implications. A century from now people may roll their eyes and shake their head in wonder that we could have ever been so wrong about things like string theory or protein synthesis.
The writing styles are of course as varied as the authors themselves, ranging from intensely personal and emotive to hard analytical, but the book’s editors did a fine job gathering samples of the best of nature writing over the past few centuries. Below, I include some of the passages that I found most interesting, memorable, or beautiful.
- [Partridges] are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. (Henry David Thoreau, p. 174-175)
- Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight; and which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated. All other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our houses, but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western Isles, as old as mankind, and...will endure as long; for the decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives. (Henry David Thoreau p. 186)
- Time itself has gone on like this; the years have accumulated, first in drifts, then in heaps, and now a vast mount, to which the mountains are knolls, rises up and overshadows us. Time lies heavy on the world. The old, old earth is glad to turn from the cark and care of drifted centuries to the first sweet blades of green. (Richard Jefferies, p. 345)
- Under all the dulcet warmth of the face of things lurks the bitter spirit of the cold. Stand still for more than a few moments and the cold creeps with a warning, and then a menace into the breast. That is the bitterness that makes this morning of all others in the year so mournful in its beauty. (Edward Thomas, p. 367)
- At all times I love rain, the early momentous thunderdrops, the perpendicular cataracts shining, or at night the little showers, the spongy mists, the tempestuous mountain rain. I like to see it possessing the whole earth at evening, smothering civilization, taking away from me myself everything except the power to walk under the dark trees and to enjoy as humbly as the hissing grass, while some twinkling house-light or song sung by a lonely man gives a foil to the immense dark force. (Edward Thomas, p. 369)
- It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking [the moth] as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. (Virginia Woolf, p. 374)
- Now the aspens on the hill are all remarkable with the translucent membranes of blood-veined leaves. They are gold-brown, but not like autumn, rather like the thin wings of bats when like birds – call them birds – they wheel in clouds against the setting sun, and the sun glows through the stretched membrane of their wings, as through thin, brown-red stained glass. This is the red sap of summer, not the red dust of autumn. And in the distance the aspens have the tender panting glow of living membrane just come awake. This is the beauty of the frailty of spring. (D.H. Lawrence, p. 386-387)
- When the great earth, abandoning day, rolls up the deeps of the heavens and the universe, a new door opens for the human spirit, and there are few so clownish that some awareness of the mystery of being does not touch them as they gaze. For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars – pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time. Fugitive though the instant be, the spirit of man is, during it, ennobled by a genuine moment of emotional dignity, and poetry makes its own both the human spirit and experience. (Henry Beston, p. 398)
- Then time gathered again like a cloud, and presently the stars began to pale over an ocean still dark with remembered night. (Henry Beston, p. 399)
- Man is himself, like the universe he inhabits, like the demoniacal stirrings of the ooze from which he sprang, a tale of desolations. He walks in his mind from birth to death the long resounding shores of endless disillusionment. Finally the commitment to life departs or turns to bitterness. But out of such desolation emerges the awesome freedom to choose – to choose beyond the narrowly circumscribed circle that delimits the animal being. In that widening ring of human choice, chaos and order renew their symbolic struggle in the role of titans. They contend for the destiny of a world. (Loren Eiseley, p. 545)
- It has been said, and truly, that everything in the desert either stings, stabs, stinks, or sticks. You will find the flora here as venomous, hooked, barbed, thorny, prickly, needled, saw-toothed, hairy, stickered, mean, bitter, sharp, wiry, and fierce as the animals. Something about the desert inclines all living things to harshness and acerbity. The soft evolve out. (Edward Abbey, p. 686)
- The leopard lay on an open rise, in the shadow of a wind-worn bush, and unlike the lions, it lay gracefully. Even stretched on a tree limb, all four feet hanging, as it is as seen sometimes in the fever trees, the leopard has the grace of complete awareness, with all its tensions in its pointed eyes. The lion’s gaze is merely baleful; that of the leopard is malevolent, a distillation of the trapped fear that is true savagery. (Peter Matthiessen, p. 697)
- Though the Maasi have little faith in witchcraft, they recognize ill provenance and evil spirits, and a person dying is removed outside the fences so that death will not bring the village harm….Should someone die inside a hut, then the whole village must be moved, and it is said that the people listen for the howl of the hyenas, and establish the new village in that direction. The Maasai are afraid of death, though not afraid to die. (Peter Matthiessen, p. 705)
- The Mbugwe of the southern flats of Lake Manyara resort to rainmakers, and formerly, in time of drought, so it is said, would sacrifice an unblemished black bull, then an unblemished black man, and finally the rainmaker himself. (Peter Matthiessen, p. 706)
- If the sun were a golf ball in Boston, the Earth would be a pinpoint twelve feet away, and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would be another golf ball…in Cincinnati. (Chet Raymo, p. 789)
- In all societies, animals give our children images of order and diversity. We are teaching them to think, not just about food on the table or fangs in the bushes, but about ourselves. We are teaching them to separate human qualities from human beings, but not from life. Animals thus enable us to add the reach of the eye to the reach of the hearts. And that makes us braver and more patient with adversity in our own lives. It makes us better able to get along with one another. (Peter Steinhart, p. 814)
- the old joke about breakfast. ‘[The body] can be satisfied, the mind, never.’ Wallace Stevens wrote that, and in the long run he was right. The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, and God. The mind’s sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy. (Annie Dillard, p. 847)
January 25, 2020
It's no great surprise that this book, which has selections from scores of authors across several centuries, comes in with a middle-of-the-pack rating. There is probably no way it could be otherwise. But there are definitely some five-star gems buried in it. William Bartram's encounters with alligators reminds one that writers, or perhaps people generally, were made of sterner stuff in the 18th century. After being attacked repeatedly, in the dark, alone, by alligators which intend to make a meal of him, and having to fend them off with 18th century weaponry, he apologizes to the reader that he very nearly considered turning around, but instead decided to continue on for one more day. Oh, there were also bears.
Charles Darwin, Audubon, Jean Henri Fabre, Thoreau, all as good as their reputation.
More modern writers were often engaging as well. I very much enjoyed Ursula K. Le Guin's account of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, and Annie Dillard's account of witnessing a total solar eclipse. Towards the end, which for this book was the later 20th century, there did start to be a great deal of philosophizing, ecological or otherwise, and with some writers it fairly eclipsed the nature. No matter, with a volume of this sort one can skip ahead and see what the next writer has to say.
Charles Darwin, Audubon, Jean Henri Fabre, Thoreau, all as good as their reputation.
More modern writers were often engaging as well. I very much enjoyed Ursula K. Le Guin's account of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, and Annie Dillard's account of witnessing a total solar eclipse. Towards the end, which for this book was the later 20th century, there did start to be a great deal of philosophizing, ecological or otherwise, and with some writers it fairly eclipsed the nature. No matter, with a volume of this sort one can skip ahead and see what the next writer has to say.
October 23, 2022
The Norton Book of Nature Writing
93 authors are featured here with works that date back all the way to the 18th century. Most of the most famous naturalists m are featured here and a few famous authors not known for their naturalism.
I mention below those authors and their works that have previously escaped my attention. I didn't mention the obvious authors from which many of the excerpts are taken often from famous books better read in their entireties. Here were my favorites.
1. Gilbert White - wrote in his journal entries about tortoises including one he just bought. Very touching. Also wrote Antiquities of Selbourne and this classic is considered by many as the first popular treatise on naturalism.
2. Dorothy Wordsworth - hers is a beautiful and descriptive prose without being tedious like many poets of the era.
3. George Catlin - he writes bison (he calls them buffalo) circles also known as fairy circles and these patterns are found on the Great Plains. The circles are formed by the bison's horns and their wallowing in the freshly turned up mud to cool down in the summer months. Bison calves are sometimes lost in the movement of the herd and will bed down and stay still nearby. If gently approached by man and horse they will often follow them away from the prairie. Sadly Catlin was able to predict the buffalo's inevitable disappearance from the Great Plains some fifty years before it happened.
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson - before I read Emerson's Nature years ago I did not understand that church dogma (just pick any religion) was so traditionally anti-nature. This was a factor as to why so few "naturalist" authors had appeared in writings of the early 19th century as it was expensive to publish books then to find niche audiences. The wild was something to be tamed and eradicated not appreciated. Emerson was a deeply introspective and influential writer.
5. E.B. White - nature plays a prominent role in so many of White's famous works, the essay here is on Thoreau and it is so insightful.
6. Sigurd Olson - in "Northern Lights" he writes "I knew nothing then of protons or atoms and saw the northern lights as they should be seen."
7. Edwin Way Teale - my favorite nature author. His writings, as exemplified in "The Lost Woods", place emphasis on memories and evoke so much nostalgia without the negativity of saying we've got it all wrong today. His four season books are remarkable. Many of his books are out of print today and I had not read anything from "The Lost Woods."
8. Loren Eisely writes of birds in the cityscape and then in another essay about professional shellers near the seashore. His writings have tangential directions that are refreshing.
9. Archie Carr - was a professor and an authority on sea turtles. Carr had a gift for translating biological science to lay readers.
10. Wallace Stegner - perhaps our greatest author of the American West. Here he writes a wonderful essay called "Glen Canyon Submersus".
11. Lewis Thomas - this thought provoking article is entitled "Death in the Open". It is a humanizing view of death and questions how much of it in the biological world goes unnoticed - and perhaps it does so out of our sight simply for our own sanity.
12. Edward Abbey - contained here is a chapter entitled "The Great American Desert". As irreverent and wonderful a nature article as you will ever find. Even better is to read the whole book "Desert Solitaire."
13. John G. Mitchell - excerpts from "The Hunt." Wonderful and fair essays about what the title suggests - hunting.
14. Wendell Berry - he writes about his backcountry trip into the Daniel Boone National Forest. Berry is an old soul and that rare writer who taps into the emotion of wilderness.
4.5 stars. An essential reference book. These essays are from some of the very best English language writers on non-fiction and fiction alike of the past two centuries.
93 authors are featured here with works that date back all the way to the 18th century. Most of the most famous naturalists m are featured here and a few famous authors not known for their naturalism.
I mention below those authors and their works that have previously escaped my attention. I didn't mention the obvious authors from which many of the excerpts are taken often from famous books better read in their entireties. Here were my favorites.
1. Gilbert White - wrote in his journal entries about tortoises including one he just bought. Very touching. Also wrote Antiquities of Selbourne and this classic is considered by many as the first popular treatise on naturalism.
2. Dorothy Wordsworth - hers is a beautiful and descriptive prose without being tedious like many poets of the era.
3. George Catlin - he writes bison (he calls them buffalo) circles also known as fairy circles and these patterns are found on the Great Plains. The circles are formed by the bison's horns and their wallowing in the freshly turned up mud to cool down in the summer months. Bison calves are sometimes lost in the movement of the herd and will bed down and stay still nearby. If gently approached by man and horse they will often follow them away from the prairie. Sadly Catlin was able to predict the buffalo's inevitable disappearance from the Great Plains some fifty years before it happened.
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson - before I read Emerson's Nature years ago I did not understand that church dogma (just pick any religion) was so traditionally anti-nature. This was a factor as to why so few "naturalist" authors had appeared in writings of the early 19th century as it was expensive to publish books then to find niche audiences. The wild was something to be tamed and eradicated not appreciated. Emerson was a deeply introspective and influential writer.
5. E.B. White - nature plays a prominent role in so many of White's famous works, the essay here is on Thoreau and it is so insightful.
6. Sigurd Olson - in "Northern Lights" he writes "I knew nothing then of protons or atoms and saw the northern lights as they should be seen."
7. Edwin Way Teale - my favorite nature author. His writings, as exemplified in "The Lost Woods", place emphasis on memories and evoke so much nostalgia without the negativity of saying we've got it all wrong today. His four season books are remarkable. Many of his books are out of print today and I had not read anything from "The Lost Woods."
8. Loren Eisely writes of birds in the cityscape and then in another essay about professional shellers near the seashore. His writings have tangential directions that are refreshing.
9. Archie Carr - was a professor and an authority on sea turtles. Carr had a gift for translating biological science to lay readers.
10. Wallace Stegner - perhaps our greatest author of the American West. Here he writes a wonderful essay called "Glen Canyon Submersus".
11. Lewis Thomas - this thought provoking article is entitled "Death in the Open". It is a humanizing view of death and questions how much of it in the biological world goes unnoticed - and perhaps it does so out of our sight simply for our own sanity.
12. Edward Abbey - contained here is a chapter entitled "The Great American Desert". As irreverent and wonderful a nature article as you will ever find. Even better is to read the whole book "Desert Solitaire."
13. John G. Mitchell - excerpts from "The Hunt." Wonderful and fair essays about what the title suggests - hunting.
14. Wendell Berry - he writes about his backcountry trip into the Daniel Boone National Forest. Berry is an old soul and that rare writer who taps into the emotion of wilderness.
4.5 stars. An essential reference book. These essays are from some of the very best English language writers on non-fiction and fiction alike of the past two centuries.
February 19, 2025
3.5 stars.
A lot of tedious historical white men, a lot of old friends (there is quite a bit of overlap in those two categories). Also a few new friends and a few tiresome people I will continue to avoid outside of anthologies. (I only skipped one entry and it was frickin Ruskin. Ugh.)
A funny thing about groups like this is that if I am familiar with the subject, I invariably get frustrated by the exclusion of all the people whose writing I prefer, and whose writing DID already exist by the time the anthology came out (1990 in this case), but who didn't fit the mold of the anthologies and thus wouldn't make it in. With the Nortons specifically this is significantly less of a problem for me with their modern anthologies than with older ones .... their scope has mostly improved a lot.
In any case, overall, it was good to revisit so many old friends!
A lot of tedious historical white men, a lot of old friends (there is quite a bit of overlap in those two categories). Also a few new friends and a few tiresome people I will continue to avoid outside of anthologies. (I only skipped one entry and it was frickin Ruskin. Ugh.)
A funny thing about groups like this is that if I am familiar with the subject, I invariably get frustrated by the exclusion of all the people whose writing I prefer, and whose writing DID already exist by the time the anthology came out (1990 in this case), but who didn't fit the mold of the anthologies and thus wouldn't make it in. With the Nortons specifically this is significantly less of a problem for me with their modern anthologies than with older ones .... their scope has mostly improved a lot.
In any case, overall, it was good to revisit so many old friends!
February 7, 2020
some real good stuff in there
October 2, 2017
I bought this for a class years ago and it's still on my shelf because this book changed my perspective on a lot of varying things. Specifically and obviously, on nature and how it effects me and vice versa. I recommend this to everyone I can and I frequently go back to it. It's thought provoking and I think it offers something for everyone.
May 21, 2023
I'm sure putting a book like this together takes tremendous time and thought, and overall, I think they did I decent job. I feel as though when they venture to make adjustments in the future, they should make a North American version and then make an effort to compile more excerpts from other countries. The diversity in this is a little lacking to make it a complete summary of all nature writing. I did see an effort to include some of the great female writers, which I appreciated. I just feel like they can go further next time, and maybe a separation of the works would help. Of course, some of the writings are more tedious than others depending on your preferences.Took me a year to read the whole thing!!
June 11, 2022
The essays in this book captivated me and opened me to the genre of nature and science writing. Some of the essays in this anthology are among my all-time favorite writings.
I particularly love The Death of a Moth by Virginia Woolf, Under the Snow by John McPhee, Buckeye by Scott Russell Sanders, and The Flora and Fauna of Las Vegas by Ellen Meloy which ties as a favorite with The Clan of One Breasted Women by Terry Tempest Williams.
This is an old college textbook that has gained the position of treasured volume.
I particularly love The Death of a Moth by Virginia Woolf, Under the Snow by John McPhee, Buckeye by Scott Russell Sanders, and The Flora and Fauna of Las Vegas by Ellen Meloy which ties as a favorite with The Clan of One Breasted Women by Terry Tempest Williams.
This is an old college textbook that has gained the position of treasured volume.
March 20, 2018
This is probably the greatest collection of nature writers from our past I have ever read. The underlying theme is our natural world, however, the different snippets from the many well-known authors delve far deeper into their experiences in the outdoors, rather than merely detailing the beauty of the places they visited. Within these pages are fragments from Thoreau, Emerson, Muir, John Burroughs, John Wesley Powell, John Ruskin, John James Audubon, Washington Irving, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Herman Melville, WH Hudson, Richard Jeffries, Edward Thomas, Aldo Leopold, Donald Culross Peattie, George Orwell and many, many more. I cannot imagine a better resource to find authors in this genre. I've read it twice. It's as close as one can get to the outdoors without travelling there.
March 14, 2019
Emerson, Thoreau, Carson, Abbey
June 12, 2024
Great book no matter which end you start with. Wonderful collection of nature writing across time.
May 8, 2016
If you like varying descriptions of wildlife you should like this book. It is a collection of essays arranged in chronological order starting in the eighteenth century and finishing with the late twentieth century. I noticed that as the book progresses the essays become less sentimental and more objective, but none of them are bereft of sentimentality. This is certainly not a collection of scientific studies. It is more of a collection of musings. Most of the essays concentrate on American wildlife, but there are some forays to other continents especially Africa.
March 31, 2010
Currently reading this for school.
The assignments have us jumping around to different stories, so I wont be having any certain pages to record.
The assignments have us jumping around to different stories, so I wont be having any certain pages to record.
March 14, 2010
A first rate compilation. I suppose this is the only anthology that I've read from cover to cover. Full of wonderful works.
March 8, 2017
Reading the essays and discussing each in a small friendly group is heaven.
September 25, 2015
After years of perusing at a leisurely pace, I finished this gem. Perfect.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews