Reading Nature highlights the ten books that most influenced the scope and direction of literary natural history in the United States, exploring how American nature writing came to focus on the deep observation of wild landscapes. It explores how nature writing evolved over 163 years, beginning with the publication of Thoreau’s Walden in 1854.
Reading Nature highlights the ten books that most influenced the scope and direction of literary natural history in the United States. It explores how American nature writing came to focus on the deep observation of wild landscapes and how the genre evolved over 163 years, beginning with the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden in 1854. The volume also examines Mary Austin’s Land of Little Rain (1903), John Burroughs’s Ways of Nature (1905), Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (1949), Rachel Carson’s The Sea around Us (1951), Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire (1968), Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge (1991), Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass (2013), and Drew Lanham’s The Home Place (2016). This book features a series of close readings exploring how these authors transformed popular understanding of the natural world.
Contents Paying Attention Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David
Thoreau (1854) Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin (1903) Ways of Nature by
John Burroughs (1905) A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There by
Aldo Leopold (1949) The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson (1951) Desert
Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey (1968) Pilgrim at
Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard (1974) Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family
and Place by Terry Tempest Williams (1991) Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous
Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall
Kimmerer (2013) The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Mans Love Affair with
Nature by J. Drew Lanham (2016) Writing Nature: Convergences Acknowledgments
Works Cited Readings for Further Study, by
Chapter
John Seibert Farnsworth is Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies and Sciences, Emeritus, at Santa Clara University, where his teaching and research focused on environmental writing and literature. He is currently serving a three-year term on Washington States Wildlife Diversity Advisory Council, where he cochairs a subcommittee on the WDFW State Wildlife Action Plan. He is the author of Nature Beyond Solitude: Notes from the Field and Coves of Departure: Notes from the Sea of Cortes.
