Sand County Almanac - Softcover

Leopold, Aldo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345253361 ISBN 13: 9780345253361

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1977

With other Essays on Conservation from Round River'. Illustrated by Charles W. Schwartz.

Review:

Published in 1949, shortly after the author's death, A Sand County Almanac is a classic of nature writing, widely cited as one of the most influential nature books ever published. Writing from the vantage of his summer shack along the banks of the Wisconsin River, Leopold mixes essay, polemic, and memoir in his book's pages. In one famous episode, he writes of killing a female wolf early in his career as a forest ranger, coming upon his victim just as she was dying, "in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.... I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view." Leopold's road-to-Damascus change of view would find its fruit some years later in his so-called land ethic, in which he held that nothing that disturbs the balance of nature is right. Much of Almanac elaborates on this basic premise, as well as on Leopold's view that it is something of a human duty to preserve as much wild land as possible, as a kind of bank for the biological future of all species. Beautifully written, quiet, and elegant, Leopold's book deserves continued study and discussion today. --Gregory McNamee

From the Publisher:

A profoundly affecting work. I first read this in a college ecology class and its a book I return to again and again for mental and spiritual grounding. Simple, beautiful, important and imperative.
Teri Henry, Director of Subsidiary Rights