This Incomperable Lande: A Book of American Nature Writing

Thomas Lyon's splendid anthology offers a powerful synthesis of American ideas on nature, along with a first-rate set of essays of his own on the history of United States naturalism. These essays are alone worth the price of the book; so is Lyon's detailed chronology of events in the natural history of the continent. The anthology proper begins with an excerpt from William Wood's New England's Prospect (1634), a properly awed account of "the kingly lion and the strong-armed bear," moves on to great but little-known naturalist-explorers like William Bartram, John James Audubon, and Thomas Nuttall, and ends with modern giants like Aldo Leopold and Edward Abbey. Lyon's enterprise and unfailing good taste has yielded not only a model of literary selection and commentary, but a book that celebrates the best of the North American continent and what there is to protect.

Thomas Lyon's splendid anthology offers a powerful synthesis of American ideas on nature, along with a first-rate set of essays of his own on the history of United States naturalism. These essays are alone worth the price of the book; so is Lyon's detailed chronology of events in the natural history of the continent. The anthology proper begins with an excerpt from William Wood's New England's Prospect (1634), a properly awed account of "the kingly lion and the strong-armed bear," moves on to great but little-known naturalist-explorers like William Bartram, John James Audubon, and Thomas Nuttall, and ends with modern giants like Aldo Leopold and Edward Abbey. Lyon's enterprise and unfailing good taste has yielded not only a model of literary selection and commentary, but a book that celebrates the best of the North American continent and what there is to protect.