A Sand County Almanac (Outdoor Essays & Reflections)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345345053 ISBN 13: 9780345345059

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1986

The environmental classic that redefined the way we think about the natural world—an urgent call for preservation that’s more timely than ever.
 
“We can place this book on the shelf that holds the writings of Thoreau and John Muir.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
These astonishing portraits of the natural world explore the breathtaking diversity of the unspoiled American landscape—the mountains and the prairies, the deserts and the coastlines. Conjuring up one extraordinary vision after another, Aldo Leopold takes readers with him on the road and through the seasons on a fantastic tour of our priceless natural resources, explaining the destructive effects humankind has had on the land and issuing a bold challenge to protect the world we love.

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