Several people have asked me to recommend books on “Nature Writing” for them to read. That started me thinking about what Nature Writing was and how I might categorize it. I soon gave up the task. There are too many ways to slice that cake. I finally decided to simply list the books that I remembered having read and then try to see what they had in common. I’m sure there are books that I have forgotten, but the list is long enough and I’m going to leave it as it is.
A quick look at the list reveals that it is heavy on the Natural History side of Nature Writing. That reflects my life long interest in animals and plants and my scientific interests that began in childhood.
Some of the books have a literary quality. They are highlighted and include the classics by Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold and Annie Dillard. I included Loren Eiseley’s work because it spoke to me personally, although it would be stretching the concept of Nature Writing to include some of his work, other than The Firmament of Time. He seems to slipped out of the public eye and I’d like more people to be aware of his output.
Others I highlighted because they were significant to me for one reason or another. (Seton’s books made a great impression on me as a child. My father read Two Little Savages as a boy and found a used copy to give to me for Christmas when I was 10 or 11. I was enchanted by the story and Seton’s pen and ink sketches that decorated the margins of most of the pages. Wild Animals I Have Known was one of the first “adult” books that I read at 8 or 9. I recently re-read it and found that it still moved me.)
The books by Comstock, Palmer and Williams are reference works, not designed to read straight through. But don’t ignore them for that reason — they are encyclopedias of natural history and I’ve turned to them many times.
I had never heard of Ann Zwinger until I met her at a Biology of Moths workshop at Pike’s Peak, Colorado. All her books on the southwest are meticulously researched and worth reading.
I indicated books that were important to me as a child (elementary and high school) with a single * ; ** indicates those that won the John Burroughs Medal.
Here’s the list. I hope you’ll read at least one of them. It took me 70 years to read these, so pace yourself.
Ackerman, Diane
A Natural History of the Senses; 1990
The Moon by
Whale Light; 1991
Alcock, John
Sonoran Desert Summer; 1994
The Masked Bobwhite Rides Again; 1993
**In a Desert Garden: Love and Death Among the Insects;
1997
An Enthusiasm for Orchids: Sex and Deception in Plant
Evolution; 2005
When the Rains Come: A Naturalist’s Year in the
Sonoran Desert; 2009
Angier, Natalie
The Beauty of the Beastly
Austin, Mary (1868-1934)
Land of Little
Rain; 1903
Berenbaum, May
Bugs in The System: Insects and
Their Impact On Human Affairs
Buzzwords: A Scientist Muses on
Sex, Bugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll
Ninety-nine More Maggots,
Mites, and Munchers
Ninety-nine Gnats, Nits, and Nibblers
The Earwig’s Tail: A Modern
Bestiary of Multi-legged Legends; 1996
Bernhardt, Peter
Wily Violets
and Underground Orchids: Revelations of a Botanist; 1989
Natural
Affairs: A Botanist Looks at the Attachments Between Plants and People; 1993
Burroughs, John
(1837-1921)
Birch Browsings: a John
Burroughs reader; ed. by
Bill McKibben, 1992
Carson, Rachel L. (1907-1964)
**The Sea Around Us; 1951
*Comstock, Anna Botsford (1854-1930)
Handbook of Nature Study; 1911
Constantz, George
Hollows, Peepers, and Highlanders: An Appalachian
Mountain Ecology; 1994, revised ed.,2004
Dethier, Vincent G. (1915-1993)
**Crickets and Katydids, Concerts and Solos; 1992
Dillard, Annie
Pilgrim at
Tinker’s Creek
Teaching a
Stone to Speak
*Ditmars, Raymond Lee (1876-1942)
Thrills of a Naturalist’s Quest; 1939
Snake Hunter’s Holiday; 1935
Eiseley, Loren (1907-1977)
The Immense Journey; 1959
The Unexpected Universe; 1972
The innocent assassins; 1973
All the Night Wings; 1979
The Star Thrower; 1979
The Night Country; 1997
The Invisible Pyramid; 1998
**The Firmament of Time; 1960
All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life; 2000
Evans, Howard Ensign
(1919-2002)
Wasp Farm. 1963 (paperback by Cornell
University Press,; 1985.)
Life on a
Little-Known Planet. 1968
The
Pleasures of Entomology. 1985
Cache La
Poudre: the Natural History of a River; 19xx.
Ehrlich, Gretel
The Solace
of Open Spaces; 1985
Eisner, Thomas (1929-2011)
For Love of
Insects;
2003
*Fabre, Jean Henri (1823-1915) see Teale, Edwin Way
Forsyth, Adrian & Ken Miyata
Tropical Nature: Life and Death in the Rain Forests of
Central and South America; 1972
Haskell, David George
The Forest
Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature; 2013
Heinrich, Bernd
The Homing Instinct Meaning and Mystery in Animal
Migration
Ravens in Winter
Life Everlasting the Animal Way of Death
The Nesting Season Cuckoos Cuckolds and the Invention
of Monogamy
Summer World a Season of Bounty
**Mind of the
Raven Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-birds
The Geese of
Beaver Bog
Bumblebee Economics
Winter World
the Ingenuity of Animal Survival
One Man’s Owl
Mind of the Raven Investigations and Adventures with
Wolf-birds
A Year in the Maine Woods
The Thermal Warriors Strategies of Insect Survival
The Trees in My Forest
The Thermal Warriors Strategies of Insect Survival
The Hot-blooded Insects Strategies and Mechanisms of
Thermoregulation
In a Patch of Fireweed; 1984
Kimmerer, Robin Wall
Braiding Sweetgrass:
Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants; 2015
**Gathering Moss: A
Natural and Cultural History of Mosses; 2003
Kricher, John C.
A Neotropical Companion: An Introduction to the
Animals, Plants and Ecosystems of the New World Tropics; 1989
Krutch,Joseph Wood (1892-1970)
**The Desert
Year;
1955
The Voice of
the Desert;
1955
Leopold, Aldo (1887-1948)
**A Sand County Almanac; 1977
Nabhan, Gary Paul
The Desert Smells Like Rain: A Naturalist in Papago
Indian Country; 1982
The Desert Smells Like Rain: A Naturalist in O’odham
Country; (retitled),2002
The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild
Places; 1995
Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild
Plant Conservation; 2002
Gathering the Desert; 1986
*Palmer, E. Laurence
(1888-1970)
Fieldbook of
Natural History; 1949 (2nd ed., revised 1975)
Peattie,Donald
Culross (1898-1964)
An Almanac for Moderns
A Natural History of
Trees of Eastern and Central North America
A Natural History of
Western Trees
*Porter, Gene Stratton
(1863-1924)
Moths of the
Limberlost
A Girl of
the Limberlost
Pyle, Robert Michael
**Wintergreen;
1986
Quammen, David
**The Song of
The Dodo;
1996.
Sherr, Evelyn B.
Marsh Mud and
Mummichogs: An Intimate Natural History of Coastal Georgia; 2015
*Seton, Ernest Thompson (1860-1946)
Wild Animals
I Have Known; 1898
Two Little Savages; 1903
*Teale,Edwin Way (1899-1980)
North with the Spring: 1951
Autumn
Across America; 1956
Wandering
Through Winter; 1957
Journey into
Summer;
1960
*The Insect
World of J. Henri Fabre; 1949 [Teale wrote the forward; the text is Fabre in
translation.]
*Grassroot
Jungles: A Book of Insects; 1937
**Near
horizons: The Story of an Insect Garden*; 1947
Waldbauer, Gilbert
Insects
through the Seasons; 1998
What Good
Are Bugs?: Insects in the Web of Life; 2004
Insights from
Insects: What Bad Bugs Can Teach Us; 2005
How Not to
Be Eaten: The Insects Fight Back; 2012
A Walk around
the Pond: Insects in and over the Water; 2006
Fireflies,
Honey, and Silk; 2009
Millions of
Monarchs, Bunches of Beetles: How Bugs Find Strength in Numbers; 2000
*Wheeler, William Morton (1865-1937)
Demons of the Dust; 1930
Williams, Jr., Ernest H.
The Nature Handbook: A Guide to Observing the Great
Outdoors; 2005
Ann Zwinger (1925-2014)
Beyond the
Aspen Grove; 1970
**Run,
River, Run: A Naturalist’s Journey Down One of the Great Rivers of the West; 1975
Wind in the
Rock: The Canyonlands of Southeastern Utah; 1978
A Conscious
Stillness: Two Naturalists on Thoreau’s Rivers; 1982
A Desert
Country near the Sea: A Natural History of the Cape Region of Baja California; 1983
The Mysterious Lands: A Naturalist Explores the
Four Great Deserts of the Southwest; 1989
Downcanyon:
A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River Through Grand Canyon; 1995