Bibliographies

GOOD READS

Recommendations from 1997 Environmental Writing Institute Folks

Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses; Moon by Whalelight
Talk about purple prose! This gal is the queen of the ultraviolet, but writes well-researched, fascinating, and passionate essays.

William Beavis, Borneo Log
Winner of W. States Booksellers Assn. 1995 award for creative non-fiction. Study of ecology and devastation of rain forest habitat in N. Borneo island.

Peter Bernhardt, Wily Violets and Underground Orchids
A fine botanist tells gee-whiz tales of the amazing plant world in a completely engaging series of essays.

Daniel Botkin, Discordant Harmonies
An ecologist's explanation, with examples, for a general audience, about a different view of the big picture of the natural world NOT based on stability and balance.

Franklin Burroughs, Billy Watson's Crocker Sack
Wonderfully understated essay that blends story and deeper insights seamlessly - snapping turtles, euthanizing a loud dog, hunting ducks.

Anne Cameron, Daughters of Copper Woman
I'd like to know what our resident anthropologist thinks of this one. Native women's perspectives and stories from Vancouver Island region - a hugely different take on history and our relationship to the land.

Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines
Incredible evocation of aborigines in Australia and their notion of place and oral history connection - overlaid with modern reality.

William deBenys, Enchantment and Exploitation
A really sensitive look at the way the land in northern New Mexico affected first Europeans (mostly), who were Spanish and the was they affected the land, and what has happened in that interaction since. A geological, natural and human history of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the southernmost extension of the Rockies. A compelling study of culture and human interaction with the land.

Jerry Dennis, It's Raining Frogs and Fishes
Dennis writes a regular column for Wildlife Conservation mag. These are natural history essays on all things celestial - the best example I can think of on how to make "pure" natural history interpretive writing come alive.

Peter Elbow, Writing with Power; Writing Without Teachers
a good mentor.

Naomi Epel, Writer's Dreaming
Writers like Maya Angelou and John Barth discuss the place of dreams in their work and, in the process, say a lot about themselves and how they work.

James Galvin, The Meadow
This is a novel, but it's an incredible meditation on place, uses masterful dialogue and has an incredible main character. You won't forget it.

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones; Wild Mind
Excellent books, and funny, on writing practice.

Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action
nonfiction about water pollution in Woburn, MA - a page- turner.

Jim Harrison, The Theory and Practice of Rivers (poetry)
One long, melancholy, compact, brutal meditation on rivers and a bunch of short graceful poems about the natural world.

Sue Hubbel, A Book of Bees.
Utterly engaging - you'll want to become a bee-keeper.

Joe Hutto; Illumination in the Flatwood: a season with the wild turkey.
A biologist rears two broods of wild turkeys from eggs to adulthood.

Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property
The general premise is that creative products must be passed on in the spirit of a gift (even if we have to make a living), otherwise the spring will dry up. Keep the flow moving. Also looks at cultures where the giving of gifts plays a large part of social interaction.

Anne Lamont, Bird by Bird
A good book for those who are self-critical about their writing and/or people who like to laugh.

Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams.
Barry goes to the arctic. 

Thomas Lyon, ed., This Incomperable Lande
One of the better contemporary anthologies, with superb overview 100 pp. history of genre essay.

Norman MacLean, Young Men and Fire (1992), A River Runs Through It.

Peter Matthiessen, Killing Mr. Watson
Fiction about a real pioneer hoodlum in the 10,000 Islands in sw Florida. Good, accurate historical info (although he says not to trust it).

Ellen Meloy, Raven's Exile
a year-long view of the Green River, UT

Robert Michael Pyle, Wintergreen
Superb contemporary writer, lepidopterist by training, moving scrutiny of Willapa Hills, SW Washington State.

Alexandra Murphy, Graced by Pines
Essays on ponderosa pine - natural history, anthropology and environmentalism.

John Murray, Sierra Club Yearly Anthologies of Nature Writing
This is not the exact title, but there's no mistaking these books - anthologies available for 1993-1997.

Gary Paul Nabhan - The Desert Smells Like Rain; Gathering the Desert, The
Geography of Childhood; The Forgotten Pollinators.
(the last two co-authored). Nabhan is an ethnobotanist working as scientist, activist, and powerful writer. His works are funny, informative, poignant, insightful.

Gloria Naylor, Mama Day
Fiction (almost magical realism) about a family on the sea islands of South Carolina/Georgia - but powerful evocation of place.

Mary Oliver, Collected Poems
No recent American poet has so many poems with no people in them.

Roger Payne, In the Company of Whales
An eloquent discussion on the biology of right whales (primarily) and the ethics of studying them and whale conservation.

Doug Peacock, Grizzly Years
No one gets so close to big bears. As much about his coming to terms with his Viet Nam experiences as about his deep-set kinship with the griz - a page-turner.

David Quammen, Song of the Dodo
The definitive book on island biogeography and biodiversity. Written with humor and insight.

Chip Rawlins, Broken Country
journals become book!

Chip (C.L.) Rawlins, Sky's Witness
A hydrologist taking snow/water samples in the Wind River range, WY, investigating the effects of acid rain.

Reg Sauer, Four-cornered Falcon
Long essays - some at four-corners area, Grand Canyon (+ lots of geology),
plus Swiss National Park where [??] animal has been exterminated. [Sorry,
couldn't read the writing here, but I can attest that most native fauna in
Swiss Nat'l Park is gone because the landscape was once farmland. Forests
and wildlife are now being restored - a gorgeous and weird place, where you
get fined for stepping off the trail - ed.]

Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory
This book is about the way people in Europe & U.S. think about the natural world; essays extend from the first ascents of Mont Blanc to the carving of Mount Rushmore. It's weighty but great!

Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey
Collection & analysis of women's diaries of the last century as they left homes in the East and Midwest to go, unwillingly usually, to the West.

Cliff Stoll, The Cuckoo's Egg
A non-fiction story about computer espionage, but it's a great lesson in telling a complicated, highly technical tale through drama and story. Also contains a good chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Stephen Trimble, The Geography of Childhood (co-authored with Gary Paul Nabhan).
Short book on how children relate to landscape.

Pat Trotter, Cutthroat
A passionate history of the West's native trout and how it has fared in the last century.

Jonathan Weiner, Beak of the Finch
A look at a 20-year experiment on the Gallapagos Islands watching evolution
among Darwin's finches.

Christine Paige      
Ravenworks Ecology   
612 Lolo Street, Missoula, MT  59802  
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cpaige@montana.com  

"What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible." --Theodore Roethke