Zachary Bos
Some New & Recommended Reading

What we've been reading recently on the theme of "man and nature"...

• The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild by Lawrence Anthony, from St. Martin's Griffin (2012). $16.99. Nonfiction first-person account of Lawrence Anthony's attempt to take in a herd of "rogue" elephants to his game reserve in Zululand.
• H&W contributor Ryan Bayless writes: "I would advise readers looking for nature-themed poetry to look for David Young's recent collection, Field of Light and Shadow: Selected and New Poems." Knopf, 2011: $15.95.
• Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky, from Penguin (1998). $15.00. Winner of the 1999 James Beard Award, a biography of the cod and the importance it has played in world history.
• H&W contributor Caleb Klaces writes: "Peter Reading's book of climate change poems, -273.15, is brilliant." Bloodaxe, 2006: $12.95.
• Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart, from Algonquin Books (2009). $18.95. An a-to-z compendium of plants that poison, maim or kill. Includes visual companions.
• American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation, by Eric Rutkow, from Scribner (2012). $29.00. Situates forest ecology in American history.
• H&W contributor Colleen S. Harris writes: "My recommendation is Jeanie Thompson's The Seasons Bear Us. Jeanie weaves the American South and nature into her work, creating broad, beautiful tapestries against which her language soars. I highly recommend all of her work, with this book being her latest." River City Publishing, 2009: $15.49.
• Chomp by Carl Hiaasen, from Knopf Books (2012). $16.99. Zany young adult novel about a father and son who live in a zoo and take jobs on a reality television show involving wild animals.
• America's Other Audubon by Joy M. Kiser, from Princeton Architectural Press (2012). $45.00. The true story of Genevieve Jones' efforts to create her book, Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio . The Audubon would not accept her work, so her family set out to produce the costly project themselves. Sold in subscriptions, her illustrations were so well-praised that Rutherford B. Hayes and Theodore Roosevelt added their names to the subscription list.
• AWOL on the Appalachian Trail by David Miller, from Mariner Books (2011). $14.95. David Miller's account of when he left his job and family to hike the Appalachian trail.
• Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. Picador, 2008. A novel by Norwegian writer Per Petterson about an old man who moves to the desolate Norwegian tundra only to find himself absorbed in a memory from years before.
• What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses by Daniel Chamovitz, from Scientific American/Farrar, Strauss and Giroux (2012). $23.00. A look at how plants adapt to their surroundings through habits and sensory impulses. Compares the human senses to the inner mechanisms of plants.

<< return to the Table of Contents for New Series #4: Winter 2012, Volume 2 Number 2