A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There

by Aldo Leopold, Charles W. Schwartz, Robert Finch

Overview

This special edition of the highly acclaimed A Sand County Almanac commemorates the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Aldo Leopold, one of the foremost conservationists of our century. First published in 1949 and praised in The New York Times Book Review as "full of beauty and vigor and bite," A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land.

The volume includes a section on the monthly changes of the Wisconsin countryside; another section that gathers together the informal pieces written by Leopold over a forty-year period as he traveled around the woodlands of Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona, Sonora, Oregon, Manitoba, and elsewhere; and a final section in which Leopold addresses more formally the philosophical issues involved in wildlife conservation. As the forerunner of such important books as Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, and Robert Finch's The Primal Place, this classic work remains as relevant today as it was forty years ago.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195059281
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/15/1989
Series:	Outdoor Essays & Reflections
Edition description:	Commemorat
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	561,328
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Aldo Leopold, long a member of the National Wildlife Federation's Conservation Hall of Fame, was posthumously honored in 1978 with the John Burroughs Medal in tribute to a lifetime of work in conservation and, in particular, for A Sand County Almanac.
Robert Finch is the author of The Primal Place and Common Ground: A Naturalist's Cape Cod.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Delights and Dilemmas of a Sand County Almanac xv
Part I: A Sand County Almanac
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Part II: Sketches Here and There
Wisconsin
Illinois and Iowa
Arizona and New Mexico
Chihuahua and Sonora
Oregon and Utah
Manitoba
Part III: The Upshot Conservation Esthetic 165
Wildlife in American Culture 177
Wilderness 188
The Land Ethic 201
About the Author 227

Editorial Reviews

"Reborn for Earth Day 50, the 2020 edition includes an introduction by author and conservationist, Barbara Kingsolver. 'A land ethic,' Leopold wrote, 'enlarges the boundaries of the community' to include not only humans, but also soils, waters, plants, and animals.' Leopold promoted values based on caring — for people, for land, and for all the connections among them.'" — Virginia Small, Shepherd Express

"For those who may not yet have read this remarkable work of twentieth-century American nature writing, the publication of this new edition of A Sand County Almanac is the perfect opportunity to remedy that oversight. And for those who already have, and perhaps have worn out their present copy from repeated readings, the release of this new edition offers a convenient (to justify...) opportunity to replace the older one." — Johannes Riutta, The Well Read Naturalist

"These writings were and remain an ecological call to action in the face of a natural world under threat. This book is fundamentally a celebration of the human potential, when nurtured, to notice nature, and of the miraculous experiences possible for those who do. To anyone who has wondered at the natural world, or who cares about retaining the option, it is well worth reading." — Gavin Charles, The Canadian Field Naturalist

"This edition gives a new generation of readers a chance to drink from the source of some of the best ecological thinking and writing of the twentieth century." — Ed Block, Agate Magazine

"Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac was my first book of nature writing and changed my view of the world with such words as: 'It is warm behind the driftwood now, for the wind has gone with the geese. So would I - if I were the wind.' I still have my original, yellowed and marked-up copy and will never let it go." —Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing

From the Publisher