 | Walden With Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essay on Thoreau (Everyman's Library) by Henry David Thoreau
Buy new: $9.95 / Used from: $0.01 This is the only book on both my favorite list and the composite environmental list. What can I say about a classic that can be profitably and enjoyably read every year for the rest of your life? Must-reading and a standard that very few nature books even approach.
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 | National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Fifth Edition by Jon L. Dunn
Buy new: $16.32 / Used from: $13.62 There are lots of field guides out there, and especially lots of bird field guides. This is simply the best. (This is the only field guide included in these lists.) The writing, format and pictures are so compelling and so clear that this guide is better than all the rest.
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 | Meetings with Remarkable Trees by Thomas Pakenham
Buy new: $17.16 / Used from: $4.50 This is the only pictorial book on either list. A close second would be the collected photos of Ansel Adams. But this book of photographs of remarkable trees of Great Britain is simply the best of its genre. The explanatory text is also remarkable. See my review for further details.
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 | The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction by David Quammen
Buy new: $15.84 / Used from: $5.73 This product of a MacArthur grant for genius from the pen of long-time nature writer David Quammen is incredibly long. But it tells the story of species, Darwin and Russell, and biological change in the modern world better than any other single book. Highly recommended, but not light reading. See my review for further details.
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 | A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $3.18 Bryson is a well known American travel author. This book is still his best. Bryson and an old college buddy decide to hike the Appalachian trail - a thousand mile track from Georgia to Maine along the crest of the Appalachians. The comic adventures of the companion and Bryson's writing are what make this book one of my favorites. See my review.
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 | The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation by Izaak Walton
Buy new: $9.50 / Used from: $4.50 This book written hundreds of years ago in Shakespearean English has a charm and pastoral feeling that is hard to describe. But it is still read and published in expensive editions because many who read it fall in love with it. You may or may not succumb to its charms, but you ought to read a few pages on a quiet afternoon and see if you will be one of its fans.
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 | The Swiss Family Robinson (Signet Classics) by Johann D. Wyss
Buy new: $4.95 / Used from: $1.77 This classic is simply the best in the man-learning-to-get-along-with-his surroundings genre. A family is shipwrecked on a desert island and learns to survive and prosper. Unfortunately, too many people are scared away from this book because of schmaltzy movies. DO NOT WATCH THE MOVIES! Read this book. And younger people will love this.
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 | The River Why, Twentieth-Anniversary Edition by David James Duncan
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $5.97 I love this quirky book that moves me still as few other books do. It is a coming-of-age story of a young man who finds that there is more to life than fishing. This is a great book, filled with nature, that will make you yearn to get out of the city and hike or fish or just dream. (See my review for more details.)
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 | Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif
Buy new: $10.08 / Used from: $2.35 This book is the story of the people and the science that resulted in the great leap forward in life expectancy. Clean water, hygiene, and cures for infectious diseases that have killed billions are the cause and this book chronicles this story. Inspiring.
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 | A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition by Norman Maclean
Buy new: $8.40 / Used from: $3.22 One of the finest works I have read, and the single best nature/environmental book. The Redford/Brad Pitt movie actually did justice to the book - or as my kids put it 'It didn't suck'. (Read my review for more) Norman Maclean recounts his formative years in Montana and the struggles of a beloved brother who loses his way and his life all in the context of nature and fishing. Treasure it.
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 | Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
Buy new: $10.76 / Used from: $5.99 This book by crank Edward Abbey is his best. It's just not in my top ten because there is little nature in it. It tells of a few summers the author spent as a Ranger in Utah, and focuses on the author's disdain for people. The author recounts looking for dead tourists, rolling old tires into the Grand Canyon and burning down Glen Canyon through his carelessness. See my review for details.
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 | A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold
Buy used from: $3.20 A classic on just about all the environmentalist top 10 lists, this book is a collection of essays based on Wisconsin as seen thorugh a Naturalists eyes over a year. Unfortunately, this book also puts me to sleep. See my review.
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 | Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Harper Perrennial Modern Classics) by Annie Dillard
Buy new: $10.79 / Used from: $5.53 Collection of nature essays from this well-regarded author. It's just that they aren't very exciting or inspiring.
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 | Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Buy new: $9.72 / Used from: $4.98 Early classic in ecology that led to many of the early ecologic causes such as banning DDT. Dated writing, and much of it wrong, makes the book more historically important than good reading. And the DDT ban has killed millions unnecessarily.
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 | Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams
Buy new: $10.04 / Used from: $0.01 Account of cancer ravaging a family while the author also deals with the loss of a favorite natural site due to flooding. Interesting more for the cancer coping parts than the natural part. The author also displays enough bigotry towards various groups she dislikes that it is hard for many to stomach. See my review.
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 | New and Selected Poems: Volume One by Mary Oliver
Buy new: $19.80 / Used from: $23.45 Collection of nature poetry that I find riveting and contemplative. This one's actually pretty good.
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 | Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $3.00 Pretty good book on Arctic Ecosystem and various assorted similar subjects.
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 | The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
Buy new: $10.08 / Used from: $0.01 Decent book, but just not top 10 material, in my opinion.
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 | The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod by Henry Beston
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $6.02 Again, not a bad book, just not that interesting or profound.
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 | Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay by William W. Warner
Buy new: $10.19 / Used from: $0.01 This account of natural history in the Chesapeake would be in my list of top 20. I recommend this book highly if you are interested in this area.
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Listmania!
