A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There

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.

Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Published in 1949, shortly after the author's death, A Sand County Almanac is a classic of nature writing, widely cited as one of the most influential nature books ever published. Writing from the vantage of his summer shack along the banks of the Wisconsin River, Leopold mixes essay, polemic, and memoir in his book's pages. In one famous episode, he writes of killing a female wolf early in his career as a forest ranger, coming upon his victim just as she was dying, "in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.... I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view." Leopold's road-to-Damascus change of view would find its fruit some years later in his so-called land ethic, in which he held that nothing that disturbs the balance of nature is right. Much of Almanac elaborates on this basic premise, as well as on Leopold's view that it is something of a human duty to preserve as much wild land as possible, as a kind of bank for the biological future of all species. Beautifully written, quiet, and elegant, Leopold's book deserves continued study and discussion today. --Gregory McNamee

Review

"By a born naturalist, true sportsman and able writer. Delightful essays....[Leopold] develops a fine concept of conservation, not economic, but basically ethical, urging the need for an ecological conscience. Recommended."--Library Journal

"Outdoor prose writing at its best....A trenchant book, full of beauty and vigor and bite."--The New York Times Book Review

"We have Sand County Almanac to demonstrate just how exceptional Leopold was in his highly informed passion for land. [This] handsome new commemorative edition will be welcomed by afficionados whose paperback copies have gone the way of paper acid. It contains the fine original drawings of Charles W. Schartz, and is highly recommended to anyone who might care to glimpse the plateau forests of Arizona in 1909, the green lagoons of the Colorado Delta in 1922, or the guacamaja parrot flocks of Chihuahua in 1936 through the eyes of a man who was there in body and spirit."--The New York Times Book Review

"To read this book is not only to acquire much useful information, but to develop a keener eye and a sharper ear for the world of nature and a greater respect for the land."--The Christian Science Monitor

"We can place this book on the shelf that holds the writings of Thoreau and John Muir."--San Francisco Chronicle

"We may count ourselves lucky to have this final testament of a man who was not only an expert in forestry, ecology, and game management, but an exceptionally sensitive and subtle appreciator and communicator."--Commonweal

"One of the most beautiful, heart-warming and important nature books to appear in years."--The Chicago Tribune

"There is a rudeness and vigor to Leopold's writing that goes directly to the heart of the subject and to the heart of the reader. His Almanac is one of the seminal works of the environmental movement and much admired....As important a book today as when it was first published in 1949."--The Boston Globe

"There will be many for whom this special edition, commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Aldo Leopold, will be their first and long overdue encounter with the Sand County Almanac. For many it will undoubtedly be a joyful encounter, not least because it is so well written and because of the way in which the personality of Leopold engages so directly with the reader as he traces the monthly changes in the Wisconsin countryside."--The Times (London)

"A Sand County Almanac seems unassuming, a collection of poetic vignettes about run-down farmland and wilderness trips seasoned with erudite historical reflections. Yet it has sold over a million copies, and it has added a significant ethical concept to the prophecies of Thoreau, John Muir and other voices in the wilderness...Oxford University Press's handsome new commemorative edition will be welcomed by afficionados..."--The New York Times Book Review