Our Books

The summer of 1964 begins calmly enough. But when civil rights workers come to a small Mississippi town and the Ku Klux Klan responds with intimidation and terrorism, the sultry days and nights are transformed into Freedom Summer. Soon three friends…

A disarmingly honest story of the author’s restless, rootless, disaffected youth, looking for meaning in drugs and an active outdoor life in the West. From time spent fishing, climbing, and making a living logging—as well as through friendships with…

In these essays, the author describes how he found a way to balance his passions for literature and for the outdoors by building a sugarhouse with his sons in the Vermont woods. For him, the “frog run”—the tail end of the sugaring season in New…

Andy Fleck doesn’t have much of a family. A kid with Attention Deficit Disorder, he can’t keep himself from challenging every limit that is set by his adoptive parents Jeff and Laurie. It’s easy to see that Andy is a good kid dealing with his own…

In January 2001, the editors, responding to proposals to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, sent a call to writers across the country. With testimonies by President Jimmy Carter, Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez, Bill McKibben, and Terry Tempest…

Reared on her father’s thirty thousand-acre ranch, the author grew up to become a rancher herself, raising sport horses. In these essays—which rise and fall with the undulations of the prairie, and which can pack a punch like South Dakota weather—she…

The author was happily sailing through life, raised among naturalists and nurtured by a family history as American as the Stars and Stripes. But then a short trip to Guatemala changed his life, setting him on a very different path toward radical…

In this book, the author describes locales that are dear to her because they are still shaped by nature: Grand Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy; Provincetown, Massachusetts; Tucson, Arizona; and Poamoho, Hawaii. The farther we remove ourselves from…

These poems explore the territory of longing and loss, love and family, wild land and city street. With nods to Johannes Brahms and Joseph Haydn, Pablo Neruda, Theodore Roethke, and Christopher Smart, this collection tells of a passion for being in…

Written in the third century, this is one of the earliest Chinese works about the use of language, intended for those who wish to engage the art of letters at its deepest levels. In sixteen sections, it discusses the joys and problems that face both…

This book is the first of its kind, providing a thoughtful, practical process for neighborhood planning for concerned citizens as well as professional planners.

Part traveler’s journal, part philosophical exploration, this book considers the idea of islands and asks whether they encourage eccentricity and grandeur in human beings. Along the way, it introduces beguiling characters and cultures, from the well…

As a boy in Colorado, the author fell in love with alpine heights and the butterflies that float above the tree line. This early passion sparked a career in conservation that took him across the globe—until he realized that he was no longer as…

Arranged by letter of the alphabet, with at least one entry per letter, these short pieces capture the variety of daily life in contemporary China. Here, one learns what it is like to travel by “hard-seat” train to a remote village, to smuggle…

Deciding that her life was insufficiently grounded in real-world experience, the author, a Quaker reared as a Catholic, embarked on a year of tending sheep. In this often hilarious book, she describes her time in the barn as well as an extended visit…

Known for beautifully observed and illustrated books about the rivers, deserts, and mountains of the West, the author here focuses on the guiding principles of her life as naturalist. She moves from details to the larger patterns that link them to…

Growing up, the author could define failure easily; it was “to die in Minneota.” But when he returned to his hometown twenty years later, he began to discover more of himself and of our time. This books investigates—through the lens of small-town…

Organized by the seasons of the year, this book explores the natural and soul-sustaining beauty of the largest roadless area east of the Rocky Mountains. Drawing on the works of Thoreau and Wendell Berry, the author turns his naturalist’s eye on this…

Here the author recalls the stories and experiences that have guided him as a writer, and speaks on behalf of a life rooted in the commonplace. Emerging from his work is the conviction that moments of interaction with the nonhuman world restore the…

In this book, the author tells the story of his family’s homestead in the Great Basin, a ranch worked by horses when he was a boy and transformed into an agribusiness by the time he was a grown man. Recounting his life as farmer and writer, he…

Elizabeth is the newest member of the big and boisterous Sheridan family. They try to make her feel at home, but Elizabeth knows from previous experience in foster homes that one day she’ll be sent away. Now all the Sheridan kids are headed to the…

A creature almost mythic, Colter—the brown dog of the Yaak—charges through mountain valleys following the scent of game. In this book, the author gives a history of his years with Colter—including vignettes about interactions with well-known writers…

An award-winning poet, a mother, a lover of the land and every creature in it, as well as a student of zoology, the author is at home in the vocabulary of nature. In this work of prose punctuated and intensified by poetry, she describes the genesis…

In these truth-telling stories about a neighborhood of Puerto Rican adolescents growing up in the South Bronx, we meet the youth who fight every day for survival in our cities.

Cassie has always wanted a dog, more than anything in the world, but her mother has always refused. Then, one day, her dream cautiously sniffs its way into her yard and into her life. But quickly Cassie learns that Toklata, as she names her new…

Bosses, partners, governments, corporations—all can act as bullies, intimidating us to their will. But changing their behavior may be in our power. This provocative, visionary book examines some of this century’s most far-ranging concepts about how…

In 1964 the author came to Montana with her husband and their boys. In a fertile valley where meadows tip downward toward the Big Blackfoot River, they found what they had dreamed of: 163 acres of ranchland with a view of a creek, hills, and the…

These eloquent essays meditate on living with the land and reinvigorating the values of community. Combining personal reflection and memoir with a powerful look at the state of our rural towns and people, this collection postulates a society in which…

In this anthology, women survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki write of the attack’s cause, effects, and aftermath. In potent prose and poetry, these women bear witness to the shared responsibility for bringing about war, any war…

This collection is an exploration of histories, personal and public. The author says of these poems: “I am interested in the times when personal and political history liberate, and the times when they oppress.”

These poems take a sometimes humorous, sometimes wrenching look at human relationships, at the varieties of isolation and communication possible in sexuality and friendship. This collection’s lush lyric voice is grounded in a tough sensibility, an…