The Woods Stretched for Miles gathers essays about southern landscape and nature from nineteen writers with geographic or ancestral ties to the region. This remarkable group encompasses not only such well-known names as Wendell Berry and Rick Bass but also distinctive new voices, including Christopher Camuto, Susan Cerulean, and Eddy L. Harris. From the savannas of south Florida through the hardwood uplands of Mississippi to the coastal rivers of the Carolinas and the high mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, the range in geography covered is equally broad. With insight and eloquence, these diverse talents take up similar themes: environmental restoration, the interplay between individual and community, the definition of wildness in an area transformed by human activity, and the meaning of our reactions to the natural world. Readers will treasure the passionate and intelligent honorings of land and nature offered by this rich anthology. With the publication of The Woods Stretched for Miles, southern voices establish their abiding place in the ever-popular nature writing genre.

Eighteen-year-old Eva Kaufman is in a quandary about what to do with her life. She is passionate about doing something for the greater good, but has not yet realized what it is she wants to do. One day as Eva joins her mother and sister in some volunteer gardening in Liberty Park, she marvels at the spectacular views of the New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. Here so close to New York City, she also sees the miracle of the spring bird migration. She has no idea that the future of Liberty Park is in danger.Amanda Walters, a local park activist, suggests that Eva should apply for a position in the Park Service. The suggestion appeals to Eva, and she thinks her future looks much brighter. Unfortunately, Amanda also makes her aware of a threat to the green open lawns of the park. The B & L Foundation is eager to build a sports complex, a hotel and a botanical garden in Liberty Park. Now feeling desperate to defend the park from over-development, Eva and her family join Amanda and her friends to save the park. Public hearings turn into intense arguments, propaganda campaigns transform into threats as an entire community struggles to determine the park's future.This is a story about a young woman environmentalist joining forces with an experienced woman activist to save the environment of a national icon.

This volume of seven essays and a late lecture by Henry David Thoreau makes available important material written both before and after Walden. First appearing in the 1840s through the 1860s, the essays were written during a time of great change in Thoreau's environs, as the Massachusetts of his childhood became increasingly urbanized and industrialized. William Rossi's introduction puts the essays in the context of Thoreau's other major works, both chronologically and intellectually. Rossi also shows how these writings relate to Thoreau's life and career as both writer and naturalist: his readings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Darwin; his failed bid for commercial acceptance of his work; and his pivotal encounter with the utter wildness of the Maine woods. In the essays themselves, readers will see how Thoreau melded conventions of natural history writing with elements of two popular literary forms - travel writing and landscape writing -to explore concerns ranging from America's westward expansion to the figural dimensions of scientific facts and phenomena. Thoreau the thinker, observer, wanderer, and inquiring naturalist - all emerge in this distinctive composite picture of the economic, natural, and spiritual communities that left their marks on one of our most important early environmentalists.

Reading the essays of Craig Nagel is like enjoying a good, unhurried visit with a good friend, one who is thoughtful, insightful and articulate-the welcome companion who's good to have around and to be around. He's fun. Nagel simply exudes charm and common sense-and he writes so well. (He's a gentle philosopher of the commonplace.) He's also organized. His brief sketches flow so nicely together. Just perusing his preface-well, there's none like it -will convince all thinking readers they're in for a real treat. And they are: he's that good. Dr. Art Lee Prof. of History (ret.) Bemidji State University

Many scientists believe that we are currently living through the Earth’s sixth mass extinction, with species disappearing at a rate not seen for tens of millions of years – a trend that will only accelerate as climate change and other pressures intensify. What does it mean to live in such a time? And what exactly do we lose when a species goes extinct?

In a series of fascinating encounters with subjects that are now nowhere to be found on Earth – from giant tortoises to minuscule snails the size of sesame seeds, from ocean-hopping trees to fish that wag their tails like puppies – Tom Lathan brings these lost wonders briefly back to life and gives us a tantalising glimpse of what we have lost within our own lifetime.

Drawing on the personal recollections of the people who studied these species, as well as those who tried but ultimately failed to save them, and with beautiful illustrations, Lost Wonders is an intimate portrait of the species that have only recently vanished from our world and an urgent warning to hold on all the more tightly to those now slipping from our grasp.