Can the love reserved for family and friends be extended to a place? In her latest book, acclaimed author Kathleen Dean Moore reflects on how deeply the environment is entrenched in the human spirit, despite the notion that nature and humans are somehow separate. Moore's essays, deeply felt and often funny, make connections in what can appear to be a disconnected world. Written in parable form, her stories of family and friends -- of wilderness excursions with her husband and children, camping trips with students, blowing up a dam, her daughter's arrest for protesting the war in Iraq -- affirm an impulse of caring that belies the abstract division of humans from nature, of the sacred from the mundane. Underlying these wonderfully engaging stories is the author's belief in a new ecological ethic of care, one that expands the idea of community to include the environment, and embraces the land as family.

Winner, WILLA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction, 2008 How do women experience the vast, arid, rugged land of the American Southwest? The Story Circle Network, a national organization dedicated to helping women write about their lives, posed this question, and nearly three hundred women responded with original pieces of writing that told true and meaningful stories of their personal experiences of the land. From this deep reservoir of writing-as well as from previously published work by writers including Joy Harjo, Denise Chavez, Diane Ackerman, Naomi Shihab Nye, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gloria Anzaldua, Terry Tempest Williams, and Barbara Kingsolver-the editors of this book have drawn nearly a hundred pieces that witness both to the ever-changing, ever-mysterious life of the natural world and to the vivid, creative, evolving lives of women interacting with it. Through prose, poetry, creative nonfiction, and memoir, the women in this anthology explore both the outer landscape of the Southwest and their own inner landscapes as women living on the land-the congruence of where they are and who they are. The editors have grouped the writings around eight evocative themes: The way we live on the land Our journeys through the land Nature in cities Nature at risk Nature that sustains us Our memories of the land Our kinship with the animal world What we leave on the land when we are gone From the Gulf Coast of Texas to the Pacific Coast of California, and from the southern borderlands to the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, these intimate portraits of women's lives on the land powerfully demonstrate that nature writing is no longer the exclusive domain of men, that women bring unique and transformative perspectives to this genre.

For the first time in history, an international human-rights court has weighed the evidence that fracking and climate change systematically violate human rights. Bearing Witness presents the searing eyewitness testimony and ground-breaking legal arguments that persuaded the court that fracking and resulting climate warming breach both substantive and procedural rights guaranteed by international law, that governments are complicit in these rights-violations, and that the practice of fracking should be banned.

In these twenty elegant essays, a philosopher and amateur naturalist meanders along the rivers and streams of the american West-and muses on love, loss, aging, motherhood, happiness, the art of poking around, and other important matters. "A smart, compassionate, and wise meditation on living in place" (Terry Tempest Williams).

Viola Cordova was the first Native American woman to receive a PhD in philosophy. Even as she became an expert on canonical works of traditional Western philosophy, she devoted herself to defining a Native American philosophy. Although she died prematurely of a brain aneurysm before she could complete her life's work, some of her colleagues have organized her pioneering contributions into this provocative book. In three parts, Cordova sets out a complete Native American philosophy. First she explains her own understanding of the nature of reality itself--the origins of the world, the relation of matter and spirit, the nature of time, and the roles of culture and language in understanding all of these. She then turns to our role as residents of the Earth, arguing that we become human as we deepen our relation to our people and to our places, and as we understand the responsibilities that grow from those relationships. In the final section, she calls for a new reverence in a world where there is no distinction between the sacred and the mundane. Cordova clearly contrasts Native American beliefs with the traditions of the Enlightenment and Christianized Europeans (what she calls "Euroman" philosophy). By doing so, she leads her readers into a deeper understanding of both traditions and encourages us to question any view that claims a singular truth. From these essays--which are lucid, insightful, frequently funny, and occasionally angry--we receive a powerful new vision of how we can live with respect, reciprocity, and joy.

Kathleen Dean Moore begins with a review of the history of thought and practice on the subject of legal pardons, illustrated with a rich and fascinating variety of historical cases. She then addresses many crucial issues surrounding acts of clemency, including what justifies pardoning power, who should be pardoned, and the definition of an unforgivable crime. She carefully analyses the moral justification of pardons, discussing how to distinguish between justifiable, even morally obligatory, cases and unjustifiable abuses of clemency power.

Humans have faced urgent crises over the past two years, and in the midst of those we still have the threat of climate change and other big, systemic problems facing our world. In this time of chaos and crisis, how do activists find the strength to carry on? In answer to this question, environmental philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore has assembled a collection of short essays that offer courage, hope, and even some laughter to the people who have for years been working for environmental sanity and social justice. Earth's weary lovers, as Moore calls them, are tired, perplexed, and battered from all directions. Their hearts have so often been broken; it's hard to go on, but it is morally impossible to quit. To these weary activists, Moore brings encouragement to join or keep on with the struggle-not entertaining distractions, but deep and honest reasons to remember that the struggle matters, now and in the future. Moore's essays are matched with drawings by Canadian artist Bob Haverluck; together, they invite readers to take heart. Taking heart is not hope exactly, but maybe it's courage. Not reassurance, but reason to persevere. Not the promise of good results-it does not depend on winning odds-but a call to integrity. Not strength, but stubbornness, which might be just as good. Not solutions to the planetary crisis, but some modest advice for the inevitable crisis of the heart. Not good cheer entirely, but a chance to grin, and gladness to be part of this strange and necessary work for the endangered Earth.

Shortlisted for the ASLE Environmental Creative Writing Book Award, this is a breathtaking first novel set on the Alaska coast, written by a critically acclaimed naturalist and climate activist Do we belong to the Earth or does the Earth belong to us? The question raised by Chief Seathl almost two centuries ago continues to be the defining quandary of the wet, wild rainforests along the shores of the Pacific Northwest. It seethes below the tides of the fictional town of Good River Harbor, a little village pressed against the mountains-homeland to bears, whales, and a few weather-worn families. In Piano Tide, the debut novel by award-winning naturalist, philosopher, activist and author Kathleen Dean Moore, we are introduced to town father Axel Hagerman, who has made a killing in this remote Alaskan harbor by selling off the spruce, the cedar, the herring and halibut. But when he decides to export the water from a salmon stream, he runs head-long into young Nora Montgomery, just arrived on the ferry with her piano and her dog. Nora has burned her bridges in the lower 48, and she aims to disappear into this new homeland, with her piano as her anchor. But when Axel's next business proposition, a bear pit, turns lethal, Nora has to act. The clash, when it comes, is a spectacular and transformative act of resistance.

Naturalist and philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore meditates on connection and separation in these twenty-one elegant, probing essays. Using the metaphor of holdfasts--the structures that attach seaweed to rocks with a grip strong enough to withstand winter gales--she examines our connections to our own bedrock.

"When people lock themselves in their houses at night and seal the windows shut to keep out storms, it is possible to forget, sometimes for years and years, that human beings are part of the natural world," she writes. "Holdfast "passionately reclaims an awareness of the natural world, exploring the sense of belonging fostered by the communal howls of wolves; the inevitability of losing children to their own lives; the fear of bears and love of storms; the sublimity of life and longing in the creatures of the sea; her agonizing decision when facing her father's bone-deep pain. As Moore travels philosophically and geographically--from Oregon's shores to Alaska's islands--she leaves no doubt of her virtuosity and range.

The new afterword is an important statement on the new responsibilities of nature writers as the world faces the consequences of climate change.

As it erupted in 1980, Mount St. Helens captured the attention of the region, nation, and the world, and it continues to fascinate us today a constant reminder that we live in a volcanic landscape. In lucid prose and poetry by some of America's leading writers and ecologists, In the Blast Zone explores this story of destruction and renewal in all its human, geological, and ecological dimensions. Most popular accounts of the momentous eruption have focused on the devastation it caused. More recent scientific work on Mount St. Helens tells a story of unexpectedly rapid and varied ecological and geological change. In the Blast Zone is the first book to present a cross-pollination of literary and scientific perspectives on the mountain's history of cataclysm and renewal. Most of the contributors to this volume camped together on Mount St. Helens for four days in 2005 the 25th anniversary of the eruption hiking, learning the ecology, and sharing ideas. They asked the question: What can this radically altered landscape tell us about nature and how to live our lives? In the Blast Zone collects some of their answers. While introducing fascinating ecological and geological insights, it also tells compelling stories about how science informs our lives and our relationship to nature. These writings will startle readers with new recognition of the matchless gift Mount St. Helens makes to our region and the world: the gifts of beauty, of scientific illumination, of hope.