Bent Northrop Memorial Library

When Kingsolver and her family move from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia, they take on a new challenge: to spend a year on a locally produced diet, paying close attention to the provenance of all they consume. "Our highest shopping goal was to get our food from so close to home, we'd know the person who grew it. Often that turned out to be ourselves as we learned to produce what we needed, starting with dirt, seeds, and enough knowledge to muddle...

Publisher Annotation: Find a tree?a black tupelo or dawn redwood will do?and plant yourself. (It?s okay if you prefer a stoop, like Langston Hughes.) With these words, an adventure begins. Kwame Alexander?s evocative poetry and Melissa Sweet?s lush artwork come together to take readers on a sensory journey between the pages of a book.

"When I wrote the following pages... I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again." Walden is the record of those two years in the solitude of the wilderness during which Henry David Thoreau wrote and thought...

Learn about how Chinese scientists are dressing up in panda costumes, to help reintroduce panda cubs to the wild.

This memoir of life in the American desert by the author of The Monkey Wrench Gang is a nature writing classic on par with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

In Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey recounts his many escapades, adventures, and epiphanies as an Arches National Park ranger outside Moab, Utah. Brimming with arresting insights, impassioned arguments for wilderness conservation, and a raconteur's wit, it is...

Water, air, sunlight, plants . . . we need these elements to live in this world. But does the world need us? And what would happen to the world if humans were gone? This is the premise of a thought-provoking picture book from John Coy. His insightful text explores how nature would reclaim the planet, accompanied by Natalie Capannelli's gorgeous watercolor illustrations. Back matter gives further context and discusses what kids (and all of us) can

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First delivered as a lecture in 1851, "Walking" is the seminal work on Transcendental philosophy by American author and essayist Henry David Thoreau. Sometimes referred to as "The Wild", it was Thoreau's favorite speech and he gave the lecture several more times over the next decade as he refined and expanded his ideas. The final version of this influential essay was published in the "Atlantic Monthly" in 1862 after his death. In "Walking", Thoreau...

A portrait of the realities of agricultural life in today's world, based on interviews with more than forty farm families.

In this book, dozens of farm families from America's heartland detail the practices and values that relate to their land, work, and communities. Their stories reveal that those who make their living in agriculture—despite stereotypes of provincialism perpetuated by the media—are savvy to the

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In this compilation of David Suzuki's latest thoughts and writings, the renowned scientist, author, and broadcaster explores the myriad environmental challenges the world faces and their interconnected causes. In doing so, Suzuki shows that understanding the causes—and recognizing that everything in nature, including us, is interconnected—is crucial to restoring hope for a better future. The solutions are there, he argues; we just need the...

The present era of staggering scientific and technological innovations, with major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, commerce, and communications, seems to document unparalleled human achievement. Yet when we examine the long-term implications, it becomes clear that an ever-growing number of humans have threatened the delicate environmental balance that sustains life on this planet. The past century may be remembered not as a period of great...