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The Bluegrass Group of the Sierra Club in Lexington, Kentucky, has had a book discussion group since March 1997. We have read a grand total of 46 books. Nine of us chose our six favorites, and from that list we have tabulated the following winners (the number in parentheses indicates the number of votes that book received): Desert Solitude by Edward Abbey (5) A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (4) The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen(4) Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner (4) Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash (3) Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (3) Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere With Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul (3) Cry of the Kalahari by Mark and Delia Owens (3) Sierra Readers Recommend Abbey's Road by Edward Abbey Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire by Marybeth Lorbiecki An Almanac for Moderns by Donald Culross Peattie An Amateur's Guide to the Planet by Jeannette Belliveau Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner Annals of the Former World by John McPhee Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape by Barry Lopez At Home in the Woods by Vena and Bradford Angier Bad Land: An American Romance by Jonathan Raban Beyond the Aspen Grove by Ann Zwinger Beyond the Wall by Edward Abbey The Bible Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux by John Neihardt and Nicholas Black Elk The Book of Yaak by Rick Bass Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians as told to Gilbert L. Wilson Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner California Blue by David Klass (for middle-school age) California Coast Trails: A Horseback Ride From Mexico to Oregon by J. Smeaton Chase Canadian Spring by Florence Page Jaques and Francis Lee Jaques Canyon Interludes: Between White Water and Red Rock by Paul W. Rea The Cartoon Guide to the Environment by Larry Gonick and Alice Outwater Ceremonial Time: Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile by John Hanson Mitchell A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr Control of Nature by John McPhee Cosmos by Carl Sagan The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden The Course of Empire by Bernard DeVoto Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Crossing Open Ground by Barry Lopez Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner Cry of the Kalahari by Mark and Delia Owens A Cup of Sky by Donald Culross Peattie Deadly Deceit: Low-Level Radiation, High-Level Cover-Up by Jay M. Gould and Benjamin A. Goldman Dear Children of the Earth: A Letter From Home by Schim Schimmel Desert Solitude by Edward Abbey The Desert Smells Like Rain: A Naturalist in Papago Indian Country by Gary Paul Nabhan The Desert Year by Joseph Wood Krutch Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé The Diversity of Life by Edward O. Wilson Dream of the Earth by Thomas Berry Dreamers and Defenders: American Conservationists by Douglas Hillman Conse Strong (photographer) Dune by Frank Herbert Dying From Dioxin: A Citizen's Guide to Reclaiming Our Health and Rebuilding Democracy by Lois Marie Gibbs Earth Follies: Coming to Feminist Terms With the Global Environmental Crisis by Joni Seager Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit by Al Gore Ecofeminism and the Sacred by Carol J. Adams, ed. Eco-Fiction by John Stadler, ed. Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist by Mitchell Thomashow Ecologies of the Heart: Emotion, Belief, and the Environment by Eugene N. Anderson The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability by Paul Hawken Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray Encounters With the Archdruid by John McPhee The End of Nature by Bill McKibben Entropy: Into the Greenhouse World by Jeremy Rifkin Environmental Decision Making in Rural Locales: The Pine Barrens by Joan Goldstein The Exchange Student by Kate Gilmore (middle-school age) Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty by W. L. Rusho The Everglades: River of Grass by Marjory Stoneman Douglas The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World by Alan Weisman The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural by Wendell Berry The Good Rain by Timothy Egan The Granite Pail: The Selected Poems by Lorine Niedecker The Late, Great Lakes: An Environmental History by William Ashworth The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest by Lynne Cherry (a picture book) Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer's Journal by David Kline A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations by Clive Ponting The Grizzly Bear by Thomas McNamee The Grizzly Bear by William H. Wright Haa Aani, Our Land: Tlingit and Haida Land Rights and Use by Walter R. Goldschmidt and Theodore H. Haas The Habit of Rivers: Reflections on Trout Streams and Fly Fishing by Ted Leeson Heart of Thoreau's Journals by Henry David Thoreau High Tide in Tucson: Essays From Now or Never by Barbara Kingsolver How Many People Can the Earth Support? by Joel E. Cohen If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth by Helen Caldicott, M.D. The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature by Loren Eiseley In the Rainforest: Report From a Strange, Beautiful, Imperiled World by Catherine Caufield Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals by Linda Hogan, Deena Metzger, and Brenda Peterson, eds.Ishmael by Daniel Quinn The Iron Woman by Ted Hughes (middle-school age) The Island Within by Richard Nelson Journey Inward by Jean Craighead George Just a Dream by Chris Van Allsburg (a picture book) Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine The Legacy of Luna by Julia Butterfly Hill Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run by David Brower with Steve Chapple Letters From Yellowstone by Diane Smith Listening Point by Sigurd F. Olson Listening to Nature: How to Deepen Your Awareness of Nature by Joseph Cornell Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder Living Downstream by Sandra Steingraber Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere With Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul Logan's Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson The Long Way by Bernard Moitessier The Lost Gospel of the Earth by Tom Hayden Love Me, Love My Broccoli by Julie Ann Peters (middle-school age) The Lost Grizzlies: A Search for Survivors in the Wilderness of Colorado by Rick Bass The Lorax by Dr. Seuss The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau Make Prayers to Raven by Richard K. Nelson The Man Who Killed the Deer by Frank Waters The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono The Man Who Walked Through Time by Colin Fletcher The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mt. Rainier by Bruce Barcott Meeting the Tree of Life: A Teacher's Path by John Tallmadge The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey Mountain in the Clouds: A Search for Wild Salmon by Bruce Brown Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir My Wilderness by William O. Douglas A Naturalist's Cabin: Constructing a Dream by Cathy Johnson A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman The Natural Way of Farming: The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy by Masanobu Fukuoka Nature's End: The Consequences of the Twentieth Century by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka Nature's Web: Rethinking Our Place on Earth by Peter Marshall Necessity of Empty Places by Paul Gruchow Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat An Outdoor Journal: Adventures and Reflections by Jimmy Carter Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez Old Turtle by Douglas Woods One Day on Beetle Rock by Sally Carrighar The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean Our Natural History: The Lessons of Lewis and Clark by Daniel B. Botkin Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story by Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod by Henry Beston Owning It All by William Kittredge Parrots' Wood by Erma Fisk The Peacocks of Baboquivari by Erma Fisk The People Who Hugged the Trees: An Environmental Folk Tale adapted by Deborah Lee Rose The Peregrine Falcon by Robert Murphy Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard The Pine Barrens by John McPhee Places Worth Keeping: Conservationists, Politics, and the Law by Tim Bonyhady PrairyErth: A Deep Map by William Least Heat Moon The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich Preparing for the Twenty-First Century by Paul Kennedy The Pure State of Nature: Sacred Cows, Destructive Myths, and the Environment by David Horton Purple Flat Top: In Pursuit of Place by Jack Nisbet Quantum Politics: Greening Legislatures for the New Millennium by William R. Bryant Jr. Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World by Carolyn Merchant The Range of Light by John Muir A Reasonable Life: Toward a Simpler, Secure, More Humane Existence by Ferenc Maté The Recurring Silent Spring by H. Patricia Hynes Reflections in a Tarnished Mirror: The Use and Abuse of the Great Lakes by Tom Kuchenberg and Jim Legault Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams The Riverkeepers by John Cronin with Robert F. Kennedy The River Why by David James Duncan Road to Survival by William Vogt The Rolling Stone Environmental Reader by Jann Wenner and William Greider, eds. Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage by William Rathje and Cullen Murphy Runes of the North by Sigurd F. Olson A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson Second Nature: A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett Secrets and Lies by Nicky Hager and Bob Burton The Sense of Wonder by Rachel Carson Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse Silent Spring by Rachel Carson The Singing Wilderness by Sigurd F. Olson The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind by Richard Leakey Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen Soil and Civilization by Edward Hyams The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions by David Quammen The Sound of Mountain Water by Wallace Stegner South of Yosemite: Selected Writings of John Muir by John Muir, edited by Frederic Gunsky The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abrams Spring in Washington by Louis J. Halle State of the World by Lester Brown The Story of My Boyhood and Youth by John Muir Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things by John Ryan and Alan Thein Durning Taking Population Seriously by Frances Moore Lappe and Rachel Schurman Tale of the Genji by Murasaki Shikibu The Talking Earth by Jean Craighead George (middle-school age) Talking With Nature by Michael J. Roads Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard Teewinot: A Year in the Grand Tetons by Jack Turner A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf by John Muir Tongass: Pulp Politics and the Fight for the Alaska Rain Forest by Kathie Durbin Topsoil and Civilization by Vernon Gill Carter Totem Salmon: Life Lessons From Another Species by Freeman House The Travels of William Bartram by William Bartram Travels in Alaska by John Muir Trilateralism by Holly Sklar Two in the Far North by Margaret E. Murie Under the Sea Wind by Rachel Carson An Unnatural Order by Jim Mason Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry Up and Down California in 1860-64: The Journals of William Brewer by William Brewer Vital Signs: The Environmental Trends That Are Shaping Our Future by Lester Brown The Voice of the Desert by Joseph Wood Krutch Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology by Theodore Roszak Wake Robin by John Burroughs Walden by Henry David Thoreau Wandering Through Winter: A Naturalist's Record of a 20,000-Mile Journey Through the North American Winter by Edwin Way Teale The Watch by Rick Bass When the Legends Die by Hal Borland Where the Blue Bird Sings to the Lemonade Springs by Wallace Stegner Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash A Wilderness Within: The Life of Sigurd F. Olson by David Backes Wild Goose, Brother Goose by Mel Ellis Wilson's World by Edith Thacher Hurd and Clement Hurd (picture book) Wind in the Rock: The Canyonlands of Southeastern Utah by Ann Zwinger Winter: Notes From Montana by Rick Bass Wintergreen: Rambles in a Ravaged Land by Robert Michael Pyle Wintering by Diana Kappel-Smith Wisdom of the Elders: Sacred Native Stories of Nature by David Suzuki Woodswoman by Anne LaBastille The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings The Yosemite by John Muir Up to Top |
