Booknotes | MNA Recommended Reading The Rise of the American Conservation Movement Dr. Dorceta Taylor Duke University Press Paperback, $31.95
In this sweeping social history Dorceta E. Taylor examines the emergence and rise of the multifaceted U.S. conservation movement from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. She shows how race, class, and gender influenced every aspect of the movement, including the establishment of parks; campaigns to protect wild game, birds, and fish; forest conservation; outdoor recreation; and the movement’s links to nineteenth-century ideologies. Initially led by white urban elites—whose early efforts discriminated against the lower class and were often tied up with slavery and the appropriation of Native lands—the movement benefited from contributions to policy making, knowledge about the environment, and activism by the poor and working class, people of color, women, and Native Americans. Farranging and nuanced, The Rise of the American Conservation Movement comprehensively documents the movement’s competing motivations, conflicts, problematic practices, and achievements in new ways.
New & Noteworthy Finding the Mother Tree
Suzanne Simard Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Harcover, $24.49
In her first book, Simard brings us into the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths - that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are creatures connected through undergroundnetworks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own.
A Backyard Prairie
Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World Kathryn Aalto Timber Press Paperback $24.95
Kathryn Aalto celebrates 25 women whose influential writing helps deepen our connection to and understandingof the natural world. These inspiring wordsmiths are scholars, spirtual seekers,conservationists, scientists, novelists, and explores. Part travel essay, literary biography, and cultural history, Writing Wild ventures into the landscapes and lives of extraordinary writers and encourages a new generation of women to pick up their pens, head outdoors, and start writing wild.” Featured writers include Dorothy Wordsworth, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Gene StrattonPorter, Mary Austin, and Vita Sackville-West. Nan Shepherd, Rachel Carson, Mary Oliver, Carolyn Merchant, and Annie Dillard. Gretel Ehrlich, Leslie Marmon Silko, Diane Ackerman, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Lauret Savoy. Rebecca Solnit, Kathleen Jamie, Carolyn Finney, Helen Macdonald, and Saci Lloyd. Andrea Wulf, Camille T. Dungy, Elena Passarello, Amy Liptrot, and Elizabeth Rush.
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michigan nature| winter 2022
Fred Delcomyn and James Ellis Southern Illinois University Press Paperback, $23.28 Fred Delcomyn and James Ellis document their journey and reveal the incredible potential of a backyard to travel back to a time before the wild prairie was put into plow rows.
The Life of the Lakes
B. Schroeder, D. O’Keefe, & S. Dann University of Michigan Press Paperback, $19.95 The Life of the Lakes examines the complex portrait of the Great Lakes fishery, including the history of the fishery’s exploitation and management, the current health of the Lakes, and the outlook for the future. Co-author Brandon Schroeder is a member of MNA’s Board of Trustees.
