SUGGESTED READING LIST FROM RICK BASS
Grizzly Years by Doug Peacock–beautiful and wise memoir of legendary grizzly bear activist who, recovering from the wounds of Vietnam, went into Yellowstone to heal.
Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams–powerful elegiac memoir of the loss of her mother to cancer and the concurrent damage to the Great Salt lake.
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier–a love story, and a re-telling of the Odyssey, but also a novel that pays extraordinarily close attention to the natural world.
Joe by Larry Brown–novel about an itinerant woods-worker whose job is to kill old hardwoods in order to replant homogenous and fast-growing Southern yellow pine.
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray–poignant and passionate memoir of growing up in north Georgia pine forests.
An Unreasonable Woman by Diane Wilson–elegant and fiery memoir of one woman’s crusade to protect shrimp habitat in Texas.
Bayou Farewell by Mike Tidwell–magnificent ecological expose of the destruction of an extraordinarily vital and complicated watershed.
Game Wars by Marc Reisner–dramatic narrative of wildlife poaching in America, particularly in the national parks.
Science Under Siege by Todd Wilkinson–elegant and important profiles of great scientists who were forced out of government positions for not altering their science to fit political pressures from above.
Last Stand by Richard Manning–great memoir about journalism during the Timber Wars of the 1980s by one of our finest journalists
Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner–definitive book on contemporary water issues
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner–one of our Great American Novels.
The End of Nature by Bill McKibben–seminal wake-up call to global warming, published over a quarter of a century ago now.
The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen–dense, erudite, and ultimately magnificent exploration–and explanation–of conservation biology, and the danger of habitat fragmentation. Big wilderness equals healthy wilderness.
The Hour of Land by Terry Tempest Williams–the author’s “personal topography” of several of our most iconic national parks.
Mary Oliver: New and Selected Poems–one of our greatest poets of the natural world.
Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez–a definitive exploration of humans’ attitudes toward wolves.
Notes From the Shore by Jennifer Ackerman–lovely meditations on Chesapeake Bay country.
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren— a great Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, best political novel ever, and one of the Great American Novels. A case study of how power corrupts, and of how absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Any book by David Sedaris. Here in the Anthropocene, activists need to remember how to laugh. Funny, sweet, touching essays.
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