A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There (Outdoor Essays & Reflections) |  | Author: Aldo Leopold
Creators: Charles W. Schwartz, Robert Finch
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
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Rating:  85 reviews
Sales Rank: 29631
Format: Deluxe Edition
Media: Paperback
Edition: Cmv
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 019505928X
Dewey Decimal Number: 508.73
EAN: 9780195059281
ASIN: 019505928X
Publication Date: June 15, 1989
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Amazon.com Review
Published in 1949, shortly after the author's death, A Sand County Almanac is a classic of nature writing, widely cited as one of the most influential nature books ever published. Writing from the vantage of his summer shack along the banks of the Wisconsin River, Leopold mixes essay, polemic, and memoir in his book's pages. In one famous episode, he writes of killing a female wolf early in his career as a forest ranger, coming upon his victim just as she was dying, "in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.... I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view." Leopold's road-to-Damascus change of view would find its fruit some years later in his so-called land ethic, in which he held that nothing that disturbs the balance of nature is right. Much of Almanac elaborates on this basic premise, as well as on Leopold's view that it is something of a human duty to preserve as much wild land as possible, as a kind of bank for the biological future of all species. Beautifully written, quiet, and elegant, Leopold's book deserves continued study and discussion today. --Gregory McNamee
Product Description
This special edition of the highly acclaimed A Sand County Almanac commemorates the one-hundreth anniversary of the birth of Aldo Leopold, one of the foremost conservationists of our century. First published in 1949 and praised in The New York Times Book Review as "full of beauty and vigor and bite," A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land. The volume includes a section on the monthly changes of the Wisconsin countryside; another section that gathers together the informal pieces written by Leopold over a forty-year period as he traveled around the woodlands of Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona, Sonora, Oregon, Manitoba, and elsewhere; and a final section in which Leopold addresses more formally the philosophical issues involved in wildlife conservation. As the forerunner of such important books as Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, and Robert Finch's The Primal Place, this classic work remains as relevant today as it was forty years ago.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 85
 What Makes This Book So Great? September 12, 2009
S. Grooms (St Paul, MN USA)
On another web site, I listed Sand County Almanac as the book that had changed me more than any other book. I came to the book at a time when I was educated enough to understand its message and to recognize how revolutionary it was. By now, many decades later, the message isn't quite as revolutionary, and yet I am disheartened to learn over and over that a great many people have not learned its central messages.
I'll be brief. There were two radically new ideas in this book, two ideas that were very much at odds with the traditional nature writing that preceded it.
First, Leopold (who invented the first university program in game management) argues for the interconnectedness of all life. For centuries, people had been seeing living things as isolated entities. Leopold makes it clear that soil and vegetation and fish and water and animal species all form a vast and incredibly complicated entity that is bigger than the sum of its parts. This web of creation is astonishingly beautiful, complex and harmonious in operation. It is, if you please, the handiwork of God, direct and shining and holy. We can study the lovely way different parts of this greater system and still not fully appreciate all the subtle and amazing ways its parts work together.
Second, Leopold makes a connection between man's relation to the physical world and ethics. That is, he argues (radically but pleasantly) that the way we treat soil, water, fish, birds, mammals and other critters is right or wrong, depending on the consequences of our conduct. This was his famous "land ethic." Before Leopold, nobody suggested that it could be immoral to chop down a forest. After Leopold, it would be impossible to not entertain that idea as a possibility.
So . . . all living things are hooked together on this planet, and it is immoral to behave in ways that destroy the harmony of those connections. Those were radical notions and are still not understood. That is the core of the importance of this book. But these lessons are told with whimsy, poetry, gentle humor and vast skill by one of the most decent and likable humans ever to draw breath. We need more such teachers. We need them badly.
beautiful book September 3, 2009
Tracy (Michigan)
This is a beautiful book about the simplicity of nature and all the amazing things we see if we just stop for a few minutes and pay attention. It's lovely and worth reading more than once.
Classic and timeless work August 18, 2009
Cal Varnson (Portland, OR)
Although released in 1949, Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac" is as relevant today as it was upon it's release. In part one, the author shares with the reader what it was like living on his farm for an entire year, with each month serving as its own chapter. Mr. Leopold's ability to paint his words on the pages allows the reader to visualize what he say 60+ years ago. Even my 11 year old son thought the writing was beautiful and it makes you long for the solitude and beauty Mr. Leopold himself experienced.
Parts two and three tackle tough questions of how the country allowed itself to effectively rape and pillage the environment for personal gain and "progress", with part three addressing the ethical responsibilities of man's use of nature.
This book became an instant favorite in my library and I hope to share it with future generations.
A Classic June 10, 2009
S. Sass
Anyone who's a fan of the natural world should have this book in his/her collection. Its a timeless classic that will leave you with many memorable quotes.
 Disappointed by Leopold May 28, 2009
The Czar of Arkansas (Little Rock, AR USA)
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
A Sand County Almanac has been touted for decades as a classic of conservation. So, being involved in conservation, I decided that it was past time to read this work. I started reading in high hopes based on such high praise, but, at the risk of being torched by legions of Leopold's fans, I must admit that I found A Sand County Almanac disappointing.
First, A Sand County Almanac is not a book in any unitary sense; it's a compilation of different essays on a number of topics that have been compiled into a single volume. This helter-skelter arrangement gives the work a very disjointed feel, in my opinion. Anthologies are not fundamentally a bad thing, but I felt that the subsections of A Sand County Almanac were either too short or not substantive enough to stand alone; hence, the editors felt obliged to produce a hodge-podge of Leopold's work in order to have a book of sufficient legnth. The sections do not sound as if they were contemporaneously written, which adds to the inconsistent feel of the work.
Second, as noted above, A Sand County Almanac was published posthumously, and was therefore not subject to Leopold's editorial direction. I'm not sure that A Sand County Almanac, as it stands now, would have been Leopold's last testament if he had been given a chance to write one. The last section of the book, "The Upshot," is sadly the smallest section, but by far the section with the most weight. The ideas of this section are challenging and inspired, but sadly, left to the very end. I'm not sure that there's any good way to arrange the curious mix of things in A Sand County Almanac, but I didn't like this section being placed at the end. Perhaps the editors thought this would allow the compilation to end on a high note; however, I felt that the most profound section was left shortest and last, as if the most important ideas in the book were treated as little more than an epilogue.
Only the first section of A Sand County Almanac is truly so; the reader is treated to the longest section of the book as Leopold describes the landscape month by month at his farm at Sand County, Wisconsin. This section's repetitive format I found monotonous by the end and thought it was only saved by Leopold's prose, to which I will return momentarily.
Another thing I found off-putting about A Sand County Almanac was the shrill tone of Leopold during certain passages. As I said before, this was published posthumously, and Leopold didn't get a chance to edit the text, so we can excuse some of the tone for that reason.
Nevertheless, Leopold seems to have little but disdain for those who should have been sympathetic to his viewpoint: hunters, fishermen, state and federal conservation agencies, fellow citizens who were conservation-minded, teachers and professors (even though Leopold was a professor himself). Even some bird watchers come in for scorn for not being serious enough. While these passages were clearly written during the early days of organized conservation, Leopold comes off occasionally as a sneering know-it-all. From the tone of the text, the reader is left with the definitive impression that Leopold knew more than everyone else and wasn't shy about letting you know. These passages cast Leopold as an intolerant zealot, interested more in followers than fellows.
All of the above being said, A Sand County Almanac is far from disaster. Leopold's prose is really something to behold. The flow of his praise has an almost Victorian cadence, which adds an aura of reverence and respect for nature in even the most boring passages of the book. His prose causes his work to soar in the best passages, and adds a measure of profundity to the last section of his book on conservation philosophy.
I'm convinced that Leopold is justly famous not for A Sand County Almanac, but rather Game Management and his pioneering work in the game management field. Without the publishing of Game Management, A Sand County Almanac would probably be relegated to a dusty memoir, if published at all. Nevertheless, Leopold is a gifted writer and the final section is worth serious contemplation.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 85
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