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| | A Sand County almanac, and Sketches here and there; |  | Author: Aldo Leopold
Publisher: Oxford Univ. Press
Category: Book
Buy Used: $125.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  74 reviews
Sales Rank: 3925746
Pages: 226
ASIN: B0006AS1LO
Publication Date: 1949
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Publisher: Oxford University PressDate of Publication: 1949Binding: HardcoverEdition: later printingCondition: VG+ in VG dj (dj has some small closed tears)
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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
First published in 1949 and praised in The New York Times Book Review as "a trenchant book, full of 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.
Written with an unparalleled understanding of the ways of nature, the book includes a section on the monthly changes of the Wisconsin countryside; another part that gathers informal pieces written by Leopold over a forty-year period as he traveled through the woodlands of Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona, Sonora, Oregon, Manitoba, and elsewhere; and a final section in which Leopold addresses 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 69 more reviews...
 Frankly, I was disappointed August 22, 2008
I expected a book that would move me emotionally as well as intellectually, like Abby's Desert Solitude. That's not what this book is all about. It is well written, yes, but it only shoots for the intellect, not the heart, or at least it did for me. It is still an important read.
 Classic June 7, 2008
A classic. As we rush into brave new environmental worlds where angels fear to tread, and as our kids grow up plugged in rather than playing in the dirt, this should be required reading in all schools (and required for the parents, too). Besides presenting a compelling and important argument, it's also a very good book.
Leaving a light footprint on the good earth May 2, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I re-read Leopold's Sand County Almanac every couple of years or so. It's not just a beautifully poetic celebration of the land. Its defense of a new sense of moral responsibility to the environment, spelled out in the book's "The Land Ethic," is a bracing tonic against the modern temptation to take the biosphere for granted. In these days of global warming, fossil fuel depletion, and escalating degradation of the land, water, and atmosphere, Leopold's 60-year-old plea for a new environmental ethic is both prophetic and urgently immediate.
In "The Land Ethic," Leopold argues for a new understanding of the moral community. Earlier ethical models focused on interpersonal and social relationships between humans. But given the interconnectedness of all members of the biosphere, we need to extend the moral community to include earth, sky, water, and all species--the biota. At least since the dawn of the modern age, human have tended to prize the biota only in terms of what we could get out of it. It had a purely economic, utilitarian value. But this way of thinking has resulted in environmental (not to mention economic and political) crisis.
What we must do now, argues Leopold, is to recognize our "vital" relationship to the biota, acknowledging that the well-being of our species is intimately connected to the well-being of the whole. This calls for a new standard of valuation that runs counter to the older, economic model. "Quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem," writes Leopold. "Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient." And if we do that, he concludes, we'll adopt the following ethical principle: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise" (p. 262). And part of what this means is that humans should strive to leave relatively light footprints on the earth, because the lighter our impact, the more likely the biota can successfully readjust to maintain integrity, stability, and beauty.
Good, important advice.
Sand County Almanac book January 18, 2008
The book was in great condition, at a great price! I got it within just a few days. I would def. buy from this person again.
NOT Censored. December 19, 2007
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
The earlier reviewer is wrong.The Ballantine edition is not censored.I have a Ballantine edition and there are at least three uses of the word "evolution" and the name Darwin is used at least twice.So don't let the paranoid pronouncements of an evolution worshiper stop you from enjoying this great book.All who love the outdoors and the natural world should read this classic work.
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