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Sand County Almanac (Outdoor Essays & Reflections) | 
| Author: Aldo Leopold
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $0.90
You Save: $7.09 (89%)
New (53) Used (91) Collectible (3) from $0.90
Rating:  76 reviews
Sales Rank: 12300
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.1 x 1
ISBN: 0345345053
Dewey Decimal Number: 508.73
EAN: 9780345345059
Publication Date: December 12, 1986
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Location B26==wear , name on front
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| Editorial Reviews:
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
"We can place this book on the shelf that holds the writings of Thoreau and John Muir." San Francisco Chronicle
These astonishing portraits of the natural world explore the breathtaking diversity of the unspoiled American landscape -- the mountains and the prairies, the deserts and the coastlines. A stunning tribute to our land and a bold challenge to protect the world we love.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 71 more reviews...
 The anchor volume of an American conservation bookshelf December 6, 2008
The definitive anchor volume on the bookshelf of modern American conservation. Leopold presents the big picture, painted as many small scenes. Again and again, I return to the February essay, "Good Oak," a classic of natural history writing. Leopold is a natural historian of the old school.
If recycling or climate change or energy has brought you into the conservation movement, this is the first book to read to get grounded in conservation from the ecological perspective. For those coming in from the animal rights movement, here is a book to help make sense of the consumptive side of conservation. For everyone else - here are nature writings from a man well-rounded in both his consumptive use and his appreciation of the landscape that may help explain where we conservationists are coming from.
A book for every season November 8, 2008
Aldo Leopold's book of essays is a good one to pull out every month and remark on the change of seasons, the month gone by and the one to come. It will plant you as firmly on the sandy plains of Adams County, Wisconsin, watching the bright red blackberry bushes in the morning sun, as any text you will ever see.
 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
1 out of 1 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.
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