RaveSierra Club[An] environmental history that is essential reading for anyone committed to preserving life on Earth ... Nijhuis weaves some of the boldfaced names of conservation history—Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson—together with lesser-known figures ... Nijhuis brings to these capsule histories the sensibilities of an ecologist. She\'s always on the lookout for relationships, and in the process reveals how the conservation and environmental movements (separate entities, she makes clear) operate like an ecosystem ... No matter their individual passions, all the heroes who appear in this book remain a single community—one held together by a shared love of life itself.
Helen MacDonald
RaveThe Sierra ClubThe 41 essays in Vesper Flights continue her explorations into the more-than-human world. Whether viewing feral pigs, taking her niece on a walk through a rewilded fen, or tracking deer along the edge of a motorway, Macdonald works hard to break us humans out of our species solipsism ... The short essay is the perfect métier for a nature writer, in that the literary form follows the function of modern humans\' interactions with wild nature: brief encounters, filled with intensity, \'times in which the world stutters, turns, and fills with unexpected meaning.\'
Florence Williams
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewWilliams, a contributing editor at Outside magazine, presents all of this with the zip of a trail runner covering a lot of ground sure-footedly. She’s got the pop-sci presentation down pat — breezy enough to draw in the lay reader, thorough enough to satisfy the expert. She gamely volunteers to be researchers’ human guinea pig, including wearing a portable EEG unit in the woods and looking like a 'shriveled sea urchin.' (At times, though, Williams’s writing pops a little too much for my taste; describing Frederick Law Olmsted as a 'badass nature guru' is pushing it.)
