Recommended Readings

A Sand County Almanac

Aldo Leopold
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.

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-deficit Disorder

Richard Louv
In his landmark work Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv brought together cutting-edge studies that pointed to direct exposure to nature as essential for a child’s healthy physical and emotional development.

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Looking for Hickories: The Forgotten Wilderness of the Rural Midwest

Thomas Springer
Touching and humorous by turns, Looking for Hickories captures the essence of the upper Midwest's character with subjects particular to the region yet often universal in theme, from barn building to land preservation to the neglected importance of various trees in the landscape.

Scat and Tracks of the Great Lakes

James Halfpenny
See those animal signs on the trail? Was that footprint left by a dog or a coyote? Was that pile of droppings deposited by a moose or a deer? Scats and Tracks of the Great Lakes will help you determine which mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians have passed your way and could still be nearby.

The World Without Us

Alan Weisman
In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us. In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; what of our everyday stuff may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.