A Sand County Almanac

By Aldo Leopold,

Book cover of A Sand County Almanac: And Sketched Here and There

Book description

Few books have had a greater impact than A Sand County Almanac, which many credit with launching a revolution in land management. Written as a series of sketches based principally upon the flora and fauna in a rural part of Wisconsin, the book, originally published by Oxford in 1949, gathers…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked A Sand County Almanac as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

A book I resisted reading for a long time simply because everyone told me I had to read it. I am glad I stopped being pigheaded about it.

Through an anthology of essays, Leopold explores the ecology of his farm in Wisconsin as it changes through the year and explores philosophy, ecology, our relationship with the land and nature, and indeed with ourselves. But no description really does it justice.

It is a beautifully crafted set of thoughts that inspired the American conservation movement and remains an important work. To read it is to be walking in nature with Leopold,…

I read this book at Cambridge University over 20 years ago when this was already 50 years old, and I can still remember the corner of the library I was in when I read the essay in it called Odyssey where he imagines the history of two atoms.

Starting from their beginnings in rocks and then as they move through ecological systems and different life forms – oak roots, buffalo, native peoples, settler wheat and cattle, and down with their muck out to sea. It was like a hallucination of nature writing and afterwards I saw what he described whenever…

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