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"A volume for a lifetime" is how The New Yorker described the first of Donald Culross Peatie's two books about American trees published in the 1950s. In this one-volume edition, modern readers are introduced to one of the best nature writers of the last century. As we read Peattie's eloquent and entertaining accounts of American trees, we catch glimpses of our country's history and past daily life that no textbook could ever illuminate so vividly. Here you'll learn about everything from how a species was discovered to the part it played in our country’s history. Pioneers often stabled an animal in the hollow heart of an old sycamore, and the whole family might live there until they could b...
A Book of Hours contains 24 essays, one for each hour of the day, that seek to bridge the gap between definitive scientific philosophy and the sheer unadulterated beauty that Donald Culross Peattie envisioned within everyday life. The Boston Transcript referred to this collection as “science, in sheer poetry,” and the Chicago Daily Tribune mused that “it leaves one a better man for having read it” and offers “the inevitableness of natural laws and the truth of beauty, if one cares to seek it.”
Flowering Earth is an extraordinary work in which Peattie explores the origin and significance of plant life with an unmatched sense of astonishment and reflection. According to The New York Times, his prose in Flowering Earth “is pervaded by a continuous sense of beauty and illuminative insight,” and Books hails it as a piece “for people who are refreshed by any sort of emancipation from the trivial…”
The Road of a Naturalist is a fascinating autobiographical wonder written by one of America's most beloved naturalists at the height of his fame. A scientist, a philosopher, and a poet, Donald Culross Peattie takes us on an confessional journey across the landscape of his life. Told in flashbacks of years past and interspersed with impressions of a journey by motorcar across the American West, it is intensely personal. It is American in the best sense of the word. From saying goodbye to the trees at his childhood home on Lake Michigan to a man formed via Harvard and New York City, finally discovering a belief in the nature of things in a cabin in the Grand Tentons, it is not told as as linear life story but rather an adventure in living, in science, in thought.
An Almanac for Moderns contains a short essay for each day of the year that contemplates a unique but factual aspect of unbridled nature. According to a review in Nation, this collection of essays manages to “appeal to the ordinary lover of nature . . . but the turn of Peattie’s mind is poetic and speculative.” The New York Times calls this book “a fine and subtle perception . . . rising at times to an intense lyric beauty . . . a book which the reader will deeply treasure, and to which he will repeatedly return.”
Cargoes and Harvests, famed naturalist Donald Culross Peattie’s first book, eloquently explores agriculture and trade within America’s past using thoughtful language that is well ahead of its time. Originally published in 1926, Peattie takes readers on a compelling adventure through the socioeconomic histories of staples such as tea, coffee, cocoa, potatoes and tobacco. Starting with the seeds and roots of the American landscape, Cargoes and Harvests illustrates where we’ve been and how far we’ve come. By considering the relationship between a nation and its goods, Peattie unearths countless reflective implications that still resonate within the field of American agriculture today.
Each hour in the twenty-four hours of the day can be an experience revealing the wonders of the world and points to consider in man's destiny.
An informative overview of more than one hundred different tree species describes their physical characteristics, ranges, and the role they played in the history of America.
Musings of famous naturalist on natural history of Illinois.