Learning from the Past

We’re excited! The Rocky Mountain Land Series resumes this Saturday, as Mark Fiege joins us to discuss his groundbreaking new book, The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States, a brilliant reframing of a history so familiar to us all. Leading historian Richard White had this to say about the Land Series’ next book:

“Mark Fiege has written a book so original and so necessary that a reader can be excused for being both astonished and wondering why no one has written a book like this before. It is easy to say that human history never takes place outside the natural world; it is quite another thing to write a history that demonstrates it with the subtlety and grace Mark Fiege does in The Republic of Nature.”

Come meet the author — this Saturday! In the meantime, here’s a short clip on The Republic of Nature:

Mark Fiege’s publisher, the University of Washington Press, has just released yet another intriguing volume to add to the Land Library’s growing collection of environmental histories:

James Morton Turner’s The Promise of Wilderness: American Environmental Politics Since 1964, examines how the idea of wilderness has shaped the public land debate since the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. William Cronan calls Turner’s book, “the most deeply researched, analytically rigorous, and elegantly written study of American wilderness politics since the 1960s.” And here’s more, from the author himself!

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Keeping the Home Fires Burning

What do you hope to learn about in the coming new year? It’s an exciting prospect to set yourself a course of study, and little by little gain insight into what matters most to you. For the Land Library, our endless (and always rewarding) quest is to learn more about our place on earth.

From that yearning was born our 25,000 volume collection of natural history books — and also the Rocky Mountain Land Series, our long-running series of author talks, presented in partnership with the Tattered Cover Book Store. Today, we’re excited to announce the Land Series 2011 Winter lineup of authors, photographers, historians, and naturalists. Each Land Series presenter widens our appreciation of the stories behind our age-old relationship with the land, and for that we are extremely grateful!

Historian Douglas Brinkley (pictured above) rejoins the Land Series with his new book The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom 1879-1960. This is the second volume in Brinkley’s planned Wilderness Cycle, and he was last with us for the cycle’s beginning: The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. This latest volume introduces a lively cast of characters influential in preserving the Alaskan wilderness, visionaries such as William O. Douglas, Charles Sheldon, John Muir, Bob Marshall, and the marvelous Muries (Olaus, Mardy, and Adolph).

Douglas Brinkley is a marvelous storyteller in print and in person, so we hope you can join us for a very special evening!

Intrepid traveler Sara Wheeler will return us to the arctic wilderness with her new book The Magnetic North: Travels in the Arctic. More than a decade ago she traveled to the opposite tip of the world in her classic book Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica (also pictured above).

With The Magnetic North, Sara Wheeler leads us on a circumpolar route, providing an up-to-the-minute portrait of a region growing in global importance day by day.

Closer to home, we also have:

Oil and gas industry veteran Bob Cavnar will join us to discuss his behind-the scenes analysis of an accident we were all assured could never happen: Disaster on the Horizon: High Stakes, High Risks, and the Story Behind the Deepwater Well Blowout. Mark White, former governor of Texas writes: “Bob Cavnar has written the definitive story of the blowout in the Gulf….A must read for everyone concerned about the oil industry, the effectiveness of government regulation, and America’s energy future.”

We’re also happy to welcome back David Wann. David has joined us in the past for such books as Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, Simple Prosperity, and Reinventing Community. His new book, The New Normal: An Agenda for Responsible Living places each individual’s responsibility for a healthy planet front and center.

OK, wait a minute — who is this man, and why does he look so familiar??

We have been lucky enough to have Robert Michael Pyle join us several times before, but it is with special enthusiasm that we’ll be welcoming Bob back this year. The Thunder Tree: Lessons from an Urban Wildland, is a beautifully written memoir of Bob’s growing up along Denver’s High Line Canal. His carefree mucking-about cast the seeds for his future life as a naturalist. The Thunder Tree will soon be released in a new paperback edition (with a foreword by Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods):

And lastly, here’s an author we’ve been hearing about for quite some time:

We first became aware of Philip Connors in The Paris Review‘s Summer 2008 issue. For nearly a decade, Connors has spent half of each year in a fire lookout tower in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest.

Here’s a book that many, many people are talking about, months before its publication!

“What a wonderful book. Philip Connors went up to the mountaintop to serve as a lookout and he came down with a masterwork of close observation, deep reflection, and hard-won wisdom. This is an unforgettable reckoning with the American land.” Philip Gourevitch

So PLEASE join us this Winter for the chance to meet the following authors!

ROCKY MOUNTAIN LAND SERIES Winter 2011

Saturday, January 22nd, 2:00pm:

Bob Cavnar, author of
Disaster on the Horizon: High Stakes, High Risks, and the Story Behind the Deepwater Well Blowout

Wednesday, January 26th, 7:30pm:

Douglas Brinkley, author of
The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom 1879-1960

Thursday, February 10th, 7:30pm:

David Wann, author of
The New Normal: an Agenda for Responsible Living

Monday, March 14th, 7:30pm:

Sara Wheeler, author of
The Magnetic North: Travels in the Arctic

April, exact date & time TBA:

Robert Michael Pyle, author of
The Thunder Tree: Lessons from an Urban Wildland

Tuesday, May 3rd, 7:30pm:

Philip Connors, author of
Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout

All Land Series events will take place at the Tattered Cover’s Historic LoDo Book Store (16th & Wynkoop in lower downtown Denver). For more information, visit the Tattered Cover’s event page. Each program is FREE of charge — truly a wonderful opportunity for lifelong learners of all ages!

And be sure to check-in for updates. With more new books on their way, many more authors will be booked in the weeks ahead! Hopefully, authors such as Hannah Nordhaus (her new book is pictured below). Stay tuned!

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Betrayal, Rejuvenation, and the History of a People

In 2004, Oregon’s Siletz Tribe asked Charles Wilkinson to write its tribal history. Wilkinson (distinguished legal scholar and lifelong student of the American West) took on the task, and six years later we have The People Are Dancing Again: The History of the Siletz Tribe of Western Oregon.

Frank Pommershein (author of Broken Landscape: Indians, Indian Tribes, and the Constitution) writes: “Charles Wilkinson captures the Siletz people’s long journey of betrayal and rejuvenation with such warmth, insight, and engagement that a reader feels privileged to share in it.”

For more on the Siletz people, and Charles Wilkinson’s latest book, please take a look at this excellent clip!

Charles Wilkinson’s books on the complex history of the American West are among the most indispensable volumes on the Land Library’s shelves. Here’s just a few:

Blood Struggle: The Rise of the Modern Indian Nation, Fire on the Plateau: Conflict and Endurance in the American Southwest

Messages from Frank’s Landing: A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way, Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the West, The Eagle Bird: Mapping a New West, and The Fourth West (the 2009 Wallace Stegner Lecture)

The Rocky Mountain Land Series will be hosting both Charles Wilkinson and author & attorney Walter Echo-Hawk on Saturday, December 4th. For more details on this FREE event, click here. And for more information on Walter Echo-Hawk’s book, In the Courts of the Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided, you can scan our earlier post!

We hope you can make this special Land Series event. In the meantime, we’d like to share one of our favorite passages from The People Are Dancing Again. Here’s Charles Wilkinson on the home of the Siletz people:

“Their traditional homeland was literally the most productive, in terms of mammals, fish, and other seafood, of anywhere in western North America; western Oregon Indians understandably revered these ‘landscapes that fed their people.’ Their environment was so mild in climate — often rain- and windswept to be sure, but ultimately so easy on a person. The land was physically magnificent, with its green ridges and mists and changing coastlines and endless sea. Everyone was buried there, from way back, and all the stories were told there. This was where it began. The reverence for their homeland, for duh-neh, their place, is so complete, so profound, that their religion has no heaven separate from earth. When people pass on, they remain here, in their paradise.”

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Celebrating the Landscape of Home

As the Rocky Mountain Land Series heads into its ninth year, we’re excited to announce our Fall 2010 lineup of authors, artists, photographers, historians, and naturalists. Each Land Series presenter widens our appreciation of the stories behind our age-old relationship to the land, and for that we are extremely grateful! (You can find the entire Fall schedule listed below).

The new season starts on September 30th, as Craig Childs discusses his new book Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession (pictured above). The Land Series has been lucky enough to host Craig Childs before, and this new book may be his best yet!

It’s hard to think of a more wide-ranging, knowledgeable student of the American West than Dan Flores. Dan will discuss his two most recent books, the Twentieth Anniversary edition of his classic of the southern plains, Caprock Canyonlands, and Visions of the Big Sky: Painting and Photographing the Northern Rocky Mountain West.

This fall’s schedule is a good example of the wide diversity of Land Series topics. Here’s three upcoming authors who, in their own way, tell the twin stories of people and the land: Walter Echo-Hawk’s In the Courts of the Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided (for more on Walter Echo-Hawk, please visit our earlier post), Walter Borneman’s Rival Rails: The Race to Build America’s Greatest Transcontinental Railroad, and Jack Turner’s Landscapes on Glass: Lantern Slides for the Rainbow Bridge–Monument Valley Expedition (there’s more on this little known expedition on our earlier post).

Why should birder’s have all the fun? Robert Michael Pyle embarked on his own Big Year, as many obsessed birders have done. Sighting butterflies was Pyle’s goal, but along the way he has (like Edwin Way Teale before him) written an insightful natural history spanning several regions.

A certain level of learned zaniness may ensue when artist Ray Troll returns to the Land Series with his new book Something Fishy This Way Comes (for proof of zany, check out this video from our earlier post, The Perfect Blend of Pancakes & Paleontology).

Jonathan Waterman returns as well — this time with National Geograpahic photographer Peter McBride, as they discuss The Colorado River: Flowing Through Conflict. Water will forever remain high on our list of Land Series topics!

And speaking of the power of the Colorado River, photographer Christoper Brown will be giving a powerpoint presentation on his new book Path of Beauty: Photographic Adventures in the Grand Canyon, full of wonderful images that elevate geologic layers to high art.

Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril is a book not to be missed. A panel of editors & contributors will join us in a loose town-hall format as we all come to grips with our obligations to the planet and to the future.

And there’s no more immediate ethical sphere than our relationship to food. Katherine Leiner has written a wonderful new book that highlights inspirational stories from across the country, Growing Food: The New Generation of Sustainable Farmers, Cooks, and Food Activists.

So PLEASE join us this Fall for the chance to meet the following authors!

ROCKY MOUNTAIN LAND SERIES Fall 2010

Thursday, September 30th, 7:30pm:

Craig Childs, author of
Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession

Friday, October 15th, 7:30pm:

Ray Troll, author of
Something Fishy This Way Comes: The Artwork of Ray Troll

Sunday, October 17th, 3:00pm:

Dan Flores, author of
Caprock Canyonlands and Visions of the Big Sky: Painting and Photographing the Northern Rocky Mountain West

Thursday, October 21st, 7:30pm:

Walter Borneman, author of
Rival Rails: The Race to Build America’s Greatest Transcontinental Railroad

Saturday, October 23rd, 2:00pm:

Katherine Leiner, author of
Growing Roots: The New Generation of Sustainable Farmers, Cooks, and Food Activists

Saturday, October 30th, 2:00pm:

Robert Michael Pyle, author of
Mariposa Road: The First Butterfly Big Year

Saturday, November 13th, 2:00pm:

The editors & contributors from
Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril

Saturday, November 20th, 2:00pm:

Jack Turner, author of
Landscapes on Glass: Lantern Slides for the Rainbow Bridge–Monument Valley Expedition

Monday, November 29th, 7:30pm:

Christopher Brown, author of
Path of Beauty: Photographic Adventures in the Grand Canyon

Saturday, December 4th, 2:00pm:

Walter Echo-Hawk, author of
In the Courts of the Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided

Date & Time TBA:

Peter McBride & Jonathan Waterman, authors of
The Colorado River: Flowing Through Conflict

All Land Series events will take place at the Tattered Cover’s Historic LoDo Book Store (16th & Wynkoop in lower downtown Denver). For more information visit the Tattered Cover’s event page. Each program is FREE of charge — truly a wonderful opportunity for lifelong learners of all ages!

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Within One Kingdom, Such Diversity!

Timber Press, that great engine of first-rate botanical books, recently published a wonderful introduction to some of our planet’s most exotic life forms. Steven L. Stephenson’s The Kingdom Fungi: The Biology of Mushrooms, Molds, and Lichens offers an exciting natural history of an often neglected, little understood (yet critical) component of life on earth. Stephenson calls on more than thirty years of fungal studies spanning six continents, in climates ranging from the tropics to the polar regions. The result is one of the Land Library’s favorite natural history books of the past year.

Another favorite (also pictured above) is The Chanterelle Book by Olle Perrson, with beautiful illustrations by Bo Mossberg. The Chanterelle family includes some of our best known edible mushrooms, including the Spicy Chanterelle of western conifer forests, and the fragrant Black Trumpet of eastern beech woods. Persson & Mossberg’s book provides a rich natural and cultural history — not to mention recipes!

And merely scratching the surface of the Kingdom Fungi, here’s a few more volumes from the Land Library’s shelves:

Morels by Michael Kuo, North American Boletes: A Color Guide to Fleshy Pored Mushrooms by Alan & Arleen Bessette, Taming the Truffle: the History, Lore, and Science of the Ultimate Mushroom by Ian R. Hall, et.al., and The Field Guide to North American Truffles by Matt Trappe, et.al.

For naturalists, food-lovers, and fans of all-things-fungi, the Rocky Mountain Land Series will host a FREE program on Wednesday, August 18th with Gary Lincoff, author of the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. Gary will be speaking on his new book The Complete Mushroom Hunter, and he’ll be bringing along plenty of samples & examples! For more information, please visit the Tattered Cover Book Store’s event page.

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A History Both Epic and Tragic

Historian Eric Jay Dolin has just written one of the most comprehensive histories of the rise and fall of the American fur trade. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire is to understand how North America was explored and settled, as its native peoples were both enriched and exploited by the trade. Buffalo, beaver, and sea otters were slaughtered, and their precious pelts were tailored into hats, coats, and sleigh blankets.

Dolin is a natural-born storyteller, and he makes a convincing case for the seminal role the fur trade had in the shaping of our continent.

Eric Jay Dolin’s previous book, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, was chosen by the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe as one of the best books of the year.

Historian Douglas Brinkley had an excellent comment about Dolin’s latest book: “Nobody writes about the link between American history and natural history with the scholarly grace of Eric Jay Dolin. Fur, Fortune, and Empire is a landmark study filled with a cast of eccentric western-type characters. Not since the days of Francis Parkman has a historian analyzed the fur-trade industry with such brilliance.”

Please join us as Eric Jay Dolin takes part in the Land Library’s ongoing Rocky Mountain Land Series on Monday, July 26th. For more information, you can visit the Tattered Cover Book Store’s website!

The literature of mountain men and the fur trade is voluminous. Here’s just a few classic titles from the Land Library’s shelves:

Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West by Dale L. Morgan, Rocky Mountain Rendezvous: A History of the Fur Trade 1825-1840 by Fred R. Gowans, Osborne Russell’s Journal of a Trapper (a book that has been highly praised over the years by contemporary nature writer Edward Hoagland), Mountain Men and Fur Traders: Eighteen Biographical Sketches by LeRoy R. Hafen

And no study of the fur trade can be complete without a full knowledge and appreciation of the animals most impacted by this industry. The Land Library heartily recommends the following natural history studies:

The Time of the Buffalo by Tom McHugh, Otters: Ecology, Behavior, and Conservation by Hans Kruuk (including the nature & ecology of sea otters), The Beaver: Natural History of a Wetlands Engineer by Dietland Muller-Schwarze & Lixing Sun

For much more on the history of the fur trade in the West, be sure to visit the Museum of the Fur Trade‘s website, or if you’re ever in Chadron, Nebraska, plan a visit!

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Well Off Anyone’s Beaten Track

“In my mind’s eye, I wanted to live, off and on, in an area that was well off anyone’s beaten track, an area so in and of itself that it still had a lively and palpable sense of its own history, culture, and identity, where the source of that history and culture and the people who lived and worked there remained very organic to the place….This book, then, is the story of my years in the Sandhills of Nebraska. Hopefully, through the following words and pictures, you, too, will come to understand why the Sandhills is like no other place.” — David A. Owen

In Like No Other Place, author and photographer David Owen captures the rhythms and rich layers of a region few of us will ever see — Nebraska’s Sandhills, home to a Native American heritage spanning many generations, a still surviving ranching culture, and a remarkable biodiversity set in one of the largest grass-stabilized dune systems in the world.

This book is a wonderful, and amazingly thoughtful study of both people and the land. Please join us for the next Rocky Mountain Land Series event, as David Owen presents a slide show based on his new book. For more program information, please visit the Tattered Cover Book Store’s website!

And here’s a few more Sandhills books from the Land Library’s shelves!

The Road Home by Jim Harrison (a novel set in the Sandhills, as was Harrison’s earlier novel Dalva), The Last Prairie: A Sandhills Journal by Stephen R. Jones, The Niobrara: A River Running Through Time by Paul A. Johnsgard. The Land Library can also strongly recommend Johnsgard’s This Fragile Land: A Natural History of the Nebraska Sandhills (not pictured).

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Beatrix Potter: Author, Illustrator, Mycologist

Over the years we have really appreciated the opportunity to learn more and more about the renowned children’s author and illustrator, Beatrix Potter (1866-1943). We continue to find surprises around every corner. She was a close observer and illustrator of the myriad details of nature — focused, perhaps most notably, on the secret world of fungi and lichens.

Beatrix Potter produced hundreds of paintings of fungi, often using the microscope to satisfy her constant curiosity:

“During the autumn and winter of 1895 Beatrix spent an increasing amount of time drawing fungi under the microscope. Her objectives had changed from simply assembling a collection of watercolours and photographs to discovering how fungi reproduced.” — from Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature by Linda Lear.

Of course, Beatrix Potter was destined to be known not for her mycological drawings but for something quite different:

“And so it was that on 4 September, the very day after discovering the rare pine cone fungus, Beatrix sat down in the sunshine on the lawn of Eastwood and wrote a picture letter about a disobedient young rabbit called ‘Peter’. ‘I don’t know what to write to you…so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter.‘” — from Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature by Linda Lear.

Several books focus on Beatrix Potter’s love of nature, and specifically her life-long devotion to the landscape and traditions of England’s Lake District. Among our favorites is A Victorian Naturalist: Beatrix Potter’s Drawings from the Armitt Collection by E. Jay et.al. (pictured above), and the previously quoted Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature by Linda Lear (pictured below, along with a wonderful photograph of Beatrix at the Keswick Sheep Show in 1935).

And here’s the Land Library’s most recent addition to our Beatrix Potter shelf — a beautifully produced book from France:

On Wednesday August 18th, the Rocky Mountain Land Series will host a free program with Gary Lincoff, author of the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. Gary will be speaking on his new book The Complete Mushroom Hunter, and he’ll be bringing along plenty of samples & examples. Over the next few weeks the Land Library hopes to add most posts on the world of mushrooms and fungi. As Beatrix Potter’s work proves, this is a world that has attracted some wonderful books!

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Wall Street’s Sacred Mushroom Seeker

In 1934, R. Gordon Wasson joined the Wall Street banking firm of J.P. Morgan & Company. There he remained until 1963, serving for the last 20 years as Vice-President. Perhaps a typical American success story, but most definitely an unlikely background for one of the most fascinating scholars of the past century.

In the 1950′s, Wasson and his wife Valentina mounted expeditions to Mexico to study the religious use of mushrooms by the native population. They eventually met Maria Sabina, a Mazatec curandera who introduced the Wassons to the cult of the sacred mushroom. In 1957, the Wassons published a still-famous Life magazine article (Seeking the Magic Mushroom) that introduced knowledge of psychoactive mushrooms to a wide audience for the first time.

Following Valentina’s death in 1958, R. Gordon Wasson continued what had already become his life’s work (with all due respect to J.P. Morgan). His fascination with psychoactive plants and the spiritual life of indigenous people led him all over the world, especially to Papua New Guinea, India, and North America (where he studied the ceremonial use of fly agaric among the Ojibway people).

Wasson produced several books throughout his remarkable career, almost all extremely hard to find these days, and very expensive as well. Here’s just a few titles the Land Library would love to add to its shelves someday: The Wonderous Mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoamerica, Maria Sabina and Her Mazatec Mushroom Velada, and Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality.

But for now, the Land Library is happy to have the highly informative book featured above: The Sacred Mushroom Seeker: Tributes to R. Gordon Wasson, edited by Thomas J. Riedlinger (with contributions from writers in the fields of ethnobotany, religion, and anthropology, and with a foreword by Richard Evans Schultes).

It was a 1927 honeymoon trip to the Catskill Mountains that led the Wassons to their passionate pursuit of the mushroom. Chancing upon some edible wild mushrooms they became fascinated by the differences in cultural attitudes toward the Kingdom Fungi. Field research commenced, and the couple (pictured above) published their first book, Mushrooms, Russia and History, in 1957.

On Wednesday August 18th, the Rocky Mountain Land Series will host a free program with Gary Lincoff, author of the Audubon Society Guide to North American Mushrooms. Gary will be speaking on his new book The Complete Mushroom Hunter, and he’ll be bringing along plenty of samples & examples. Over the next few weeks the Land Library hopes to add more posts on the world of mushrooms and fungi. It’s a world that has attracted some wonderful books!

And speaking of books, we couldn’t sign off without sharing R. Gordon Wasson’s personal bookplate:

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Ernest Thompson Seton: A World Alive

The Rocky Mountain Land Series kicks off its summer season this coming Saturday as author David L. Witt discusses his new book Ernest Thompson Seton: The Life and Legacy of an Artist and Conservationist — the first biography of this legendary naturalist in many years. Seton (1860-1946) was one of America’s most popular authors and lecturers in the early 1900′s. He wrote over 40 books, many of which are in print to this day, including Wild Animals I Have Known, cited by both Rudyard Kipling and David Attenborough for its early influence on their lives.

Ernest Thompson Seton was also one of the most important and technically accomplished wildlife illustrators of his time, and his concepts for bird identification influenced the likes of Roger Tory Peterson and others.

David L. Witt tells a fascinating story of a remarkable and complex life. His new book is also a joy to look through, with hundreds of historic photographs, and page after page of Seton’s artwork and illustrations. Learn much, much more at this Saturday’s Rocky Mountain Land Series program (details below)!

Three by Seton: The Biography of a Grizzly, Lives of the Hunted, Art Anatomy of Animals

Ernest Thompson Seton’s The Sleeping Wolf: “Seton wrote that the work took a full month at several hours per day, a claim easily believed by the detail he captured. Everything we might consider noble and beautiful about a wild animal comes through in this painting. The setting is so beautiful that we feel as if we have come upon this animal in a state of total peace in a remote woodland.” — David L. Witt

Sharp-shinned Hawk, Ernest Thompson Seton’s first known painting, 1876.

Please join us as the Rocky Mountain Land Series presents:

David L. Witt, author of Ernest Thompson Seton: The Life and Legacy of an Artist and Conservationist

WHEN: Saturday, June 26th, 2pm

WHERE: at the Tattered Cover’s LoDo Store (16th & Wynkoop in lower downtown Denver)

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