THE OUTPOURING OF concern for the wilderness environment has produced a bewildering (odd word in this context) onslaught of printed material. Sometimes it seems like too much of a good thing. The conscientious reader could spend all his or her leisure hours reading the literature on wilderness and never set foot in the woods. We don’t wish to encourage the idea that reading about it is more important than being there.
That said, however, we believe that there is a core of “must” reading, and concentric circles of valuable—informative or inspiring—thought provokers. We list below those books that we have found useful or provocative, a half dozen of which we’ve marked (*) as the “must” (that is, not to be allowed to become “musty”) core.
Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness. Simon & Schuster, 1968.
Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Sierra Club Books, 1977.
______. The Long-Legged House. Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969.
Brooks, Paul. The Pursuit of Wilderness. Houghton Mifflin, 1971.
______. Roadless Areas. Knopf, 1964.
Brower, David. For Earth’s Sake: The Life and Times of David Brower. Peregrine Smith Books, 1990.
Callicott, J. Baird, ed. Companion to “A Sand County Almanac.” University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.
Cohen, Michael. The Pathless Way: John Muir and the American Wilderness. University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.
Cole, David N. Low-Impact Recreational Practices for Wilderness and Backcountry. United States Forest Service General Technical Report INT-265, August 1989.
Commoner, Barry. Making Peace with the Planet. Pantheon Books, 1975.
Devall, Bill, and George Sessions. Deep Ecology. Gibbson Smith, 1985.
Dr. Seuss. The Lorax. Random House, 1971.
Dubos, René. The Wooing of Earth. Scribner’s 1980.
Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. Scribner’s, 1908.
Hampton, Bruce, and David Cole. Soft Paths. Stackpole Books, 1988.
*Hardin, Garret. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science, December 13, 1968, pp. 1243–49.
Huth, Hans. Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes. University of Nebraska Press, 1957.
Leopold, Aldo. The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays. University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
*______. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. Oxford University Press, 1949.
Levin, Philip D. Series of articles in Appalachia: “Toward a Recreated Wilderness: Notes on Abolishing the Four Thousand Footer Club,” June 1973, pp. 132–140; “Inward to Wilderness,” part 1, December 1975, pp. 49–62; part 2, December 1976, pp. 18–35; part 3, June 1978, pp. 25–44; part 4, December 1978, pp. 57–86.
Lopez, Barry. Desert Notes: Reflections in the Eye of a Raven. Avon Books, 1978.
Manes, Christopher. Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization. Little, Brown, 1990.
Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. Oxford University Press, 1964.
*McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature. Doubleday, 1989.
McPhee, John. The Control of Nature. Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1989.
______. Encounters with the Archdruid. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1971.
*Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. Yale University Press, 1967; rev. ed., 1973, 1982.
______. The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics. University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.
Rollin, Bernard E. Animal Rights and Human Morality. Prometheus Books, 1981.
Runte, Alfred. National Parks: The American Experience. University of Nebraska Press, 1979.
Sax, Joseph L. Mountains without Handrails: Reflections on the National Parks. University of Michigan Press, 1980.
Schmitt, Peter. Back to Nature: The American Myth in Urban America. Oxford University Press, 1969; reissue, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild. North Point Press, 1990.
Terrie, Philip G. Forever Wild: Environmental Aesthetics and the Adirondack Forest Preserve. Harbor Hill Books, 1985.
Thoreau, Henry David. The Maine Woods. Originally published in 1848 magazine articles and an 1864 book; see the Bramwell House edition, 1950.
*______. Walden; or, Life in the Woods. 1854; see the Houghton Mifflin edition, 1893.
Waterman, Laura, and Guy Waterman. Wilderness Ethics: Preserving the Spirit of Wildness. Countryman Press, 1993.
Winner, Langdon. The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. University of Chicago Press, 1989.