The Owl and the Woodpecker (Paul Bannick)

Bird books seem to my biggest new indulgence this year. No fewer than seven of them have followed me home (so far) in the last 12 months. [I've reviewed several here; search my blog for "birds" to retrieve them.] As a group, these books have been a delight. Birders and the little flitting critters they [...]

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Tree: A Life Story (David Suzuki & Wayne Grady)

Evergreens help make much of the Pacific Northwest one of the most beautiful places on earth. Pines, cedars, and Douglas-fir line the horizon almost everywhere I go, and I’m lucky enough to see a few out any window of my house. But trees are more than ornaments. They are environments unto themselves. They provide shelter, [...]

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A Contract With the Earth (Newt Gingrich)

QUICK TAKE:  A Contract With the Earth by Newt Gingrich [LibraryThing / WorldCat] is a book-length proposal for a new environmental policy.  It wasn’t as science-oriented as Bjorn Lomborg’s Cool It [LibraryThing / WorldCat], nor as hyperbolic as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth [LibraryThing / WorldCat].  It fell somewhere in between while trying to advocate [...]

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The Creation (E. O. Wilson)

Why not start this blog with creation?: The Creation [LibraryThing / WorldCat] by Harvard scientist Edward O. Wilson, one of the founders of the modern biodiversity movement. I picked it up last September, when Wilson spoke at the University of Puget Sound, my alma mater. In his mid-70s, he’s still sharp as a tack and [...]

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