Shale County Years

Author: Aldo Leopold
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-03-01
Features: This book is the Bible of ecological egalitarianism and a manifesto for land ethics! It was selected as one of the top ten must-read books in the humanities by the New York Public Library's "Books of the Century." It is hailed alongside Walden as a model of natural humanistic writing! In 1999, the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of this book, nearly considered a "revolutionary" work in the field of conservation, Leopold began a major revision of articles he had long prepared for publication. These articles were selected from about a decade of his work. The first part consists of short essays on his seasonal observations at his cabin, arranged by month in the form of a diary; the second part includes episodes from his career at different places, experiences that taught him the meaning of conserving natural resources; the last part consists of several substantial philosophical essays, concluding with a powerful statement of land ethics. This is the initial form of A Sand County Almanac, published the year after Leopold's death (1949). In 1996, a new edition of the book was released, which included eight additional articles from Leopold's River of Words (1953) collection, along with minor rearrangements of the articles, but did not affect its fundamental structure. This is the version of A Sand County Almanac that we read today. A Sand County Almanac: And Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, the author Aldo Leopold was born in Iowa, USA, in 1887. Shortly after graduating from Yale University, he joined the U.S. Forest Service and served as an assistant forester in New Mexico and Arizona, dedicating himself to conservation work and becoming a pioneer of the American conservation movement. In 1948, less than a month after completing the manuscript of A Sand County Almanac, Leopold tragically lost his life while helping to extinguish a fire at a neighbor's farm, making this book his final declaration on conservation. He would wake up at 3:30 a.m. in July, like a landlord, to inspect the land and his "tenants," watch the sandpipers perform their aerial courtship dances in forest clearings every evening in April and May, and track a skunk that had just woken from hibernation and boldly emerged from its den to explore as the snow melted; he would notice the birthdays of all the "local" wildflowers on the grasslands, often overlooked and left to their own devices, and frequently visit the sandbars in August to watch the river paint; he enjoyed fishing for trout and hunting wild turkeys, but more importantly, he remembered the annual return of geese and annually banded the chickadees on his farm; he had led his family to plant thousands of the trees he loved most each year, and he left the land he cherished too soon to help extinguish the fire at a neighbor's farm—such a man, what kind of feelings did he have for the land? What mysteries did he uncover from the earth? What were his views on the relationship between humans and the land? The answers to these questions are the priceless treasures that Leopold carefully placed in the A Sand County Almanac, ready to bestow upon the world. This book is the Bible of ecological egalitarianism and a manifesto for land ethics! It was selected as one of the top ten must-read books in the humanities by the New York Public Library's "Books of the Century." It is hailed alongside Walden as a model of natural humanistic writing! The ecological conservation concepts revealed in this book offer profound life experiences for the land and deliver an ecological philosophical warning to the then-existing social systems. In terms of literary achievement, it is even more remarkable; it is also an important model of American nature writing.