Books like Pastoral Song — picked by fans

This too is a tale of three village generations grappling with historical change.

Here the story is about changing ideas of stewardship of the land, an enthralling account of farming ways in flux and of the intricate, back-breaking, and unpredictable work of restoring degraded farmland to health.

The Rebanks family run a hill-farm in a Lake District village. Rebanks’ grandfather started with horse-ploughs. A tractor replaced the horses, yet he still knew the individual ways of every ewe and cow and farmed lightly on the land. But Rebanks’ father, caught in market pressures, industrialized his farming methods.

Progress became the mantra of all the village farmers, including the young Rebanks himself.

Today, although they recognize the precarity of their livelihood and the damage to the land, most see no alternative to intensifying production. When Rebanks decides to switch to regenerative farming to preserve the land for future generations, his fellow… show more.

I love this thoughtful, personal, and exceptionally well-informed narrative about doing the right thing on a beautiful piece of land quite near my own home.

Through this book, I learned so much about what good farming looks like and the sensitivities around livelihoods and communities. 

The Wilder Heart of Florida is a marvelous collection of essays on wild and natural Florida, selected and edited by Dr. Leslie Poole, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and History at Rollins College, and Dr. Jack Davis, Professor of History at the University of Florida. It is a second volume to the renowned 1999 The Wild Heart of Florida, and features insightful chapters penned by experts on real Florida, like Cynthia Barnett, Lauren Groff, Totch Brown, Lars Anderson, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Clay Henderson, as well as Jack Davis, and Leslie Poole, among others.

Aldo Leopold was a Forest Service ranger stationed in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest when he first began advocating for a new approach to managing national forests. Leopold’s visionary thinking and diligent advocacy resulted in the first-ever Wilderness Area in the U.S.—the Gila Wilderness Area, established in 1922—more than 40 years before the Wilderness Act was passed by Congress in 1964. A Sand County Almanac is Leopold’s best-known work and follows his efforts to restore a patch of cut-over farmland in Wisconsin while also articulating his vision of a land ethic where humans and nature are intertwined and care for people cannot be separated from care for the land. His beautiful writing resonated strongly with me when I first read A Sand County Almanac more than two decades ago, and his vision remains as important now as ever.

A conservation classic, Against Extinction is a comprehensive and absorbing story of conservation over the last hundred years. Bill Adams explores the history, context, and legacy of conservation. Often quoted as the ‘UK voice of conservation’ Bill Adams, Professor of Conservation and Development in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, is an authoritative writer on this critical global tale. 

Meeting Professor Adams in discussion for my own research has been both insightful and deeply interesting. His reflections on this evolving movement are poignant and for me, so helpful in framing and distilling the words of my picture book conservation stories.

Indigenous communities and land dispossession are the subjects of Crimes Against Nature, although Jacoby also brings white transgressors of federal policy into his book about the dark history of the American conservation movement. The rural communities he describes engaged in survival practices that quickly became defined and punished as crimes: hunting, fishing, tree-cutting, and foraging. Jacoby includes eastern parks in his assessment, writing about the Adirondacks before turning to Yellowstone and Grand Canyon. At the heart of this beautifully written book is the tension between what constitutes private and public space in American history, and how rural white and Indigenous Americans have often lived in the borderlands between them.

This book has literally changed the way I see the world.

The premise is simple – our pollinators are in trouble and we can help them (and entire ecosystems) thrive by creating tiny “Homegrown National Parks” in our own yards and neighborhoods. After reading this, I began learning about invasive plants, the importance of planting native species, the dangers of “pristine” lawns, and the climate and public health impact of pesticides, herbicides, and lawn machinery.

I’m loving the process of planting native plants and watching all kinds of wildlife visit my yard. I’m currently organizing a Nature's Best Hope community book talk in my own town and my amazing local library has booked Doug Tallamy for our discussion event. I hope you’ll join the Homegrown National Park movement! 

I was inspired by Horn’s observation that many of the men and women doing today’s most consequential environmental work would not call themselves environmentalists. Debunking the pervasive myths that conservation innovators must be bicoastal, political activists, Horn profiles a Montana rancher, a Kansas farmer, a Mississippi riverman, a Louisiana shrimper, and a Gulf fisherman—all stewards of the land offering creative ways to restore soils and protect wildlife.

I first read A Sand County Almanac in college, and it inspired me to think deeply about nature. In fact, it helped inspire my career. Aldo Leopold wrestled with our obligations to wild creatures and places arguably more seriously than any contemporary. This is the sort of book where you can open a random page, read a passage, and spend the rest of the afternoon mulling over the ideas, their implications, and the beauty of their expression. This volume collects not only his most famous book but dozens of articles and letters where you can see his mind evolving and changing. Leopold modeled an integrity and a curious mind at work that I try to emulate. I know I’m not alone. 

This reminds me strongly of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac - a classic of the ecological literature, and I can think of no better comparison to give you an idea of this book’s content, quality, and worth. It is set largely in Highland Scotland and comprises 52 short essays on wildlife and land use.

Many of the essays start with an observation of a species or place, then the author fills in the background, muses on the wider picture, and how the world could be better. It’s a simple and effective way to tell a story.

Roy Dennis is an elder statesman of the UK conservation movement, one of its doers, and one of its thinkers. This book is well worth a read.