"Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood atop Maine's Mount Katahdin....

Narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire of August, 1910, and Teddy Roosevelt's pioneering conservation efforts that helped turn public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service with consequences felt in the fires of today.

A man harvests and sells a bountiful crop of pumpkins so that he will be able to preserve the field from developers.

A conservationist who has dedicated her life to saving orphan elephants in Africa describes her relationships with her late husband, Tsavo Park warden David Sheldrick, and a host of animals, including the majestic elephant, Eleanor.

Evaluates Theodore Roosevelt's role in launching modern conservationsim, identifying the contributions of such influences as James Audubon and John Muir while describing how Roosevelt's exposure to natural wonders in his early life shaped his environmental values.

"The Home Place is a remarkable meditation on nature and belonging. This is at once a deeply moving memoir and a riveting exploration of the contradictions of black identity in the rural South -- and in America today."--

"In June of 1889 in San Francisco, John Muir-iconic environmentalist, writer, and philosopher-meets face-to-face for the first time with his longtime editor Robert Underwood Johnson, an elegant and influential figure at The Century magazine. Before long, the pair, opposites in many ways, decide to venture to Yosemite Valley, the magnificent site where twenty years earlier, Muir experienced a personal and spiritual awakening that would set the course...

One of America's most important and influential naturalists, John Muir was a formative figure in the country's conservation movement and the establishment of the national park system. He was also a gifted storyteller, and in this series of essays he reminisces about his early years. Muir relates the circumstances that inspired and nurtured his fascination with the natural world, from his boyhood in Scotland to his years at the University of Wisconsin,...

The Earth in Her Hands celebrates the important contributions women make to the wide world of plants--in the fields of horticulture, environmental science, botany, floral design, farming, landscape architecture, herbalism, food justice, and more.

The story of Wangari Maathai, who in 1977 founded the Green Belt Movement, an African grassroots organization, and in 2004 was the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.