The Nature Pages from OUTRIDER

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	Reading the Roots American Nature Writing Before Walden edited by Michael P. Branch University of Georgia Press, 2004
	Literature professor Michael Branch, who specializes in environmental writings, compiled this unusual anthology of works pertaining to America's natural resources. His earlier publications include John Muir's Last Journey, Reading the Earth and The Height of Our Mountains.
	The writings in this volume span the better part of four centuries, from Christopher Columbus' log book of the 1492-93 voyage to Fredrika Bremer's The Homes of the New World: Impressions of America, published in 1853.
	Arranged chronologically, from the earliest to the latest, the anthology's selections cover a wide range of styles, voices and authors of rhetorical nonfiction concerned with natural science, the environment, and the idea of nature in America. While Native American, African American and female writings are included in the volume, they are limited in comparison to those by the dominant white male literary culture.		Was this, then, indeed, the Mississippi, that wild giant of nature, which I had imagined would be so powerful, so divine, so terrible? Here its waters were clear, of a fresh, light-green color, and within their beautiful frame of distant violet-blue mountains, they lay like a heavenly mirror, bearing on their bosom verdant, vine-covered islands, like islands of the blessed. Fredrika Bremer  The Homes of the New World:  Impressions of America
Browse our selection of new, used and out of print nature writing	"The need to restrict this book to a length that allows publication as a single volume has made it necessary to omit scores of interesting and important early American writers whose work engages the natural landscape," Branch explains. A Further Reading section in the back of the book lists works by more than 100 writers that would have been included had space permitted.
	Like a leisurely visit to a great library packed with volumes long out of print and rarely mentioned, this book offers readers many delightful surprises and unanticipated revelations. An excellent reference for environmental historians and scholars, certainly, it is also a fun read for general readers of natural history.