Customer Reviews

Of Prairie, Woods, and Water: Two Centuries of Chicago Nature Writing

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I keep this book on my nightstand for a quick read. Joel Greenberg did a great job with this book. The writings are well organized into groups: Landscape, Botany, Land Animals, Water World, Mindscapes. He also researched and included biographical information on the authors when the information was available to him. A few of the writings are anonymous. I like the fact that he did not edit the essays from their original format.

A few of my favorites are "A Hoosier Tramp" by Samuel A. Harper, "Tragedy in the Home of the Owls" by Edward B. Clark and the poem "On Improving The Property" by May T. Watts. But as I thumb through the book again I see many others that I could easily say are my favorite. I found myself reading the biographical info before reading the essay. I wanted to know a little about the authors and the time frame first.

Great read. Check it out!

In writing his magnificent Natural History of the Chicago Region, Joel Greenberg came across many interesting writings from early settlers. He put these aside and searched for additional writings after his Natural History of the Chicago Region was published. He assembled the writings in this volume. Individual essays, most written in the 1800s and very early 1900s, run anywhere from less than a page to several pages. The essays are grouped by the main subject of the writing. So, the book is broken down into the categories: Landscape, Botany, Land Animals, Waterworld, and Mindscape. All of the writings come from the greater Chicago region. Greenberg picked the top essays and I enjoyed virtually all of them. This is really a wonderful collection of obscure and otherwise hard to find nature writings. It can be enjoyed by anyone but those in the Midwest might find it the most appealing.