Reading the Landscape of America [Paperback]

May Theilgaard Watts (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0912550236 | ISBN-13: 978-0912550237 | Publication Date: March 15, 1999

In this natural history classic, the author takes the reader on field trips to landscapes across America, both domesticated and wild. She shows how to read the stories written in the land, interpreting the clues laid down by history, culture, and natural forces. A renowned teacher, writer and conservationist in her native Midwest, Watts studied with Henry Cowles, the pioneering American ecologist. She was the first to explain his theories of plant succesion to the general public. Her graceful, witty essays, with charming illustrations by the author, are still relevant and engaging today, as she invites us to see the world around us with fresh eyes.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A classic in landscape interpretation, remarkably timely. Unexcelled in the blending of landscape ecology and lived experience on landscapes. -- Int'l Society for Environmental Ethics Newsletter, Summer 1999

A fantastic book. Great for understanding the Indiana Dunes and the north woods of Wisconsin, for example. -- Weedpatch Gazette, Spring 1999

May Theilgaard Watts' classic, work, Reading the Landscape of America, is an excellent landscape guidebook with a near perfect blend of natural and cultural history. -- Arnold Berleant, A. Carlson, The Aesthetics of Human Environments, May 2007

No single essay I have read so well lays out our landscaping follies [as the last chapter of Watts' book]. -- Wild Ones Natural Landscapers Journal, October 2001

Stargazer, artist, poet and naturalist, Watts' interests were many. It shows in Reading the Landscape, a beautifully written book used for decades by educators. -- Chicago Wilderness Magazine, Winter 1999

The interpretive prototype of all landscape-level natural histories. It opened my eyes to a whole new way of seeing. -- Tom Wessels, ecologist, in Stonecrop, Winter 1997

Watts' chapter on the Prairie Plowing Match is a classic work of landscape study. -- Sonia Simone, Whole Earth Review

Watts' essays constitute the near perfect guidebook for the appreciation of the rural landscape. -- Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment, 2000

This is a classic of the quality and genre to rank with Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac. . . Watts brings to the task (of ecology) an artist's eye and a story teller's way with words, to help the non-biologist better understand the world about him. --Philip B. Whitford, Ecology, Autumn 1976

Product Details

• Paperback: 372 pages
• Publisher: Nature Study Guild Publishers (March 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0912550236
• ISBN-13: 978-0912550237
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #441,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take a field trip with one of America's favorite naturalists, March 10, 1999

By 

Dr William Marszalec (North Riverside, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reading the Landscape of America (Paperback)

I have just finished reading a library copy of "Reading the Landscape". I enjoyed the book so much that I just had to have a copy of my own. May Watts was both a splendidly observant naturalist-scientist and a delightful writer as well. And boy...did I get a kick out of her little sketches...they're so great!

If you are a lover of nature or nature writing, then this is a book for you. In a series of short essays Ms Watts describes her field trips across America, from the plains to the coasts, from the mountains to the deserts. In each location she comments on the interaction between the land and the types of plants found there. As Ms. Watts indicates it is often the plantlife that creates and molds the underlying landscape.

In one of my favorite essays, she describes a train trip taken on January 1, 1954. Leaving Chicago at twilight, she notes the changing landscape seen through the train window on the way to Denver on that cold winter night. Her descriptions are accompanied by a series of little sketches showing the changing silhouettes of trees and homesteads as she leaves the city and outlying suburbs for the prairie farms of the heartland. In another essay, she attempts to date the age of an old abandoned country schoolhouse by observing the trees and other plants surrounding it. Sort of like a botanical Sherlock Holmes.

May Watts' writing style always places the reader on the trail beside her whether examining the building of a sand dune or the ecology of a bog. She comes across like a scholarly botanist who also happens to be your favorite aunt. "Reading the Landscape" is the perfect book for those rainy weekends or cold winter nights when the naturalist is stuck inside.

Dr. Bill Marszalec

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars lovely and accessible, January 29, 2002

By 

B. E. Watts (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Reading the Landscape of America (Paperback)

This is a book that people love and remember for many different reasons. I recently came across a 1998 article in the journal "Bioscene," called "Trees at the Center" by Maura Flannery, a professor of biology at St. John's University who writes widely about science education.

Flannery says: "I read May Watts's Reading the Landscape of America years ago, and it remains one of my favorite books. There are several chapters on trees, but the one that has always stuck most firmly in my mind is the very first, on magnolias in the Great Smoky Mountains. In a lovely and accessible discussion of plant morphology and evolution, Watts explains why the magnolia is considered such an ancient species; why its flower form is considered primitive. She also discusses the remains of ice-age forests found on the upper slopes of the Smokies and the problem of trying to preserve these forests from human intruders."

The chapter referred to is "In Search of Antiques, or The Forests of the Great Smoky Mountains." Its title evokes for me the image of the author standing by a Tennessee roadside at dusk, cupping a luminous white magnolia flower in her hands, and imagining the dawn of flowering life on earth. This is typical of May Theilgaard's writing--highly observant, imaginative, she sees deeply beyond the surface of things and teaches us to see more, also.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Basic Primer for Nature Writers and Naturalist/ Ecologists, February 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Reading the Landscape of America (Paperback)

I am thrilled that this book has been reprinted and recommend it to all who want to write about nature or who would become Ecologists or Naturalists. Watts writes with so much descriptive clarity that the scene and the natural occurances seem to come immediately to life on these pages. I have been to some of the areas she writes about and have a far more succinct appreciation for these landscapes. Should be recommended reading for every student of nature.