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A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places Hardcover – September 17, 2024


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An "instant classic", this genre-bending blend of naturalism, memoir, and social manifesto is a fascinating study for rewilding the city, the self, and society (Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author).

During the real estate crash of the late 2000s, Christopher Brown purchased an empty lot in an industrial section of Austin, Texas. The property—abandoned and full of litter and debris—was an unlikely site for a home. Brown had become fascinated with these empty lots around Austin, so-called “ruined” spaces once used for agriculture and industry awaiting their redevelopment. He discovered them to be teeming with natural activity, and embarked on a twenty-year project to live in and document such spaces. There, in our most damaged landscapes, he witnessed the remarkable resilience of wild nature, and how we can heal ourselves by healing the Earth. Beautifully written and philosophically hard-hitting,
A Natural History of Empty Lots offers a new lens on human disruption and nature, offering a sense of hope among the edgelands. 

“Brown lives far from any conventional battlefield, but he is surrounded by the wreckage of a different war, and he, too, finds hope in cultivating the ruins of nature…A Natural History of Empty Lots is less a departure from the nature writing tradition than a welcome addition to its edgelands.” —New York Review of Books

"The nature writing we need now." —Michelle Nijhuis, author of
Beloved Beasts

"Incredible" —Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist 

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Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

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From the Publisher

Book cover image of A Natural History of Empty Lots by Christopher Brown.

A Natural History of Empty Lots is the record of my twenty-year experiment exploring, living in and documenting the edgelands where human cities and wild nature collide.

Image of butterfly resting on a flower.

It’s nature writing, but not by a professional naturalist—I am a dystopian novelist, a lawyer, and a dad whose children helped him rediscover the outdoors without leaving the city. As a consequence, the book is simultaneously infused with the sense of wonder that characterizes both youthful exploration and speculative fiction, and with the lawyer and the dystopian’s clear-eyed understanding of what the human animal is capable of. It’s a record of personal experiences in a very particular place, but its research and material range much farther across time, space and subject matter, endeavoring to provide fresh perspectives on how we got to this juncture in the climate and biodiversity crisis, and how we might find our way out. The narrative is redemptive, especially in the incredible resilience of wild nature it documents, showing a path to a healthier future we each can help achieve from the grassroots, while recognizing the incapacity of human power structures to get us there.

Moody image of an overgrown empty lot.

The book tries to break through conventional ways we experience and think about nature, starting with language and narrative inversion. It seeks out the wild in landscapes marred by human industry, marrying the lyrical beauty and romance of nature writing with rich and inclusive description of the everyday details, often ugly, of our own imprint on the land. The damage we see in our natural environment, the book contends, is a mirror of the damage we can feel inside ourselves—both of which can be remedied by a rediscovery of the wild that exists outside our doors, and within us.

It’s a book about a house, but it’s not a design book. It’s the chronicle of an experiment in rewilding the home, and reconsidering house as nature.

Image of a coyote in a wooded empty lot.

The book is a journal of the author’s observations in the field, but it is also a book of ideas—not just about nature, but also about how experiences of urban nature help illuminate the ways that social and economic justice are inextricably intertwined with environmental justice.

It’s a kind of nature writing whose influences come from very different literary traditions—writers like J.G. Ballard, Octavia Butler, Joan Didion, Walker Percy, and Samuel R. Delany. Its field notes and extrapolations draw not just from natural history, but also mine folklore, law, economics and political philosophy. At its narrative core, the book sets out to repurpose the stories of exploration, colonization and settlement that are in many ways the literary roots of American identity, in an effort to show paths to decolonization of the land, the community, and the self.

Image of faded artwork on a wall in an industrial empty lot.

This is the most personal work I have written, a distillation of a lifetime of outdoor exploration, reading and living into a memoir of life outside the self that tries to accrete into a manifesto for rethinking how we live in and care for the world and each other. It aims to equip the reader with simple and actionable tools to re-connect with the wild wherever they are, discover new things about their own nature, carve out pockets of more authentic fulfillment in the interstices of everyday life, and get agency in the future.

Image of a footpath carved through a wooded empty lot.

The book should be of interest to a diversity of readers—those who enjoy reading about nature and the outdoors, climate and biodiversity, landscape, design and urbanism, speculative fiction and futurism, creative nonfiction, memoir, and even self-help. In its simple accumulation of one person’s memories of living in the world, and learning just how inclusive that world can really be if you open your mind to it, it aims to provide a palliative, and maybe even a cure, for eco-anxiety. An ambition that is fully bounded by the understanding that I don’t have the answers—just some ideas on how the nature we ignore and abuse can help us find them.

Image of author Christopher Brown.

Christopher Brown’s debut novel, Tropic of Kansas, was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for best science fiction novel of the year. Rule of Capture was published in 2019, followed by 2020’s Failed State, a nominee for the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. He also writes the popular urban nature newsletter Field Notes.

Chris has also taken two companies public, restored a small prairie, worked on two Supreme Court confirmations, rehabilitated a brownfield, reported from Central American war zones, washed airplanes, co-hosted a punk rock radio show, built an eco-bunker, worked day labor, raised two amazing kids, and trained a few good dogs. He lives in Austin with his family, in the edgeland woods between the river and the factories, where he works in a 1978 Airstream trailer.

All images by Christopher Brown. Not found in book.

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An inspiring blend of nature writing and memoir that explores nature’s crucial role in our emotional and mental health. How forests can not only heal us as people but can also help save the planet. Science, nature, and adventure come together in this riveting account of a solo bike trip along the migratory path of the monarch butterfly. Women poets, ramblers, and mavericks who shape how we see the natural world.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A loving, deeply pleasurable, and sprawling investigation of place, community, personal history, and larger contexts. A Natural History of Empty Lots has the shape and liveliness of something organic, as if it has grown out of the neglected, teeming hidden places of the landscape Brown knows so well. An incredible book." 
 ―
Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist, MacArthur Fellow, and award-winning author of The Book of Love

"A Natural History of Empty Lots is the best and most interesting book I’ve ever read about the spaces we often overlook. Christopher Brown comes to these places with a deep curiosity and understanding of both human and nonhuman history. An instant classic."
 ―
Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author

"Too often, what we call ‘nature writing’ is nostalgic for what never was. Thank goodness for Christopher Brown, who sees the wonder in what is and what might be.
 A Natural History of Empty Lots is the nature writing we need now."
 ―
Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction

“Instantly hypnotic, 
A Natural History of Empty Lots invites you to see the ‘waste’ spaces of the Anthropocene for what they are: a resource that contains more than itself. Christopher Brown is a complete and literate denizen of these zones. His calm, clever writing shows a real care for the natural world, and a real feel for the deep worth of the brownfield liminal.”
 ―
M. John Harrison, Goldsmiths Prize-winning author of Wish I Was Here and Climbers

“A marvelous and wonderfully wide-ranging account of learning to see how wild nature infiltrates the interstices and abandoned places of the Anthropocene.” ―
Paul McAuley, author of Beyond the Burn Line, and winner of the Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke and John W. Campbell Awards

A Natural History of Empty Lots is a book about the inbetweenlands, the sacrifice zones, the feral strips — landscapes shocked by humanity, quietly healing. The book pads unbotheredly across the barrier between “urban” and “rural”, “wild” and “industrial”, and the one doing the padding, Christopher Brown, is an ideal guide: wise and ironic, observant, and sensitive.”―Robin Sloan, author of Moonbound and Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

“Like flowers from broken asphalt this book is a surprise joy—in a time of anxiety, this is a meditation on how, to paraphrase the fictional Ian Malcolm, life finds a way."
 ―
Chuck Wendig, author of Wanderers and Black River Orchard

“An astute observer and deep thinker, Brown celebrates edgelands and “nature’s resiliency” even as he states that the wild is “mostly losing” the battle against voracious human consumption. A vivid, many-faceted, and provocative ecological inquiry.” ―
Booklist

“Come for the reflections on edgelands and cryptids, stay for the exquisite prose style. Christopher Brown writes with ecstatic accuracy and appealing curiosity about the Anthropocene and its discontents.” ―
Ed Park, Pulitzer Prize finalist for Same Bed Different Dreams

“Brown examines urban nature from the sides of highways to empty lots to traffic islands and how animals and plants thrive in these areas humans aren’t allowed. We often think that one must leave the city to see nature, but Brown’s writing illuminates the wonder all around us.” ―
Arlington Magazine

"Meandering between the specifics of his land, the history of the region and the ideas of how humans interact with nature is by design, fitting for someone so committed to wandering as a way of finding truth....But we can all start to see how the wild is all around us, just by taking a walk."―
Los Angeles Times

“Brown lives far from any conventional battlefield, but he is surrounded by the wreckage of a different war, and he, too, finds hope in cultivating the ruins of nature…
A Natural History of Empty Lots is less a departure from the nature writing tradition than a welcome addition to its edgelands.” ―New York Review of Books

“With A
Natural History of Empty Lots, Brown rises to a level of acute observation and analysis that bears comparison with the works of Michael Pollan, Jared Diamond, Rachel Carson and Edward O. Wilson.” ―Austin American-Statesman

“Brown tells the immensely gripping story not only of his discovery of wild, urban places but of the opportunities we each have to track, forage and wander if we so choose."―
The Masters Review

“A meditation on the wildness found in the most overlooked parts of our urban landscape… Brown translates what he sees into evocative field notes that point toward a future rewilding.” ―
Landscape Architecture Magazine

About the Author

Christopher Brown is the Philip K. Dick, World Fantasy and John W. Campbell Award-nominated author of the novels Tropic of Kansas, Rule of Capture and Failed State. Also an accomplished lawyer, he has worked on two Supreme Court confirmation hearings, led the technology corporate practice of a major American law firm, and been the General Counsel of two public companies.

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Christopher Brown
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Christopher Brown is the Philip K. Dick, World Fantasy and John W. Campbell Award-nominated author of the novels Tropic of Kansas, Rule of Capture and Failed State. His newest book A Natural History of Empty Lots, which combines nature writing, literary nonfiction and memoir in an exploration of the wild spaces of cities, is forthcoming from Timber Press in October 2024. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he also practices law.