Product Review

This fine, well-annotated anthology offers selections from familiar writers such as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez. It contains surprises as well, including George Orwell's little-known essay, "Some Thoughts on the Common Toad" and Herman Melville's musings on how the great white whale came to be so white in the first place, the fruit of the deep natural-historical research that underlies Moby-Dick. At more than 900 pages, The Norton Book of Nature Writing is too hefty to pack into the wild, but every page is an inspiration to take into the world outdoors.