Of all the problems facing the United States that I have, as an American, over the course of my life seen to be the most trouble-inspiring, are a profound misunderstanding of history and an over-abundance of nostalgia for the imagined past that this misunderstanding creates. An insufficient, and commonly over-simplified, initial education in our own […]
This just in! Melissa Harrison’s new novel “All Among the Barley” will be published this autumn by Bloomsbury.
I know, I know; I don’t review much fiction here in The Well-read Naturalist – primarily because I haven’t been all that impressed by most of the contemporary fiction I’ve read, and because few contemporary authors I’ve found seem to have any genuine understanding of the natural world, much less incorporate it into their work.
When I walk out on the bottom lands beneath my home in the hills of northwest Oregon, I am keen to take note of such troublesome invasive species as Nutria (or Copyu, Myocastor coypus), American Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus), and Scotch Broom (Cytisus scoparius). However as I’m doing so, I’m passing by a number of other invasives without giving them so much as even a passing glance.