Best of
Nature

1954

The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon


Jim Corbett - 1954
    These stories maintain, perhaps even supercede, the high standard of the earlier classic collection. Corbett saves his best story of all for the long concluding chapter in this volume, describing, in The Talla Des Man-Eater, how he embarked on what he feared might be a fatal last test of skill and endurance. As always, he writes with an acute awareness of all jungle sights and sounds, choosing words charged with a great love of humanity, birds, and animals. His calm and straightforward modesty heightens the excitement and suspense of these experiences, in which he continuously risks his life to free the Indian tarai of dangerous man-eaters.

The Wilderness World of John Muir


John Muir - 1954
    In 1903, while on a three-day camping trip with President Theodore Roosevelt, he convinced the president of the importance of a national conservation program, and he is widely recognized for saving the Grand Canyon and Arizona's Petrified Forest. Muir's writing, based on journals he kept throughout his life, gives our generation a picture of an America still wild and unsettled only one hundred years ago. In The Wildernesss World of John Muir Edwin Way Teale has selected the best of Muir's writing from all of his major works—including My First Summer in the Sierra and Travels in Alaska—to provide a singular collection that provides to be "magnificent, thrilling, exciting, breathtaking, and awe-inspiring" (Kirkus Reviews).

The Bafut Beagles


Gerald Durrell - 1954
    Meet a frog with a coat of hair (which turns out not to be hair at all), full grown monkeys that fit inside a teacup, mice with wings, and many more of the species endemic to the Cameroons, not to mention the local ruler, the Fon of Bafut.

Three Singles to Adventure


Gerald Durrell - 1954
    three singles to adventure takes the reader to south America, where he meets the sakiwinki and the sloth clad in bright green fur, where he can hear the horrifying sound of piranha fish on the rampage, or learn how to lasso a galloping anteater.

Kinship with All Life


J. Allen Boone - 1954
    All that is required is an attitude of openness, friendliness, humility, and a sense of humor to part the curtain and form bonds of real friendship.For anyone who loves animals, for all those who have ever experienced the special devotion only a pet can bring, Kinship With All Life is an unqualified delight. Sample these pages and you will never encounter "just a dog" again, but rather a fellow member of nature's own family.

Last of the Curlews


Fred Bodsworth - 1954
    The lone survivor comes to stand for the entirety of a lost species.

Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World


Helen Nearing - 1954
    Moreover, it is the distillation of twenty--not two--years in the woods, and it offers wisdom and practical guidance to city dweller and prospective homesteader alike.This book is a harvest of congenial and specific advice on harmonious rural living, for its authors have proved to themselves--and now to the world--that with hard work and harder common sense, they could take a piece of eroded, stony land and make it bloom and support them. In the process they have achieved something fine for themselves and relevant for everybody. (Description from book jacket.)

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West


Wallace Stegner - 1954
    But it didn't stop him from exploring the American West. Here Wallace Stegner, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, gives us a thrilling account of Powell's struggle against western geography and Washington politics. We witness the successes and frustrations of Powell's distinguished career, and appreciate his unparalleled understanding of the West.<

The Ivory Trail


T.V. Bulpin - 1954
    

Bird Life in Wington


John Calvin Reid - 1954
    A collection of sermons about the (bird) characters belonging to the First Birderian Church of Wington, aimed at stimulating the interest of young people in the worship services of the church.