Best of
Nature

1955

The Edge of the Sea


Rachel Carson - 1955
    It's Appendix and Index make it a great reference tool for those interested in plant and animal life around tidepools.

Wild America: The Record of a 30,000 Mile Journey Around the Continent by a Distinguished Naturalist and His British Colleague


Roger Tory Peterson - 1955
    There they began a strenuous and thrilling hundred-day field trip around the edge of the continent. Part travelogue, part epic natural adventure, their richly illustrated record is "the superlatively good product of ideal circumstances" (Chicago Sunday Tribune).

Two Against the Ice: A Classic Arctic Survival Story and a Remarkable Account of Companionship in the Face of Adversity


Ejnar Mikkelsen - 1955
    First published in Danish in 1955, it has never before been published in North America.Ejnar Mikkelsen was a man devoted to Arctic exploration. In 1910 he decided to search for the diaries of the ill-fated Mylius-Erichsen expedition, which had set out to prove that Robert Peary’s outline of the East Greenland coast was a myth, erroneous and presumably self-serving. Iver Iversen was a mechanic who joined Mikkelsen in Iceland when the expedition’s boat needed repair. Several months later, Mikkelsen and Iversen embarked on a journey during which they would suffer virtually every travail in the Arctic repertoire: implacable cold, scurvy, starvation, frostbite, snow blindness, plunges into icy seawater, Sisyphean sledging conditions, Vitamin A poisoning, debilitated dogs, apocalyptic storms, gaping crevasses, and assorted mortifications of the flesh. Mikkelsen’s diary was eaten by a bear. Three years of this, coupled with seemingly no hope of rescue, would drive most crazy, yet the two retained both their sanity and their humor. Indeed, what may have saved them was their refusal to become as desolate as their surroundings.“A classic of Arctic survival and a remarkable account of companionship in the face of adversity. ” -- From The Foreword

The Last Wilderness


Murray Morgan - 1955
    First published in 1955, this book tells the lively and entertaining story of the Olympic Peninsula, "the fist of land thrust north between Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean, a wilderness area of six thousand square miles, as large as the state of Massachusetts, more rugged than the Rockies, its lowlands blanketed by a cool jungle of fir and pine and cedar, its peaks bearing hundreds of miles of living ice that gave rise to swift rivers alive with giant salmon; the first land in the Pacific Northwest to be reported by explorers, the last to be mapped--the last wilderness." Murray Morgan has recorded the epic adventures of the pioneers of this remote region in this rousing and humor-filled saga, one that should capture the imagination of Americans everywhere.

The Voice Of The Desert, A Naturalist's Interpretation


Joseph Wood Krutch - 1955
    The what and why of desert country -- It suits him fine -- Strange forest -- How they got that way -- He was there before Coronado -- The moth and the candle -- The mouse that never drinks -- Settlers, old and new -- And every single one of them is right -- First on the mountain top -- Love in the desert -- Conservation is not enough -- The mystique of the desert.

This is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers


Wallace Stegner - 1955
    

The Story of Mosses, Ferns and Mushrooms


Dorothy Sterling - 1955
    This book tells that fascinating story and gives detailed descriptions of the various species for easy identification.

Selections from Gift From the Sea


Anne Morrow Lindbergh - 1955