Reading the Landscape of America
A classic in landscape interpretation, remarkably timely. Unexcelled in the blending of landscape ecology and lived experience on landscapes. --Int'l Society for Environmental Ethics Newsletter, Summer 1999A fantastic book. Great for understanding the Indiana Dunes and the north woods of Wisconsin, for example. --Weedpatch Gazette, Spring 1999May Theilgaard Watts' classic, work, Reading the Landscape of America, is an excellent landscape guidebook with a near perfect blend of natural and cultural history. --Arnold Berleant, A. Carlson, The Aesthetics of Human Environments, May 2007No single essay I have read so well lays out our landscaping follies [as the last chapter of Watts' book]. --Wild Ones Natural Landscapers Journal, October 2001Stargazer, artist, poet and naturalist, Watts' interests were many. It shows in Reading the Landscape, a beautifully written book used for decades by educators. --Chicago Wilderness Magazine, Winter 1999The interpretive prototype of all landscape-level natural histories. It opened my eyes to a whole new way of seeing. --Tom Wessels, ecologist, in Stonecrop, Winter 1997Watts' chapter on the Prairie Plowing Match is a classic work of landscape study. --Sonia Simone, Whole Earth ReviewWatts' essays constitute the near perfect guidebook for the appreciation of the rural landscape. --Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment, 2000This is a classic of the quality and genre to rank with Aldo Leopold'sSand County Almanac. . . Watts brings to the task (of ecology) an artist's eye and a story teller's way with words, to help the non-biologist better understand the world about him. --Philip B. Whitford, Ecology, Autumn 1976