Wilderness | Further Reading

The names below were either mentioned in Wilderness and the American Mind or branched off from other titles listed. The titles were chosen because they best fit the theme of nature, wilderness, and their kinship with humanity. 

The choice to omit links for each book suggestion is deliberate. The aim is for you to visit your local library or check out second-hand bookstores to find the listed titles.


Carleton E. Watkins. First View of the Yosemite Valley from the Mariposa Trail, 1865/66. Smithsonian American Art Museum

John Muir

My First Summer in the Sierra (1911)

The Mountains of California (1894)

The Yosemite (1912)

Our National Parks (1901)

Travels in Alaska (1915)


Adam Clark Vroman. Around Zuni, from Northeast of Pueblo "99", 1899. Smithsonian American Art Museum

Edward Abbey

Desert Solitaire

Down the River

The Journey Home

Abbey's Road


Thomas Eakins. Geese at the Site of "Mending the Net," Gloucester, N.J., (1881). Smithsonian American Art Museum

Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (1949)

Game Management (1933)

The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays (1991)

Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold (1972)

For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays and Other Writings


Gotthelf Pach, Pach Brothers. Wood's Farm Scene, from the album Views of Charlestown, New Hampshire, 1888. Smithsonian American Art Museum

Wendell Berry

The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry

The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural

The Long-Legged House

Nature as Measure

Our Only World


Carleton E. Watkins. Big River, from the Rancherie, Mendocino, California, 1863. The Art Institute of Chicago

John McPhee

Annals of the Former World (1998)

The Control of Nature (1989)

Encounters with the Archdruid (1971)

Coming into the Country (1977)

The Pine Barrens (1968)


Carleton E. Watkins. Cascade, Nevada Falls, Yosemite, California, ca. 1861. Smithsonian American Art Museum

Mary Oliver

Upstream: Selected Essays (2016)

Blue Pastures (1995)

Owls and Other Fantasies (2003)

Winter Hours (1999)

White Pine (1994)


Kerr Eby. High Land, Cape Cod, ca. 1922. Smithsonian American Art Museum

Henry Beston

The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod (1928)

Northern Farm: A Chronicle of Maine (1948)

Herbs and the Earth (1935)


F. Jay Haynes. Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Falls, ca. 1885. Smithsonian American Art Museum

Wallace Stegner

The Sound of Mountain Water (1969)

Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West" (1992)

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West" (1954)

Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier" (1962)

The American West as Living Space (1987)


William B. Post. Boats on the Sea, 1890s. Smithsonian American Art Museum

Rachel Carson

Under the Sea-Wind (1941)

The Sea Around Us (1951)

The Edge of the Sea (1955)


John Chislett. Stream, Early Spring, ca. 1900. Smithsonian American Art Museum

Louise Glück

The Wild Iris (1992)

The Garden (1976)

A Village Life (2009)

Meadowlands (1996)


Kerr Eby. Sand and Sea, Cape Cod, 1921. Smithsonian American Art Museum

Robert Finch

Norton Book of Nature Writing

The Primal Place

The Outer Beach: A Thousand-Mile Walk on Cape Cod's Atlantic

The Iambics of Newfoundland: Notes from an Unknown Shore

Summers in Squid Tickle: A Newfoundland Odyssey

Common Ground: A Naturalist's Cape Cod


Laton Alton Huffman. The Yellowstone from Pompey’s Pillar, c. 1906. The Art Institute of Chicago

Gretel Ehrlich

The Solace of Open Spaces (1985)

Islands, the Universe, Home (1991)

A Match to the Heart (1994)

This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland (2001)

The Future of Ice: A Journey into Cold (2004)

Unsolaced: Along the Way to All That Is (2021)


Timothy H. O'Sullivan. East Humboldt Mountains, Utah, 1868. The Cleveland Museum of Art

Rober MacFarlane

Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination (2003)

The Wild Places (2007)

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (2012)

Landmarks (2015)

Underland: A Deep Time Journey (2019)


Carleton E. Watkins. Cathedral Rocks, Yosemite, 1861–66. Smithsonian American Art Museum

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature (1836)

The American Scholar (1837)

The Over-Soul (1841)

The Poet (1844)


Culture: Japan. Untitled, from a photography album with images of Japan. 19th–20th century. The Minneapolis Institute of Art

Gary Snyder

Turtle Island (1974)

The Practice of the Wild (1990)

Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996)

No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1992)

Earth House Hold (1969)

Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems (1959)