Books about Countryside from Amazon.com

An original portrait of New England's forests, tracing their evolution from precolonial days to the present through a study of the patterns we see today.

Landscape is much more than scenery to be observed or even terrain to be traveled, as this fascinating and many-layered book vividly shows us. Etched into the land is the history of how we have inhabited it, the storms and fires that have shaped it, and its response to these and other changes.

An intrepid sleuth and articulate tutor, Wessels teaches us to read a landscape the way we might solve a mystery. What exactly is the meaning of all those stone walls in the middle of the forest? Why do beech and birch trees have smooth bark when the bark of all other northern species is rough? How do you tell the age of a beaver pond and determine if beavers still live there? Why are pine trees dominant in one patch of forest and maples in another? What happened to the American chestnut? Turn to this book for the answers, and no walk in the woods will ever be the same. 60 black & white illustrations, index..
Price: $11.11 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Modern American environmentalism owes much to such predecessors as Henry Thoreau, John Muir, and Theodore Roosevelt. But it owes much more, suggests historian Adam Rome, to the sprawling suburbs of the postwar era, when great sections of the country fell under the bulldozer to make way for the vaunted American Dream.

Homebuilders of the immediate postwar era did not, as a rule, take into account the environmental costs of their work--nor did they have to. "To take advantage of the cheap, unsewered land at the fringes of cities," writes Rome,

they could install septic tanks on tiny lots, in unsuitable soils, or near streams and wells. To reduce land-acquisition costs, builders also could level hills, fill wetlands, and build in floodplains. To maximize the number of lots in a tract, they could design subdivisions with no open space.

Such actions improved a builder's chances of making a profit, to be sure, but in the coming years they yielded significant opposition--and not just from the occasional birdwatcher or hiker. Activist citizen groups and government agencies began demanding responsible building and zoning practices. In the end, non-urban America's onetime habit of letting landowners do what they would on their land gave way to "an explosion of codes, regulations, and guidelines," the product of a growing awareness of environmental problems and the need to solve them--and an extraordinarily far-reaching shift in public policy.

Rome's well-written book makes a welcome addition to the history of environmental thought, one to shelve alongside the best of Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs. --Gregory McNamee.
Price: $20.11 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Beverley Nichols fans, armchair gardeners, and literature enthusiasts will delight in this reprint of the second book in his Allways trilogy, with facsimile reproductions of Rex Whistler's original graceful illustrations and a new foreword by Roy C. Dicks. Nichols's humorous ruminations on life in the countryside, as always, are refreshing. The typical Nichols gardening anecdotes and familiar characters are there, as well as the author's beloved dog, Whoops, an inveterate spy with a habit of leaping to conclusions..
Price: $15.55 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This reprint of the third book in Nichols's Allways trilogy contains a new foreword by Bryan Connon, Beverley Nichols's biographer Set in the English countryside, the hilarious memoir is as much about the author's love for plants as it is about the village in which he lived. The depictions of flowers and ornamentals - "A single one of those gloxinias would be an event in Allways ... I should give a party for it" - are both inspiring and unforgettable. This is the voice of one whose chief endowment is an appreciation for plants and the landscape, including a keen understanding of the importance gardens play in an increasingly modern world..
Price: $12.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Cook and the Gardener is Amanda Hesser's first book. From the opening lines of its introduction, her literary gifts are as evident as her passion for good food. Since this work combines recipes with her essays about Monsieur Milbert (the gardener at the Chateau du Fey in Burgundy, where Hesser worked as the cook), readers get to enjoy both of her talents.

Hesser worked hard to get M. Milbert to talk with her. She shares the careful, deliberate way she wooed him, sometimes by bringing freshly baked bread to his less mobile wife, sometimes by holding back questions she wanted to ask, just to win his tolerance of her presence. Crusty, surly, and tradition-bound, he is the quintessential French peasant. Fortunately, Hesser--who is respectful and patient even when M. Milbert's stubborn ways exasperated her--knows he is an almost-vanished breed. None of his children, or anyone else, is likely to work as he has, continuing to live mainly off the land for nearly 60 years.

Each chapter covers a month, starting with March, when the nearly 400-year-old walled garden comes to life. Hesser talks about the garden, how she used the bounty gathered by M. Milbert, and muses on life in and around Burgundy. In September, "the rains seemed to clean off and illuminate the plants' colors ... everything seemed to wake up, as after a hot, cranky nap." The final tomatoes are harvested, as are the green and butter beans, with Milbert sneakily keeping the best for himself. Hesser visits a neighbor's Portuguese-style garden, as exuberant and vivid as Milbert's is restrained and disciplined. She cooks sautéed red snapper with tomatoes, fennel, and vermouth; makes a profound Tomato Consommé; and slow roasts tomatoes into meltingly tender mounds.

Sepia drawings by Kate Gridley add to the low-key charm of this information-packed work. (It even includes a history of purslane going back to the Middle Ages.)

The knowledge and maturity of this work belie Hesser's youth. Not yet 30 at the time of writing, she's a wise cook worth following. --Dana Jacobi.
Price: $18.23 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this enchanting European version of A Year by the Sea, an artist recalls her liberating sojourn in France during the sixties—and the friendship that transformed her life.

Marjorie was a young woman from Chicago in the 1960s who shocked her family and fiancé by moving to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. There she fell in love and married Yves, a handsome and volatile French painter. On a trip to Breton, a rugged area on the northern coast of France, her husband impulsively purchases nearly half of a hamlet, La Salle, and she finds herself renovating a house in this remote village. Surrounded by neighbors who dress only in black, speak patois, and still employ customs and farming methods from the Middle Ages, Marjorie finds a friend in Jeanne, an old and illiterate peasant woman who has three cows to her name and no knowledge of the world outside her village. Their differences are staggering, yet as Marjorie’s marriage unravels they forge a friendship brimming with laughter, wisdom, and an uncommon exchange of customs from vastly different cultures.

A Gift from Brittany is a charming, moving memoir about the grace that can be found through friendship, and finding reserves of strength you never knew you possessed..
Price: $4.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Guess what?

Make a Difference! Your efforts even very small efforts to attract and protect wildlife can make a difference to many kinds of critters. Habitat loss affects all animals not just rare, endangered species. You don't have to have a big yard or even any yard at all to make a welcoming place for wildlife!.
Price: $2.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

.
Price: $11.65 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A follow-up to Black Dog's bestselling Country Wisdom and Know-How, the Country Wisdom Almanac provides hundreds of ideas and methods for living the good and simple life, plus information on weather, gardening, buying produce and cooking by season, holidays, frost dates, moon phases, and more.

Divided into the four seasons and then organized into 373 individual tips, the Country Wisdom Almanac presents a wide variety of ways to live a simpler, more self-sustained life year round. Each season offers home-improvement ideas (wallpaper a room in the Fall or build a stone wall in the Spring), crafts (create gorgeous homemade decorations for Christmas, Halloween, or the Fourth of July), recipes (use seasonal produce to create fresh, healthy meals), gardening advice (what and when to plant in order to get the maximum results from your land), and more.

Also included is year-round advice on caring for pets, creating your own health and beauty remedies, canning and preserving food, and more. Each season opens with a list of holidays and a guide to in-season produce. Appendices cover average weather by city and month, frost dates, and moon phases..
Price: $4.55 [Notify me when price goes down.]