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NonfictionNatureMemoir

Better Living Through Birding

Review by Alice Cary

Christian Cooper has been bird-watching in Central Park for decades, but a spring migratory excursion took a dramatic turn on May 25, 2020, when a woman refused his request to leash her wandering dog, per park regulations. He was hoping to spy a ground-dwelling bird called a mourning warbler and knew that her unleashed pet would make his quest impossible. After she refused and Cooper began filming with his phone, Amy Cooper—a white woman of no relation—announced that she was about to call the police, adding, “I’m going to tell them that there’s an African American man threatening my life.” Her blatant use of “weaponized racism” went viral. As Cooper aptly sums up the incident in Better Living Through Birding, “Fourteen words, captured amid sixty-nine seconds of video, that would alter the trajectory of two lives.” This encounter happened on the same day George Floyd was murdered. 

A year later, Cooper was invited to attend a birding festival in Alabama. As he walked across Selma’s infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge, he reflected on the day that bridge became a bloodbath in 1965 and on the travails his ancestors must have endured. “In that context, my incident in Central Park is just an asterisk,” he writes. “More than a year later, it remains exceedingly strange for me—the notoriety, that I’d even be mentioned in the annals of the nation’s racial strife.” 

Throughout his wide-ranging memoir, Cooper is a thoughtful, enthusiastic narrator. Growing up as a Black kid on Long Island, New York, in the 1970s, “I was rarer than an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in the very white world of birding,” he writes. “As I simultaneously struggled with being queer, birds took me away from my woes suffocating in the closet.” Cooper gradually came out to family and friends, beginning while studying at Harvard in the 1980s. He went on to become one of Marvel’s first openly gay writers and editors—aside from birds, his other passions include superhero comics and sci-fi and fantasy—and introduced the first gay male Star Trek character in the Starfleet Academy series. In entertaining prose, Cooper reminisces about his life, writing especially poignantly about his often-difficult relationship with his father.

Tying these multifaceted strands together is no easy feat, but Cooper does it well. He peppers the text with helpful tips for beginning birders while recounting vivid excursions through Nepal, the Galapagos, Australia and, of course, his beloved Central Park. Generous soul that he is, Cooper writes that outrage shouldn’t be focused on Amy Cooper. Instead, he concludes, “Focusing on her is a distraction and lets too many people off the hook from the hard, ongoing examination of themselves and their own racial biases. . . . If you’re looking for Amy Cooper to yell at, look in the mirror.”

In thoughtful prose, birder Christian Cooper reminisces about his life before and after the day a white woman threatened to call the police on him in Central Park.
NonfictionScienceNatureAnimals

Many Things Under a Rock

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Did you know octopuses can shift their skin to create papillae, bumps or folds? Or that they don’t see color but can see polarized light? Did you know they can be cannibals but also seem to live in relationship with other creatures?

In Many Things Under a Rock: The Mysteries of Octopuses, David Scheel shares these facts and many more. Scheel is a professor of marine biology at Alaska Pacific University, but Many Things Under a Rock is accessible regardless of the reader’s amount of scientific knowledge. Scheel’s straightforward prose places readers beside him as he gets to know the elusive, intriguing octopus. He describes the molluscs, their habits, their characteristics and their habitats in detail gathered from 25 years of research and observation.

And the book is well researched, with dozens of pages of meticulous notes as evidence. But Scheel doesn’t overload his text with annotations, and he never turns to jargon or complex explanations to ensure that he’s perceived as an expert. Instead, Scheel invites readers along on a journey of discovery. He shares the lessons he’s learned about octopuses by recounting research trips and personal anecdotes, writing like a teacher who is eager to invite readers into octopuses’ magical world. It’s as though he’s in the water with us, lifting a stone or pushing aside seaweed to show off the many things that can exist under a rock (which is a translation of the Eyak word for octopus).

Scheel’s curiosity about octopuses parallels his curiosity about Alaska Native history, and his respect for Indigenous experiences is obvious. Particularly in the early years of his studies, Scheel turned to Native people for insight into the cephalopods they’ve hunted for centuries. He weaves their knowledge and stories into this book, showing appreciation for shared wisdom and making Many Things Under a Rock a treasure trove of expertise, generously shared.

David Scheel’s straightforward prose places readers in the water beside him as he lifts a stone or pushes aside seaweed to show off the elusive, intriguing world of the octopus.
NonfictionNatureAnimals

What an Owl Knows

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Owls are adorable, alluring and enduringly fascinating. They’ve been featured in everything from ancient cave paintings to the works of Picasso, iconic Tootsie Pop commercials, the Harry Potter series, mythology and poetry.

“What is it about owls that so enthralls us?” asks bestselling author, prolific science writer and passionate bird advocate Jennifer Ackerman (The Genius of Birds, The Bird Way) in the very first line of her wide-ranging and wonderful new book, What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds. She explores this question with her trademark thoroughness and care, leading readers on an in-depth tour through the extraordinary world of owls. Scientists, field researchers, academics and volunteers (aka “citizen scientists”) serve as dedicated guides, as eager as the author to share knowledge and admiration in hopes of inspiring others to protect these special birds.

Jennifer Ackerman shares which owly items in her home and closet are her favorite.

Ackerman chronicles her travels to places such as the Mission Mountains in Montana; Norfolk Island in Australia; southeastern Brazil; and Waynesboro, Virginia, in chapters covering owls’ evolution, communication, breeding, migration and—of course—wisdom. She visits wildlife centers, peers up at countless trees and tromps through nighttime landscapes with fellow owl lovers to hear about the astonishing things they’ve discovered. There are funny tidbits, too; as one Montana field researcher quipped, “This is not the first time we’ve found a nest when someone had to pee.”

Less quotidian revelations include the thrill of first hearing great horned owlets vocalizing in their eggs and the gratifying achievements of education in Kikinda, Serbia, where hundreds of long-eared owls roost in the town square. (A public awareness campaign transformed superstitious fear into immense hometown pride.) During her reporting, Ackerman also learned about new research indicating that owls are more clever and intentional than previously realized: They have emotions, engage in altruism and play. “We think we know something about them, and then, poof! they dispel our theories, offering up bent or broken rules and unexpected qualities,” she writes.

Ackerman also reminds readers that owls are at risk of extinction, thanks to “human-induced climate change” via deforestation and development, rodenticides, wildfires, et al. What should we do? “Everything in our power,” she writes, to learn about and preserve owl populations around the world. Reading the edifying and immersive What an Owl Knows is an excellent place to start.

Bestselling author and passionate bird advocate Jennifer Ackerman goes around the world to find out why owls so intrigue humans in her wide-ranging and wonderful new book.
NonfictionNatureEnvironmentAnimals

Kings of Their Own Ocean

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Part memoir, part scientific exploration, part biography, Karen Pinchin’s cautionary and riveting Kings of Their Own Ocean: Tuna, Obsession, and the Future of Our Seas illuminates the plight of the Atlantic bluefin tuna and the fishermen and scientists who’ve spent their lives studying, tagging and working to save the species.

Although we often marvel over tales of great white sharks and other predators of the sea, most people only think of bluefin tuna when they order sushi, seldom considering its beauty and power beyond the dinner plate. Pinchin opens with a paean to this apex predator of the oceans: “To stand beside a just-landed giant bluefin, still slick from salt water, feels akin to standing beside a natural marvel like Niagara Falls or an erupting volcano. There’s beauty, but also danger.” The book follows one bluefin, dubbed Amelia (after Amelia Earhart) from the cold waters of the Atlantic, where she was first tagged in 2004, to the warmer waters of the Mediterranean, where she was killed in 2018. In between this coverage, Pinchin takes us through the history of commercial fishing for bluefin, as well as the politics and science that have frequently collided in attempts to preserve the tuna from extinction. 

Early in his career as a boat captain, fisherman Al Anderson recognized the precipitous decline of the bluefin population and soon began chartering trips off Rhode Island where his customers catch, tag and release tuna—including Amelia. In 1990, Anderson wrote The Atlantic Bluefin Tuna: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, an oral history peppered with his own memories of fishing, and To Catch a Tuna, a “how-to guide for aspiring tuna fishermen.” We also meet Molly Lutcavage, whose research was the first of its kind to gather and analyze data on bluefin, and Carl Safina, the author of Song for the Blue Ocean, who proposed that the bluefin be listed as endangered. 

While Pinchin avers that “we are collectively only ever a few terrible choices from wiping out any ocean species,” her conclusion is optimistic: “The future of Atlantic bluefin tuna has hinged on a series of butterfly-wing events. . . . Those moments all mattered, and those moments are still being made.” Kings of Their Own Ocean enthralls, instructs and is a must-read for readers concerned about the future of our oceans and the creatures within them.

The enthralling Kings of Their Own Ocean tells the story of an overlooked predator, the Atlantic bluefin tuna, urging readers to consider its power and beauty beyond the dinner plate.
NonfictionNatureLifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Land Art

Review by Susannah Felts

U.K. artist James Brunt “works with what nature gives”: only what is found on the ground, in natural settings like beaches and woodlands. Imagine great spirals, mandalas, grids and other patterns composed of rocks, twigs, seeds, fern fronds, petals or leaves upon sand or forest floor. In Land Art, Brunt familiarizes us with his creative terrain—also famously explored by land artists such as Andy Goldsworthy and Robert Smithson (“Spiral Jetty”)—and invites us, too, to “get outside and play.” He provides exercises that first coax us into engagement with our natural surroundings and then into the act of art-making. For starters, find 10 of anything, such as pine cones or other seeds; then arrange them in a pattern of your liking. Brunt’s work, presented with infectious enthusiasm through full-color photographs, is gorgeous and mesmerizing.

Made from found natural objects like rocks, twigs and seeds, James Brunt’s gorgeous and mesmerizing art is presented with infectious enthusiasm through full-color photographs.
NonfictionNatureMemoirEnvironment

The Quickening

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Creative nonfiction writer Elizabeth Rush had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when she was invited to join a 57-person voyage to the Thwaites Glacier. That piece of Antarctica had never been seen by humans, yet scientists expected that data from its fast-shifting ice would inform our understanding of a changing climate. Aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer, Rush could once again deploy her reporting and narrative prowess to deepen her and readers’ familiarity with the world they call home, as she did when exploring how rising sea levels would affect the United States’ coast in her previous Pulitzer finalist book, Rising.

But to do so, Rush would have to delay her attempts to conceive a child.

These competing desires propel The Quickening: Creating and Community at the Ends of the Earth, a distinctive addition to the Antarctic canon. Before setting out on the Palmer, Rush turned her attention to existing literature about Antarctica—which she finds is largely “fluff or end-of-the-world stuff.” Women rarely appear in these accounts, nor do the crews who navigate the treacherous seas and make research possible through their expertise.

Rush is at ease shifting between various objects of fascination, and she immerses herself in her shipmates’ work at every opportunity. Although she’s on board as a writer, not a scientist, Rush helps teams gather and process samples of mud and ice containing clues to Thwaites’ past and the Earth’s future.

But even the study of climate change seems impossible to isolate from forces that exacerbate it. During an excursion off the Palmer, Rush notes, “Almost every aspect of our mission is threaded through with petrochemicals,” from the soles of the group’s shoes to Rush’s voice recorder to the careers of many shipmates’ parents.

Aboard the Palmer, Rush grapples with her desire to give birth in a world with an increasingly fragile climate. Back home, she encounters an undergraduate student arguing against reproduction in this scenario. But in conversation with her shipmates, Rush cites a scientific article that she recently read: “Its underlying argument—that rapid transition away from fossil fuels, not fewer pregnancies, is what is needed—gives me some solace.”

Rush centers women’s voices in her exploration of motherhood and the Earth, gliding between her personal reflections, descriptions of life aboard the ship and stories of what comes after. Simultaneously lyrical and analytical, The Quickening depicts Rush’s search for meaning while rejecting easy answers.

Pulitzer finalist Elizabeth Rush combines memoir, reportage and science writing in a lyrical, women-centered addition to the Antarctic canon.
NonfictionScienceNature

The Underworld

Review by Priscilla Kipp

The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean zips as enthrallingly along as the state-of-the-art submersibles in which journalist Susan Casey deep-sea dives. The 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 over the Indian Ocean ignited Casey’s curiosity about what lay deeper within the marine worlds she had previously covered in her bestselling The Wave, The Devil’s Teeth and Voices in the Ocean. As Casey writes, the ensuing high-tech search for the plane using robots and sonar revealed a “symphony of extremes, a playlist of geology’s greatest hits,” including mountainous volcanoes, deep crevasses, towering cliffs and “a riot of unique species” never seen before. The Underworld is her dazzling answer to the age-old, tantalizing question about the ocean’s abyss: “What’s down there?”

Casey provides a thorough historical run-up of how the deep ocean has intrigued cartographers and explorers for centuries. From Olaus Magnus’ 1539 illustrated map, the Carta Marina, which inspired the popular belief that monsters filled the deep, to today’s OceanX, a nonprofit initiative whose mission is “to explore the ocean and bring it back to the world,” Casey colorfully explains how far our understanding of the ocean has come. Yet as humans we tend to look up, not down. Space continues to hold our attention. This, Casey argues, shortchanges the great lifesaving potential of the ocean, where even tiny microbes have the power to transform and save our planet.

The Underworld begins in January 2021, with Casey equally thrilled and terrified as she prepares to take her first dive in a submersible. Starting from the epipelagic (or sunlight) zone, she will drop through several regions to reach the hadal zone—fittingly named after Hades, Greek god of the underworld—which starts at 20,000 feet and extends beneath the seafloor into trenches and troughs. It is a wild ride as she describes the sea’s inhabitants flitting past the viewport: supergiant squids and transparent creatures with glass skeletons, three hearts, eight legs or “eyes that could swivel in any direction.” In the hadal zone, a submersible faces 16,000 pounds of pressure per square inch, and any mechanical flaw is likely to be fatal.

But that is not the danger Casey worries about. Rather, she worries about the imminent threat of deep-sea mining, poised to wreak havoc on the ocean’s floor, destroy sea life and alter the ocean’s ecosystem forever. Casey warns that the global efforts of environmental activists to stop the cataclysmic mining could ultimately fall short, and The Underworld compels readers to pay attention and learn more about this mysterious but vital world.

The Underworld is Susan Casey’s dazzling answer to the age-old, tantalizing question about the ocean’s abyss: “What’s down there?”
NonfictionNatureLifestyles

Find More Birds

Review by Susannah Felts

For a couple of years, I’ve been observing the crows that call my neighborhood home, and I’ve learned that when they’re making a ruckus, there’s bound to be a hawk nearby. So much of watching birds is about being a) still and quiet, and b) familiar with bird behaviors, as one learns in Find More Birds, a book that makes you slap your head and think, “Why has no one done this before?!” Birding books typically center on the what (kinds of birds one hopes to see) rather than the how. As Heather Wolf points out, “the bulk of bird-finding is wrapped up in a multitude of tidbits of experience, knowledge, and intuition gleaned from years of observing birds,” and that’s just what she passes along here in morsels that make birding feel accessible, even fail proof. Wolf shows us how to home in on birds in almost any situation—at a superstore, in the car, on a college campus, by a body of water—and offers sound advice for finding birding buddies, too.

Heather Wolf shows us how to home in on birds in almost any situation—at a superstore, in the car—and offers sound advice for building a birding community.
NonfictionTrue CrimeTravelNatureMusicMemoirHistoryEnvironmentBlack HistoryBiographyAmerican History

Fall 2023 preview: Most anticipated nonfiction

Feature by the editors of BookPage

How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair

Simon & Schuster | October 3

Throughout poet Safiya Sinclair’s childhood in Jamaica, her father was a strict Rastafarian who imposed harsh constraints on his daughters’ lives and appearances. As Sinclair read the books her mother gave her and began to find her voice as a poet, she likewise found her voice as a daughter struggling to get out from underneath her father’s thumb. In her debut memoir, Sinclair reckons with colonialism, patriarchy and obedience in expressive, melodic prose.

A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Riverhead | September 12

The celebrated novelist and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer turns to memoir for the first time in A Man of Two Faces. Viet Thanh Nguyen left Vietnam at age 4 and came to the U.S. as a refugee, but even after escaping danger in their home country, his family was separated, targeted and harmed in America. This book recounts the events of Nguyen’s life, of course, but it becomes much more than a straightforward memoir as Nguyen conjures stirring insights into memory, migration and identity.

The Sisterhood by Liza Mundy

Crown | October 17

The author of the 2017 bestseller Code Girls returns with The Sisterhood, a history of the women who have played key roles in the CIA since World War II. As spies, archivists, analysts and operatives, women have been underestimated and overlooked through the years. Liza Mundy now spins a gripping tale of how those women used those slights to their advantage as they captured state secrets and spotted threats that the men working alongside them had missed.

Being Henry by Henry Winkler

Celadon | October 31

Famously kindhearted actor Henry Winkler opens up about his life and work in Being Henry. From overcoming a difficult childhood and getting typecast as the Fonz early in his career to finding his second wind decades later in shows such as “Arrested Development” and “Barry,” Winkler peers beneath the sparkling veneer of Hollywood to tell the tender personal story behind his lifelong fame.

My Name Is Barbra by Barbra Streisand

Viking | November 7

If there is one book that truly captures the spirit of “most anticipated,” it has to be screen and stage legend Barbra Streisand’s memoir. Fans have been looking forward to reading the full saga of Streisand’s life and unparalleled career for years—and this fall, they will finally get the chance. At 1,024 pages long, this book is unlikely to skip over any of the juicy details.

To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul by Tracy K. Smith

Knopf | November 7

Tracy K. Smith digs into historical archives to craft a new terminology for American life in this centuries-spanning portrait. Using the personal, documentary and spiritual, Smith considers the memory and possibilities of race, family and intimacy throughout history and into the future. By the end of this meditation, readers will have a new vocabulary and insight into the powers of their own soul.

Gator Country by Rebecca Renner

Flatiron | November 14

Gonzo journalism meets nature documentary in this fast-paced Floridian crime story. Officer Jeff Babauta goes undercover into the world of gator poaching in an attempt to bring down the intricate crime ring. As he becomes embedded in the network, meeting a zany, desperate cast of characters, Babauta’s sense of justice is challenged and he soon has to choose between sacrificing his new community and the safety of the natural world. 

The Lost Tomb by Douglas Preston

Grand Central | December 5

True crime meets a crash course in archaeological history in this extravaganza of a book. When he isn’t co-writing bestselling thrillers featuring FBI Agent Pendergast, Douglas Preston has been traveling the world, visiting some of history’s most storied and remote locations. From the largest tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings to a mass grave left by an asteroid impact, Preston will take readers on a fun, insightful journey into history.

Discover all of BookPage’s most anticipated books of fall 2023.

From CIA spies to Barbra Streisand, alligator tales and more, there’s something for everyone in fall’s most anticipated nonfiction releases.
NonfictionNatureLifestylesAnimals

Slow Birding

Review by Susannah Felts

Despite filling feeders and growing native plants, I continue to be disappointed by the birds that frequent our yard. So much of the same old, same old: cardinals, sparrows, chickadees. I do especially love chickadees—but where are the goldfinches, if not the bluebirds?

Joan E. Strassmann’s Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard challenges me to remember that there’s much to observe and learn about even our most quotidian avian neighbors. In a corrective to bird-watching as tally-driven competitive hunt, here’s an invitation to appreciate the magic of the ordinary creatures with whom you cohabitate, rather than rush all over tarnation chasing glimpses of rare or elusive ones. Strassmann’s exploration is personal and hyperlocal: In lively, conversational prose, she explores birds that populate a close radius around her own home in St. Louis, Missouri, such as robins, mockingbirds and blue jays. Even the oft-maligned European starling gets a chapter, and I love how Strassmann nudges us to rethink our prejudice against this invasive species. “If I wanted you to love European Starlings,” she writes, “I would start with murmurations, those mesmerizing movements of thousands of birds soaring, turning, turning again, then weaving around a forest, only to soar as if one again. . . . It is wonderful to be close to a murmuration of starlings, those pre-roosting evening rivers of life.”

Joan E. Strassmann’s Slow Birding challenges readers to remember that there’s much to observe and learn about even our most quotidian avian neighbors.
NonfictionNatureAnimals

Conversations With Birds

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Just as immersion in nature inspires a mix of profound awe and renewed curiosity about this Earth we call home, so, too, does filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar’s mesmerizing essay collection, Conversations With Birds—rendered in finely wrought prose, steeped in memory and thrumming with endless curiosity.

Kumar reflects on her childhood in northern India, formative years during which she enjoyed lush nature every day. As a young adult studying film at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she realized that she had become alienated from the natural realm that once brought her such joy. An impromptu bird walk and fortuitous encounter with a long-billed curlew reshaped the way Kumar has experienced the world ever since: “My hunger to know more about the bird was like a bridge that would one day lead me back to nature’s elusive womb.”

In the years since, Kumar has embarked on journeys far and near to commune with birds (cranes, owls, tanagers, eagles) and other creatures that inhabit the American Southwest. She chronicles her encounters thoughtfully and with passion, dotting her work with references to Orpheus, Henry David Thoreau, Ravi Shankar and more.

But travel isn’t necessary for engaging with nature; just looking up at a tree that you walk by daily could reveal new wonders. Kumar and her family have only to sit by the large round window that looks out on their Santa Fe backyard, where they might observe a passing bobcat or the beheaded remains of flowers that were eaten by deer.

However, birds remain Kumar’s truest loves. “How is it that we can love birds . . . and not be attentive to how bird habitats all around us are being fragmented or overgrazed or paved over with concrete?” she writes. It’s a question that circles through Conversations With Birds from beginning to end as Kumar celebrates the creatures that live among us and urges us to consider our role in protecting our collective future. After all, she knows from experience that “the seeds of transformation lie dormant in all of our hearts. Sometimes it just takes the right bird to awaken us.”

The essays in Conversations With Birds are rendered in finely wrought prose, steeped in memory and thrumming with endless curiosity about nature.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryNatureLiteratureHistoryAmerican History

Witchy books for spooky season

Feature by Susannah Felts

★ American Wildflowers

American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide exists at the intersection of two important movements: the protection of native plant populations from climate change and shortsighted development, and the decolonization of literature. Editor Susan Barba has gathered a captivating bouquet of plant-inspired writings, with prose and poetry from contemporary greats like Jericho Brown, Lydia Davis and Aimee Nezhukumatathil alongside the words of perennial canon-dwellers like Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. “The best writers closely observe not only the plant but our words in relation to it, and in doing so they focus our attention and clarify our intentions,” writes Barba. What first drew me to this book were Leanne Shapton’s atmospheric watercolors of pressed flowers, which are as ephemeral as the specimens they interpret. A significant addition to the tradition of writing about plants, this anthology urges us to notice the lessons offered by the tiniest bluet.

The United States of Cryptids

Speaking of overlooked (possibly) living things, I can’t get enough of the names of creatures featured in The United States of Cryptids. Snarly Yow? Snallygaster? Woodbooger? Wait, back up. What, you ask, is a cryptid? It’s “a creature or species whose existence is scientifically unproven,” and that right there is a freakishly wide net, folks. But author J.W. Ocker’s emphasis is on the lively lore surrounding Bigfoot creatures, et al., and how these tales both shape and are shaped by the animals’ supposed stomping grounds. “Wherever cryptids are celebrated, the story is so much more important than the science,” he writes, and boy does he have a lot of fun telling said stories. There’s even a “world’s largest chainsaw-carved bigfoot” in a state otherwise light on cryptids (looking at you, South Dakota), a wooden beast born of idle hands during the COVID-19 pandemic. Seems about right for a contemporary cryptid.

Toil and Trouble

Toil and Trouble examines the ways in which women throughout history have found agency, self-expression, financial gain and political influence in witchcraft, tarot and other practices with a spiritual element. Remember Joan Quigley, astrologer to Nancy Reagan? She’s among the fabulous cast of characters included here, along with the witches who hexed Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler, spiritualist Achsa Sprague, Voodoo queen Marie Laveau and so many more. Ultimately, authors Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson (Monster, She Wrote) argue that the occult offers women a way to rebel against the patriarchal Christian constructs of womanhood. Anyone who has dabbled in the craft by way of #witchtok will deepen their knowledge immensely by reading this book, which is as historically thorough as it is fueled by the modern ascendance of the occult in popular culture. With a final chapter titled “100% That Witch,” you know you’re going to learn a lot and have some fun.

This month’s lifestyles column runs the gamut from nature-inspired beauty to straight-up monsters. Brush up on your preferred form of magic with the help of these three enchanting books.
NonfictionScienceNatureEnvironment

Fen, Bog & Swamp

Review by Anne Bartlett

By and large, our enterprising American ancestors hated swamps, which they saw as obstacles to travel and agriculture. In the timeless war between swamp folk and swamp drainers, most were firmly in the latter camp—supported with vigor by the government.

Count Annie Proulx as one of the swamp folk at heart. The acclaimed author of The Shipping News, Barkskins and “Brokeback Mountain” turns her perceptive eye to the calamitous destruction of the world’s peatlands in Fen, Bog & Swamp, an information-packed short history that argues for their preservation and restoration.

As a nonscientist, Proulx explains in accessible language how fens, bogs and swamps differ by water level and vegetation, and how crucial each of these ecosystems is to a balanced environment. The very short version is that they store carbon dioxide and methane, so when peatlands are disrupted, those gases are released and contribute to the climate change crisis, which is itself one of the things causing those disruptions. Peatlands are also home to a staggering number of plant and animal species integral to a healthy ecological community.

One of Proulx’s chapters is called “Discursive Thoughts on Wetlands,” which sums up her approach. She ranges widely, both thematically and geographically, from the small Limberlost Swamp in Indiana to the huge Vasyugan Swamp in Siberia. She considers plenty of archaeology (the Shigir Idol), history (the Battle of Teutoburg Forest) and literature (A Girl of the Limberlost) along the way, sprinkling in reminiscences of her own wetland encounters as well. Among the most interesting discussions are her explorations of the interactions between human and peatland, as in the ritual sacrifices later turned up as “bog bodies” by terrified peat cutters.

In truth, Proulx argues, humans are able to coexist very well with peatlands if they harvest their bounty with respect. When the drainers win, they’re usually sorry in the long run. She notes that luckily, there are a number of promising restoration projects around the world, but they’re small. It turns out it’s a lot harder to re-create a swamp than to preserve one.

Acclaimed author Annie Proulx is one of the swamp folk at heart, and in Fen, Bog & Swamp, she argues for the preservation and restoration of peatlands the world over.

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