Sand County Almanac

The essays that made Leopold’s reputation sit at the back of the book, arriving only after a full year of pleasant Wisconsin nature diary that some readers find charming and others find slight. Sketches Here and There and the philosophical chapters of The Upshot read slower and thinner than the almanac up front, and momentum drains before The Land Ethic pays it off. One reader calls out the writing itself, “flowery, verbose prose that irritate me to no end,” arguing the sentences work against the ideas rather than for them. Leopold wanted a “call for caring for all biotica” while hunting and fishing through most of the same pages, and at least one reviewer concludes he “wasn’t the defender of nature that he thought himself to be.” Read the almanac for pleasure and the essays for the argument, in whichever order works.