The Wild Bunch: A Conversation with Curt Meine and Gavin Van Horn
An important new essay collection avoids the old arguments about wilderness and instead offers 26 meditations on living well in our places.
The (Built) Environmental Revolution: A Conversation with Sarah Williams Goldhagen
We know nature is good for our brains. Can buildings be, too? A preeminent architectural critic calls for a radical shift in how we design the places where we live, work, and play.
Seeds as Time Capsules
When Courtney Fullilove looks inside a seed, she sees Mennonite farmers, Comanche agriculture, and Echinacea patents. Her new book, “The Profit of the Earth,” shows that the genes of a seed can narrate the history of American empire.
Can a Piano Sing a Birdsong?
The French composer Olivier Messaien attempted to reproduce the calls of 80 European birds in a three-hour piece for solo piano. Did he succeed?
From TNT to Tallgrass: Prairie Restoration at a Munitions Plant Turned National Grassland
It was the world’s largest munitions plant. Now it’s a rich grassland teeming with wildflowers, hikers, and even a bison herd. Illinois’s Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie offers an environmental success story for our time.
Bittersweet Catch: Korea’s Diving Women and the Pitfalls of Cultural Preservation
While attending a school set up to train the next generation of haenyeo divers, one woman grapples with the historical and ongoing complexities of maintaining the traditional practice.
NASA and the Explosive 1960s: A Conversation with Neil Maher
The author of the new book “Apollo in the Age of Aquarius” shows how NASA shaped, and was shaped by, 1960s environmentalism, feminism, conservatism, counterculture, antiwar protests, and the black freedom struggle.
Knowing Prairies: An Essay in Comic Form
What can the world’s first restored prairie tell us about living with the land? The University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum inspires one artist to reflect on ecological restoration and what we call nature.
The Land Ethic Revisited: Individualism vs. Morality
How can a community implement Aldo Leopold’s notion of the land ethic? Kenya’s Njuri Ncheke councils offer an example, balancing individual and group agency.
Love for Home in a Place Industry Left Behind
When the mines closed throughout Wisconsin’s Gogebic Range, its population collapsed. But many left their hearts there. Now some are even moving back.