The Oxbow (The Connecticut River near Northampton), by Thomas Cole, 1836.

The Oxbow (The Connecticut River near Northampton) (detail), by Thomas Cole, 1836. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1908.

Book of Nature

Volume 1, Number 3 | summer 2008

Purchase

Birds and Flowers of Spring and Summer, by Kano Eino, late seventeenth century.

Preamble

Messages in a Bottle

By Lewis H. Lapham

Nature is the only artist, the wonder of her collected works formed by their reflections in the mirrors of the human imagination.

More

Factories at Asnieres, seen from the Quai de Clichy, by Vincent van Gogh, 1887.

Pattern Recognition

By Steven Stoll

Economic growth partakes in this magical thinking: the capacity of the environment remains constant at infinity.

More

Map

Clearing the Inventory

Mining gold, chopping timber, tapping oil, fishing oceans.

View

c. 1861 | Amherst

Taints of Majesty

Emily Dickinson looks up at the night sky.More

1830 | Washington, D.C.

Removing the Indians

Andrew Jackson defends the price of progress.More

1865 | Brooklyn

Parade Music

Walt Whitman’s paean to town and country.More

Charts & Graphs

Nature’s Calling

A brief history of the toilet.

View

Engraving of William Shakespeare from the first folio edition.

Oil painting portrair Michel de Montaigne in red robes and white collar

Black and white photograph of former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt.

Man with a gray goatee wearing a checked shirt standing outdoors

Photograph of British writer and journalist Simon Winchester.

Animals hear about death for the first time when they die.

—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1819

Engraving of William Shakespeare from the first folio edition.

Black and white photograph of Friedrich Nietzsche with a huge mustache.

William Shakespeare & Friedrich Nietzsche

Purchase