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

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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.

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Scroll of a river passing through mountains covered in clouds.

The Great Bend

By Simon Winchester

What if the Yangtze River had turned south instead of east?

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Map

Clearing the Inventory

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

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1906 | San Francisco

The March of the Flames

Jack London watches hearts break after an earthquake.More

1912 | Yosemite

Defying the Foul Fiend

John Muir defends man’s holiest temple.More

1734 | London

Great Chain of Being

“Whatever is, is right.”More

Charts & Graphs

Something from Nothing

Archaic notions of spontaneous generation.

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Black and white photograph of a young H.G. Wells with a mustache.

Jonathan Swift

Engraving of William Shakespeare from the first folio edition.

American author Evan S. Connell.

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

American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

Lewis Lapham at his desk

Nature never breaks her own laws.

—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500

Engraving of William Shakespeare from the first folio edition.

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

William Shakespeare & Friedrich Nietzsche

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