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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Deer in the Forest, by Gustave Courbet, 1868.

And Such Small Deer

By Garret Keizer

A writer struggles to defend his trees from a pack of hungry deer—“an episode of great vexation and buffoonery.”

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Map

Clearing the Inventory

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

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1687 | Cambridge

Law of the Land

Isaac Newton’s rules for investigating phenomena.More

1878 | Rome

Cultivation and Its Discontents

“Man is everywhere a disturbing agent.”More

1893 | Chicago

The End of History

Frederick Jackson Turner outlines the importance of frontiers. More

Charts & Graphs

Animal Instincts

Composite animals from mythical lore.

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

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

Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.

Black and white photograph of former chancellor and Führer of Germany Adolf Hitler.

Black and white photograph of American novelist John Steinbeck.

Painting of Greek philosopher Heraclitus weeping over a globe.

If people think Nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.

—Kurt Vonnegut, 1988

William Shakespeare & Friedrich Nietzsche

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