By Aldo Leopold, Edited by Curt Meine
Library of America, March 2013
“Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel.” That voice—filled with folksy directness and playful literary loft—is Aldo Leopold’s, from his 1949 classic A Sand County Almanac, a poetic memoir and “land ethic” manifesto. This spring, The Library of America adds to its editions of Muir, Thoreau, and Audubon a definitive volume of Leopold’s writings: Sand County, more than four dozen previously uncollected public talks and essays, and newly transcribed selections from his journals and letters, all edited by premier Leopold ...
