Natural History Category: 
Reviews of the Winners of the
Natural History Literature Category
The most important book award program in the outdoor field is the National Outdoor Book Awards. Past winners of the Natural History Literature Category are listed below:
Winner. The American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree. By Susan Freinkel. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 9780520247307
At one time, the American chestnut tree stretched in great numbers from Georgia to Maine. In the Appalachian Mountains, it was so prolific that it made up fully 25 percent of all tree species. Then in the early 1900s, the chestnut blight fungus, accidentally introduced to North America on imported Asiatic chestnuts, quickly spread. In forty years time, an estimated four billion chestnuts trees were dead. Only a handful of isolated trees remained in California and the Pacific Northwest. This is Susan Freinkel's absorbing story of a cultural American icon and the century-long struggle by those who refused to let the tree slip into oblivion.
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Winner. Sky Time in Gray's River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place. By Robert Michael Pyle. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. ISBN 978039582812.
In this beautifully designed, hand-sized volume, Robert Michael Pyle describes his life in the little, out-of-the-way village of Gray's River in southwest Washington. He follows the lives of his neighbors—birds, butterflies, cats and people—season by season, over a thirty year period. His keen curious eye and generous whimsical spirit combine with his gifts as a writer to make a lovely meditation on one's own backyard.
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Honorable Mention. Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West. By Michael Punke. Smithsonian Books, New York. ISBN 9780060897826.
Last Stand is an engrossing story about the destruction of the great buffalo herds. It's an all too familiar story of greed and arrogance, but Michael Punke explores a little known part of that history—that of the contributions of conservationist George Grinnell. Colorful and imminently readable, the book helps establish Grinnell's place among the leaders of America's conservation movement.
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Winner. Condor: To the Brink and Back. By John Nielsen. HarperCollins Publishers, New York. ISBN 9780060088620
This book is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the efforts to save the condor, North America's largest flying land bird. Condor is a story waiting to be told, and there could have been no better person for the job than John Nielsen. Nielsen has penned a natural history book that is fun to read, mixing humor, science and human interest in just the right portions. In short, it's a brilliant telling of a compelling environmental saga.
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Winner. Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion. By Alan Burdick. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. ISBN 0374219737
Combining exhaustive research and an engaging and lyrical writing style, author Alan Burdick explores the ecological minefield of exotic, non-native species. We zig and zag through that minefield from Hawaii to Guam to San Francisco to Alaska, following the work of scientists in the new field of invasion biology. What we learn in the end is unsettling: nature herself may pose the greatest threat to the future of our planet.
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End of Listing