What do you think?
Rate this book
Of Prairie, Woods, and Water: Two Centuries of Chicago Nature Writing
In the literary imagination, Chicago evokes images of industry and unbridled urban growth. But the tallgrass prairie and deep forests that once made up Chicago’s landscape also inspired musings from residents and visitors alike. In Of Prairie, Woods, and Water , naturalist Joel Greenberg gathers these unique voices from the land to present an unexpected portrait of Chicago in this often charming, sometimes heart-wrenching anthology of nature writing.
These writings tell the tale of a land in transition—one with abundant, unique, and incredibly lush flora and fauna, a natural history quite elusive today. Drawing on archives he uncovered while writing his acclaimed A Natural History of the Chicago Region , Greenberg hand-selected these first-person narratives, all written between 1721 and 1959. Not every author is familiar, but every contribution is distinctive. From a pioneer’s hilarious notes on life in the Kankakee marsh to Theodore Drieser’s poignant plea for conservation of the Tippecanoe River to infamous murderer Nathan Leopold’s charming description of a pet robin he kept in prison, the sources included are as diverse as the nature they describe.
The excerpts conclude with insightful biographical essays and traverse a wide area of greater Chicagoland, from the Illinois River to southwest Michigan, from southern Wisconsin to the Limberlost swamp of northeastern Indiana. A fascinating record of Chicago’s changing environmental history, Of Prairie, Woods, and Water captures the natural world in a way that will inspire its continued conservation.
We have learned the title of a book by the Chicago ecologist and writer May Theilgaard Watts has been incorrectly rendered in the selections attributed to Mrs. Watts. The correct title of her book is Reading the Landscape of America (Nature Study Guild Publishers, see
These writings tell the tale of a land in transition—one with abundant, unique, and incredibly lush flora and fauna, a natural history quite elusive today. Drawing on archives he uncovered while writing his acclaimed A Natural History of the Chicago Region , Greenberg hand-selected these first-person narratives, all written between 1721 and 1959. Not every author is familiar, but every contribution is distinctive. From a pioneer’s hilarious notes on life in the Kankakee marsh to Theodore Drieser’s poignant plea for conservation of the Tippecanoe River to infamous murderer Nathan Leopold’s charming description of a pet robin he kept in prison, the sources included are as diverse as the nature they describe.
The excerpts conclude with insightful biographical essays and traverse a wide area of greater Chicagoland, from the Illinois River to southwest Michigan, from southern Wisconsin to the Limberlost swamp of northeastern Indiana. A fascinating record of Chicago’s changing environmental history, Of Prairie, Woods, and Water captures the natural world in a way that will inspire its continued conservation.
We have learned the title of a book by the Chicago ecologist and writer May Theilgaard Watts has been incorrectly rendered in the selections attributed to Mrs. Watts. The correct title of her book is Reading the Landscape of America (Nature Study Guild Publishers, see
- GenresNatureNonfiction
402 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 2008
2 people are currently reading
56 people want to read
About the author
Joel Greenberg
27 books8 followersJoel Greenberg is a research associate of the Chicago Academy of Sciences Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum and the Field Museum. Author of three books, including A Natural History of the Chicago Region, Greenberg has taught natural history courses for the Morton Arboretum, Brookfield Zoo, and Chicago Botanic Garden. He helped spearhead Project Passenger Pigeon to focus attention on human-caused extinctions. Greenberg lives in Westmont, Illinois. Visit his blog at Birdzilla.com.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 29, 2023
In a book that seems tailor-made for me, nature writer Joel Greenberg has compiled a scrapbook of sorts, a collection of nature writing sharing impressions of nature in the Chicago landscape from the 1700s to early 1900s. It's a diverse compilation; it includes scientific articles and settler's diaries, old newspaper articles and yellowed journal pieces hauled out of the archives.
Most of the reminiscences conjure landscapes now lost: the Kankakee Marsh, the great old-growth forests of Michigan, the once-unbroken sweep of the Illinois prairie. The writers seem to alternate between knowing these places are in danger--some stories end with a postscript saying that the habitat described is already lost, even back in the 1800s--while others seem to take this bounty for granted, assuming it will subsist and sustain forever.
There's a callousness toward nature here that's disturbing. Some of the articles from shooters and trappers convey wholesale slaughter, as old-time sportsmen aim shotguns to the sky and fill their bags with dozens of birds. There's even an entry from an old target shooter who remembers when they used to compete with live birds, fifty at a time, right out of the trap.
But Greenberg does a good job balancing the perspectives on display. Some writers point out that pioneer families relied on the protein of the field and were vulnerable to the predations of wolves...not that it makes the tales of wolf hunts easier to read. Others lament the loss of habitat and indiscriminate killing; they work to stop the shoots or collection of birds for ladies' hats.
As Benjamin T. Gault writes in the Audubon Bulletin in 1937, "the encouragement of 'Crow Shoots' and dynamiting them at their winter roosts, is all wrong as it has been practiced in our state and by the Conservation Department. It is wrong, I think, for the harm it does psychologically to our growing youth by encouraging murderous instinct."
Like any historic compilation, some of the writing is wonderful and some is old, weird, baroque. But on the whole it's a wondrous collection, an evocation of a world now lost. As Donald Culross Peattie writes in "A Prairie Grove" (1938), "There is no other land in the world with autumns like ours. We pile the treasure of the year into a great burial fire. Tongues of flame go up to the sky, the garnet of black and red oaks, the leaping maples and the flickering aspens and out of the midst of it all one exulting spire of light where a cottonwood shakes primal yellow at the primal blue of the American sky."
Most of the reminiscences conjure landscapes now lost: the Kankakee Marsh, the great old-growth forests of Michigan, the once-unbroken sweep of the Illinois prairie. The writers seem to alternate between knowing these places are in danger--some stories end with a postscript saying that the habitat described is already lost, even back in the 1800s--while others seem to take this bounty for granted, assuming it will subsist and sustain forever.
There's a callousness toward nature here that's disturbing. Some of the articles from shooters and trappers convey wholesale slaughter, as old-time sportsmen aim shotguns to the sky and fill their bags with dozens of birds. There's even an entry from an old target shooter who remembers when they used to compete with live birds, fifty at a time, right out of the trap.
But Greenberg does a good job balancing the perspectives on display. Some writers point out that pioneer families relied on the protein of the field and were vulnerable to the predations of wolves...not that it makes the tales of wolf hunts easier to read. Others lament the loss of habitat and indiscriminate killing; they work to stop the shoots or collection of birds for ladies' hats.
As Benjamin T. Gault writes in the Audubon Bulletin in 1937, "the encouragement of 'Crow Shoots' and dynamiting them at their winter roosts, is all wrong as it has been practiced in our state and by the Conservation Department. It is wrong, I think, for the harm it does psychologically to our growing youth by encouraging murderous instinct."
Like any historic compilation, some of the writing is wonderful and some is old, weird, baroque. But on the whole it's a wondrous collection, an evocation of a world now lost. As Donald Culross Peattie writes in "A Prairie Grove" (1938), "There is no other land in the world with autumns like ours. We pile the treasure of the year into a great burial fire. Tongues of flame go up to the sky, the garnet of black and red oaks, the leaping maples and the flickering aspens and out of the midst of it all one exulting spire of light where a cottonwood shakes primal yellow at the primal blue of the American sky."
April 22, 2013
While I didn't read *every* essay in its entirety, the earlier writing interested me most - the writing from travelers, from botanists, from journal entries of rough-hewn prairie dwellers - the stuff about the settlement of the region of lakefront prairie and swamp that gradually was transformed into Chicago. I originally picked up this book because I saw an essay about pigeons, that dirty, infernal city-bird described to me early in my city years as "rats with wings." That essay turned out to be short and unremarkable. It was the early writings that showed me what existed once beneath this concrete jungle, adding to my understanding of the natural world that still peeks out of the corners once in a great while.
December 4, 2024
The one thing missing from this book is an index. It would be great to have that to reference specific facts/topics.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews