A Sand County Almanac

Aldo Leopold, 1949.

Recommended by Tom Dobbins

A simply beautiful collection of stories and essays on land. Leopold has a wonderful knack of inspiring ecological stewardship through his intimate descriptions of place, while also managing to capture what it is to have an honest, evolving relationship with the world around us. His joyous month-by-month assessment of rural Wisconsin is backed up by sharp ecological critique, which continues to inspire a place-based management practice rooted in community and inhabitation.