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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Scroll of a river passing through mountains covered in clouds.

The Great Bend

By Simon Winchester

What if the Yangtze River had turned south instead of east?

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Map

Clearing the Inventory

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

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c. 1846 | Walden Pond

Survival of the Fittest

Henry David Thoreau observes the kingdom of the ants. More

1794 | London

Forests of the Night

William Blake’s fearful symmetry.More

1830 | Washington, D.C.

Removing the Indians

Andrew Jackson defends the price of progress.More

Charts & Graphs

Suburban Warfare

An index of suburban danger.

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American author Evan S. Connell.

English poet Edmund Spenser.

Image of English naturalist Charles Darwin.

Italian artist, engineer, and scientist Leonardo da Vinci.

Jules Verne

Jonathan Swift

Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.

—George Eliot, 1857

Engraving of William Shakespeare from the first folio edition.

Black and white photograph of Friedrich Nietzsche with a huge mustache.

William Shakespeare & Friedrich Nietzsche

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