Readers who think they know Leopold, whether from his classic A Sand County Almanac or from earlier writings about him, are in for a real surprise. We see here, far better than ever before, the science underlying Leopold's conservation thought; he was at the forefront of ecology, not merely a consumer of it. Even more, we see how Leopold moved step by step to the (for him) painful realization that true conservation was not possible without significant cultural change, which in turn required committed conservationists to step up and challenge dominant values and institutions. Newton shows clearly that it was Leopold's idea of land health, not his land ethic, that stood at the center of his mature conservation thought. She shows how land health, once carefully crafted, transformed his thinking on nearly every aspect of conservation. And she explains vividly-- far better than any other scholar--the precise meanings that Leopold attached to his famous ethical admonition to preserve the land's "integrity, stability, and beauty." Why did Leopold resist the federal conservation programs of the New Deal Era? How did he redefine wilderness over the final decade of his life and reshape his chief reasons for protecting it? What did he view as the main goals of wildlife management, and why did he turn against many basic assumptions in his classic book Game Management? What kind of startlingly new ecology text did he have in works when he died? These and other questions are answered for the first time, in this major work that is brimming with new information and new interpretations. The most sobering realization one has, though, upon finishing this splendid book, is that today's conservation cause might cite Leopold often but hardly at all understands who he was and what he thought. This is not just the best book we have on Leopold, it might well be the best book we've had on any conservation intellect. Aldo Leopold's Odyssey: Rediscovering the Author of A Sand County Almanac'
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