Books
The Pine Island Paradox | Holdfast | Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water | Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge
How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V. F. Cordova | In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens | PARDONS: Justice, Mercy, and the Public Interest | Coming to Land in a Troubled World
| The Pine Island Paradox by Kathleen Dean Moore Milkweed Editions (hardcover, paperback), 2004 ISBN: 1-57131-276-5 Exploring the tide-washed shores of the piney island where her family regularly camps, Kathleen Dean Moore writes about the web of connections that link humans to the rest of the natural world. A gifted storyteller with a sly sense of humor, Moore engages the reader with tales about her family and natural encounters on wilderness excursions or within the fences of her backyard. She writes about thousands of shrimp visible at the ebb tide, fungi her botanist father cultivated in the family refrigerator, her daughter’s night in jail, bad weather, grouse dancing on their lek, and the haunting note—the augmented fourth—heard in the call of a loon, the howl of a wolf, and sacred music. In essays full of rich surface detail, she weaves arguments about the hidden connections that bind the world. She speaks for an environmental ethic of care that extends from our families to the special places we experience with them, a borderless zone of affection that embraces the human and natural world. (Publisher’s description) "Top Ten Northwest Books of the Year . . . Stands with the best tradition of nature writing." -- the Oregonian Selections from The Pine Island Paradox Order this book |  |
| Holdfast by Kathleen Dean Moore The Lyons Press, Globe Pequot (hardcover, paperback) 1999 ISBN: 1-55821-780-0 With the finely honed skills of an essayist, the heightened sensibility of a naturalist, and the carefully reasoned mind of a philosopher, Kathleen Dean Moore examines our connections to what we hold most dear. In a quest for the metaphorical holdfast—the structure at the end of seaweed strands that attach to rocks with a grip that even ocean gales cannot rend—Moore seeks to understand what holds her family in place. In twenty elegant, probing essays, she meditates on connection and separation. From the Oregon coast she calls home to Alaskan shores, Moore travels geographically and philosophically, leaving no doubt of her virtuosity and range. (Publisher’s description) "The natural world is not just rocks and bears, it is close and familiar. I am stoked by how Holdfast makes that familiarity fresh and exciting. Kathleen Dean Moore's book negotiates between the energies of both critters and people -- coots, kelp, otters, daughters, and more. Her clean, intimate prose shows how learning to howl like a wolf is also learning to howl like a human." -- Gary Snyder, author of Turtle Island Selections from Holdfast Order this book |  Top |
| Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water By Kathleen Dean Moore Harcourt Brace, a Harvest Book (paperback), 1996; Lyons and Burford (cloth), 1995 ISBN: 1-55821-408-9 ISBN: 0-15-600461-5 In these twenty elegant and provocative essays, Moore invites us to travel the West with her, and often with her family, as she rafts down rapids, hikes through dunes, camps in the desert, and walks along riverbanks. All along the way, she shares her remarkable observations about the life—both human and otherwise—that is sustained by rivers. Moore ponders love, loss, motherhood, happiness, evolution, and country music with ease and acuity. Moore is a philosopher by training and a naturalist by sentiment. The way in which she sees the world and way in which she gracefully imparts how she sees it, is a mixture of both disciplines: part keen analysis, part sumptuous embrace, of all that she sees, hears, and feels in the moving water of rivers and of memory. The result is Riverwalking, a collection that is enlightening, moving, and brilliantly conceived. (Publisher’s description)"A smart, compassionate, and wise meditation on living in place." -- Terry Tempest Williams Selections from Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water Order this book | Top |
| Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge Edited Lisa Sideris by Kathleen Dean Moore SUNY Press, 2008 ISBN 978-0-7914-7472-3 Leading scholars explore the full range and current significance of Carson’s work. Long before Rachel Carson would become synonymous with environmental activism, she was a nature and science writer, penning The Sense of Wonder for children, and three books about the ocean and its inhabitants—including the bestselling The Sea around Us. Based solidly on science and written in beautiful prose, Carson’s work issued a practical and moral challenge to her readers: Can we find a way to live on earth with care and respect? In Rachel Carson, the first book to offer a sustained treatment of her work prior to Silent Spring, editors Lisa H. Sideris and Kathleen Dean Moore bring together seventeen writers, activists, and scholars from a range of disciplines to uncover the many sides of Rachel Carson. Exposing her enthusiasm for the natural world and the depth of her writings, the contributors examine her books, speeches, essays, and the letters she wrote as she prepared to die. A testament to Carson’s continued influence on environmental thought, this volume is for everyone who cares about finding ways to live sustainably on earth. (Publisher’s description) “From grim statistics to women’s studies, from religion to public health, and from fish to flowers, these essays offer the data, emotion, and lyricism needed for a complete homage to Rachel Carson. Carson’s offspring are flowering in many fields, and this book maps those connections clearly and brightly for anyone wishing to find a new approach to Carson’s writing.” — Nancy Gift, Director, Rachel Carson Institute Order this book |  Top |
| How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V. F. Cordova Edited by Kathleen Dean Moore, Kurt Peters, Ted Jojola, and Amber Lacy University of Arizona Press, 2007 ISBN 978-0-8165-2649-9 These essays by Viola Cordova are something this world has not seen before: from a person who grew up nourished by Apache wisdom and worldviews, a powerful critique of European-Christian thought. From a person trained as a scholar of European thought in the analytic and classical traditions of an American Ph.D. program, a brilliant statement of a Native American’s philosophy. From a woman writer who knows firsthand what it means to be excluded and embraced, a moving, life-changing account of what she most deeply believes is true. What is the world? What is a human being? What is the role of a human in the world? The book ends with a coda in which Dr. Cordova addresses perhaps the hardest question of all — how, then, shall I live? Her answer is simple and complex, beautiful and burdensome: The greatest duty, if it can be so called, of a human being is to cause no disruption to the greater, and beautiful, whole of what it is that is. |  Top |
| In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens Edited by Charles Goodrich, Kathleen Dean Moore, and Frederick J. Swanson Oregon State University Press, 2008 ISBN 978-0-87071-198-5 As it erupted in 1980, Mount St. Helens captured the attention of the region, nation, and world, and it continues to fascinate today – a constant reminder that we live in volcano country. In lucid prose and poetry by some of America’s leading writers and scientists, In the Blast Zone explores this story of destruction and renewal in all its human, geological, and ecological dimensions. The contributors to this volume camped together on Mount St. Helens for four days, hiking, observing, and sharing ideas. They asked the question, What can this radically altered landscape tell us about nature and how to live our lives? In the Blast Zone collects their answers. While introducing ecological and geological insights, it also tells compelling stories about how science and literature inform our lives and our relation to nature. These writings will startle readers with new recognition of the mountain’s matchless gifts of beauty, illumination, and hope. Contributors: Jerry Franklin, Ursula LeGuin, Scott Russell Sanders, Gary Snyder, Ann Zwinger, and many more. Selections from In the Blast Zone Order this book |  Top |
| PARDONS: Justice, Mercy, and the Public Interest By Kathleen Dean Moore Oxford University Press, 1989 Moore’s timely and highly readable volume addresses many crucial questions surrounding acts of clemency, including what justifies pardoning power, who should be pardoned, and the definition of an unforgivable crime. Illustrating her argument with rich and fascinating historical examples – some scandalous or funny, others inspiring or tragic – Moore examines the philosophy of pardons from King James II’s practice of selling pardons for two shillings, through the debates of the Founding Fathers over pardoning power, to the recent presidents’ record low number of pardons. (Publisher’s description) “Extraordinarily engaging reading. Once I got started, I couldn’t put it down . . . Not only is there nothing like it in modern philosophical literature – despite a great volume of material on punishment – but it is of very high philosophical quality . . . A very important contribution to ethics and the philosophy of law. It goes well beyond anything anyone else has done.” -- Claudia Card, University of Wisconsin Selections from PARDONS Order this book |  Top |
| Coming to Land in a Troubled World Essays by Peter Forbes, Kathleen Dean Moore, and Scott Russell Sanders The Trust for Public Land, 2003 ISBN: 0-9672806-9-9 The present rate of devastation of our natural world and of healthy lives is unprecedented, and accelerating. The work of conserving land, species, and ways of life is more urgent and vital than ever before. What does it mean to truly conserve land and community life in this era? And why is this so vitally important if we are to heal the divisions in our culture and ourselves, change our patterns of consumption, and reverse the fate of our earth? In three powerful essays, three influential writers and thinkers—Scott Russell Sanders, Peter Forbes, and Kathleen Dean Moore—explore these questions, giving us new insights about the promise of land conservation in our present world. Through its deep examination of the value of land to our culture and our souls, this book becomes a meditation on reconciliation and restoration, love and loss, wholeness and innovation, fairness and community. It gives us new approaches and new hope to work to heal the great divisions and losses we see around us each day. (Publisher’s description) All three essayists look hard at the ecological and cultural crises of our time. But they also point to sources of hope. . . . I feel grateful for the mature, practical wisdom of this collection.” -- John Elder, author of The Frog Run Selections from Coming to Land in a Troubled World Order this book |  Top |
Copyright © 2008 Kathleen Dean Moore
