Drew Lanham. This book provokes mixed reactions. var ue_furl = "fls-na.amazon.com"; I'm not always drawn in to read history, so it was nice to get the history by way of an author who loves and appreciates nature so much. . South Carolina Audubon, Aldo Leopold Foundation, BirdNote and the American Birding Association. I love adjectives as much as anybody, and more than most. The Home Placeis a deft examination of how we come to define ourselves in a world that, in turn, is relentlessly trying to define who we areand how we can take those definitions over and make our own., One of the most moving memoirs about place I have read . googletag.cmd.push(function() { All very upsetting. As a teen and twenty-something I read loads of great nature writing from the 50s and 60s, and Lanham's style is definitely reminiscent of those years. }); He writes about the importance of conservation but also spends some of the latter half of the book investigating his ancestors and their slave roots and what that means to him. J Drew Lanham is a force of Southern ornithology and lore. His accounts of racism in the South are harrowing, while his passages on nature are gorgeous. As a Black American hes intrigued with how culture and ethnic prisms can bend perceptions of nature and its care. Early Spring Flowers Will Combat the Winter Blues. Though the natural world remains Lanhams main character, readers can hardly overlook his own narrative. Well, it's a memoir, so it's mostly about this guy's life. 305pp. This excellent memoir recounts the authors experiences growing up in a hard working African-American family living on their own farm in South Carolina. There he works as a Clemson University Distinguished Alumni Professor, Provost's Professor . Please read it. Clemson professor J. Drew Lanham Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum Community Read, June-July 2021 . Join the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum for an evening with renowned author and naturalist J. There can be no more important task in the world today than to upend this rotten dichotomy, to heal the manufactured rift between environmentalism and the fight for social justice. One of the best things I read this year. Well-written, thoughtful, and thought-provoking. I don't want my aversion to butchering mammals for food to cloud my rating. for(var i=0; i