SOME PAST HITS

national bestseller

“Delightful... A rich and exuberant kaleidoscopic portrait of a great, messy, noisy, daunting, inspiring, maddening, enthralling, constantly shifting Rorschach-test of a place.”

    —Sarah Lyall, New York Times Book Review

winner of the bbc/samuel johnson prize for nonfiction

“Genius.”—Nathaniel Philbrick, New York Times Book Review

“One of the most sublime reading experiences you’ll have this year.” —NPR.org

winner of the national outdoor book award

winner of the banff mountain book grand prize

winner of the mpiba book of the year award

finalist for the orion book prize

“An excellent, informative, and delightful book.”

    —Annie Proulx

amazon.com top 100 book of the year

“Immensely readable, ingenious, witty and important-feeling.”—Richard Ford

“Captivating and often glorious.”—Josh Emmons, New York Times Book Review

a new york times notable book of the year

“Brilliant! I couldn’t put it down.”—Oliver Sacks

“A great trip.”—Abraham Verghese, New York Times Book Review

“Entertaining... A sprightly journey through horticultural history.”—Wall Street Journal

“Witty and beguiling...You will never look at a weed, or a garden fork, the same way again.”—Richard Holmes

new york times bestseller

“Read it today to understand the science of tomorrow.”

    —Steven Pinker

“The general reader’s indispensable passport to the frontiers of science.”

    —Booklist (starred review)

30th anniversary edition

“The fullest and finest exploration I’ve ever read of how the useless delights to be discovered in nature can ripen into the practice of art.” —Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift

“Beautiful... A cross between Thoreau’s Walden and Berger’s Ways of Seeing...”—New York Times

“Glittering...Makes a reader feel that the sheer force of all these dreams, this persistence, might in fact rub off on you.”

    —Los Angeles Times

Other writers whose essays and stories I’ve edited (chiefly in litmag days of yore) include Daniel Alarcón, Daniel Bergner, Tom Bissell, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Jim Frederick, Alexandra Fuller, Paul Fussell, Jennifer Gonnerman, Patricia Hampl, Isabel Hilton, Graham Joyce, J. Robert Lennon, Jonathan Lethem, Barry Lopez, Jacki Lyden, Robert Macfarlane, Benjamin Markovits, James Meek, Maile Meloy, Andrew O’Hagan, David Peace, Richard Powers, David Rakoff, Luc Sante, Said Sayrafiezadeh, Eric Schlosser, Jim Shepard, Wendell Steavenson, Robert Sullivan, Studs Terkel, Tom Vanderbilt, and Colson Whitehead.