Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

"In [this book], you can open any page and out will fall words like pressed flowers and autumn leaves, vivid souvenirs of joy and loss....A memoir, a family history, and the ecology of a dying place, the book pivots between land and people, embracing both as rare and fragile. We are swept along like the resinous odor of pine needles in the balmy wind." - Yvonne Tooley (Bloomsbury Review, 1/1/00)

"It's a compelling story, briefly told: For all the pine cones on its pages, [this book] is a bit short on biology, or even cracklin' good natural history....No matter: The memoir is better reading anyway, building from well-told tales of a skinned-knee girlhood in the junkyard flats of south Georgia." - Yvonne Tooley (Austin Chronicle, 9/19/00)

"What sets ECOLOGY OF A CRACKER CHILDHOOD apart is the ambitious and arresting mission implied in its title. Ray's lament for a lost landscape and a lost way of life centers on a South that has little acquaintance with cotillions, columned mansions or cotton plantations....[Her] passion for preserving and restoring this unsung landscape is heartfelt and refreshing. Ray's paeans to pokeweed and yellow pine become repetitive....[But h]er prose is much leaner and more affecting when she returns to the raw, man-made world in which she was raised, and the resourceful 'crackers' who inhabit it." - David C. Moore (New York Times Book Review, 1/9/00)

top environmental books

Futures by Design (Print) - Doug Aberley +w A reference and primer for those who are interested in self-reliance and self-government,...  read more

2.  Earth in the Balance (Print) - Al Gore +w 3.  Community, Democracy, and the Environment (Print) - Jane A. Grant +w 4.  Collapse (Print) - Jared Diamond +w 5.  An Inconvenient Truth (Print) - Al Gore +w 6.  Clean House, Clean Planet (Print) - Karen Noonan Logan +w 7.  It's Easy Being Green (Print) - Crissy Trask +w 8.  The Sustainability Revolution (Print) - Andres R. Edwards +w 9.  Green Living (Print) - E Magazine +w 10.  How to Live Green, Cheap, and Happy (Print) - Randi Hacker +w

top forests & forestry books

A Curse Dark as Gold (Print) - Elizabeth C. Bunce +w As the debt mounts after the sudden death of her father, Charlotte Miller begins...  read more

2.  River of Doubt (Print) - Candice Millard +w 3.  Strangely Like War (Print) - Derrick Jensen +w 4.  The Forest in Folklore and Mythology (Print) - Alexander Porteous +w 5.  Canopies In The Clouds (Print) - Ellen Hopkins +w 6.  Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (Print) - Janisse Ray +w 7.  Field Guide to Ecology of Eastern Forests (Print) - John C. Kricher +w 8.  Rainforest (Print) - Thomas Marent +w 9.  A Field Guide to Eastern Forests North America (Print) - John C. Kricher +w 10.  The Trees in My Forest (Print) - Bernd Heinrich +w