Introduction

​This website lists, catalogues and contextualizes a substantial Collection of rare and collectible books (first editions, signed copies, association copies, etc.) which documents the history and evolution of the Environmental Conservation movement in America, from the 17th century through the end of the 20th century. ​

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My intent is that the Collection one day finds a home in an institution where it will be a resource to conservationists, historians, students and book lovers.  My goal in creating this website is to provide a framework - to make the Collection more interesting, approachable and useful.  I hope my efforts to catalogue, contextualize, and cross-reference the materials provide lasting value to future users.  In an ideal world, the site would be adopted and enhanced over time by my successor stewards.

 

I elaborate further below but in short, the real value and beauty of the Collection is in the flow of ideas and relationships over time.  The EC movement represents to me a true pinnacle of human intellectual development - both in its acceptance of the idea that one's own individual, short-term best interest is not necessarily congruent with the best interests of society over the long term; and in its recognition that humanity, a quite recent addition to the planet, is but one unit within the broader ecological environment - with much to learn from that which has survived and evolved over eons.

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This website is already quite substantial but remains a work in progress.  I've been working on it in my free time, with a couple of extended breaks, since early 2022.  The Collection itself I started around 2009.  As of March 2025, the Master List and Catalogue sections are largely complete.  The first five chapters of the EC History section are well advanced.  The other History chapters are in various early stages.

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For those new to the site, a March 2025 blog post discusses what I considered to be the highlights of the Collection.  More generally, I would recommend starting with the Master Lists, then dip into the Catalogues.  The completed EC History chapters are worthwhile reading on a stand-alone basis, or one can jump back and forth between those Chapters and the Catalogue.  This Intro provides a more detailed description of the Collection and my approach to this website.​

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For the benefit of regular visitors to this site, a list of recent additions and blog posts:

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​​​Hornaday, WIlliam

Thirty Years War for Wild Life (1931).  The Congressional Edition, for distribution to legislators, of Hornaday's screed against all of the forces, including the National Audubon Society and the U.S. Biological Survey, which at the time opposed legislations regulating hunting.  Inscribed to Louisiana naturalist and journalist Stanley C. Arthur.

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Continental Conservation

A 1999 anthology from The Wildlands Project focused on conservation biology and regional reserve networks, edited by "father of conservation biology" Michael E. Soule and John Terborgh.  This copy is inscribed by Soule to Intel co-founder and major international conservation philanthropist Gordon Moore.

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Hall, Leonard

Stars Upstream: Life along an Ozark River (1958).  While not widely known today, Hall was a prominent conservationist and journalist who led the efforts to create the first National Scenic Rivers in the country.  This inscribed copy is about one of those rivers, the Current River, in Missouri.

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NEW BLOG POST - March 2025

I've made another attempt to spotlights the highlights of the Collection - a list melding the most impactful books and authors with the rarest and most collectible books.

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The Sierra Club Wilderness Handbook

1967, second printing.  Edited by and catalogued under David Brower.  Softcover with the ownership signature of Sheridan Anderson, the semi-legendary artist, author, fisher and climber who published The Curtis Creek Manifesto, perhaps the best-selling fly-fishing guide of all time.  Also listed is Paul W. Nesbit's self-published Longs Peak climbing guide, which is inscribed to Anderson and which came with the Wilderness Handbook.

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Murphy, Robert Cushman

Fish-Shape Paumanok: Nature and Man on Long Island (1964).  Inscribed first by this celebrated ornithologist.

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Hogner, Dorothy Childs

Conservation in America - 1958.  A book for teenagers inscribed by the prolific author and her husband, who illustrated the book, to an acknowledgee.

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​Leopold, Aldo

"The Ecological Conscience" - 1947.  An offprint from the printing of the text of a key address by Leopold, in which he first uses the passage which will become his most frequently quoted and analyzed.

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Muir, John

The National Parks - 1901.  Inscribed by Muir to William D. Armes, who was a Sierra Club organizer and founder, and its initial secretary.  A particularly exciting addition to the Collection, given the importance of Muir and the Sierra Club in the history of the environmental conservation movement, and all the more so given the rarity of signed or inscribed books (let alone association copies) by Muir.​

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​​​​​​​​​​​​​​By way of warning - if this website was published today as a typically formatted book, it would exceed 500 pages in length.  The Collection currently consists of nearly 700 items, mostly books, all of which are listed and Catalogued on this site.  FWIW, while one can access the site from a phone, the sheer volume of material precludes complete access to, and proper formatting of, the contents.

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One thing you will not find on this website is anything about the monetary value of the books.  Not what this project is about.  

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The website is also not about me, and I actually regret the name I chose for it.  This site is about the Collection, not the collector.  In truth, I did not give it a great deal of thought at the time I chose it - I just picked something that was somewhat descriptive while being neither too long and nor already in use.  It is, however, too late to change it - too many folks have it at this juncture.

 

I post occasionally on the blog on special topics or events.  One post from March 2025 discusses what I consider to be the highlights of the Collection.

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THE COLLECTION (AND THE COLLECTOR)

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This website is designed primarily to create a permanent record and Catalogue of a substantial and growing Collection of rare and collectible books and authors that were influential in the development of the Environmental Conservation (EC) movement, primarily in the United States, through the end of the 20th century.  In order to contextualize the Collection and Catalogue, I am also writing a history of the EC movement, using the works in the Collection as the framework.

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My name is Michael Embler and I am a semi-retired finance professional.  I am a long-time resident of NYC with a presence in the Hudson Valley as well.  I have two beautiful (adult) daughters and a beautiful (adult :) wife.  Every word on this website was typed by me (all 214,892 of them as of Jan 2025 when I last backed up the contents of the site onto a word document).  I am thus solely responsible for errors and omissions of both fact and judgement.

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I am a lover of nature and the outdoors - have been all my life.  I am also an avid student of history.  Finally, I love books for their own sake, and for what they convey and represent (thanks Mom and Dad!).  I've combined these passions into developing a Collection of "rare/collectible" books which traces the development of the EC movement through the books and authors that have had the greatest impact - in terms of public understanding and appreciation and behavior, and in terms of impact on public policy.  By "rare/collectible" books I mean primarily first printings and/or editions, often signed or inscribed, with many being association copies or having interesting provenance.  

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Bill McKibben in his Introduction (pp. xvi-xxvi) to the massive anthology American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau (2008), writes:  "An argument can be made that environmental writing is America's single most distinguished contribution to the world's literature, and in this anthology I have sought to give a feel for how that writing - out of which emerged the first modern environmentalism - evolved intellectually and artistically."  McKibben notes that 'environmental writing' and 'nature writing' overlap, but that the former "subsumes and moves beyond" the latter, "seeking answers as well as consolation, embracing controversy, sometimes sounding an alarm."  I have taken a somewhat broader view in building and interpreting the Collection, believing that there are pieces of what might be described as pure nature writing that have had such power and influence on readers as to have been a driver of the environmental movement.  However, McKibben's overall point about the centrality of environmental literature and the authors thereof to the overall conservation movement is spot on.

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Two of the great joys of developing both the Collection and this website have been:  (1) Learning about the authors themselves, many of whom are not household names, but who have had an enormous impact on the EC movement - and sometimes in other areas as well (see for example Comstock, Eastwood and Prudden); and (2) Seeing the connections among the authors represented - in terms of the evolution of ideas and sometimes more tangibly when authors have inscribed books to others, or blurbed other books, or otherwise highlighted those connections.

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The latter point, about associations, is particularly fun - but hard to keep track of.  I attempt to be as complete as I can showing connections, associations and cross-references in the alphabetical Master Lists.  I also selectively highlight and use bold print to indicate key associations in the Catalogue and, to a lesser degree, in the EC History chapters. 

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Tracking the evolution and flow of ideas and influences is similarly gratifying, and tracking that progress represents perhaps the most important theme running throughout both the Catalogue and the EC History chapters.  The Collection itself is a physical manifestation of that intellectual development and in various ways, through association copies, blurbs, etc., highlights the relationships amongst thinkers whose work spurred the EC movement.  Illustrating those connections and influences is a primary goal of this site.

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By way of concrete example, I would venture to guess that at least two of the triumvirate of Gilbert White, William Bartram and Alexander von Humboldt were read by every single 19th-century author represented in the Collection.  Charles Darwin idolized Humboldt, and Darwin's work created the superstructure upon which the scientific basis of the EC movement is constructed.  Ralph Waldo Emerson spawned the great literary naturalists of the second half of the 19th century and into the 20th, from Thoreau to Muir, Beecher to Burroughs, and everyone else besides.  George Perkins Marsh's Man and Nature laid the foundation for the entire conservation movement.  John Burroughs, called Oom (Uncle) John by Theodore Roosevelt, was read by an entire generation of Americans, teaching readers to appreciate nature, close observation, and the natural environment immediately around us.  John Muir's work nationalized the conservation and land protection movements.  And so on.  All of the authors herein, with the exceptions of John Josselyn and John Ray, read books represented in the Collection by their literary and philosophical antecedents.  And thus, a movement is born, and thus it matures.  The evolving principles underlying the EC movement are the only realistic hope of saving humankind from its short-sighted folly, if saved we are to be. 

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Virtually every book explicitly named on this site is represented in the Collection, with only a handful of exceptions, which are noted.

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The decision to end the Collection at the end of the 20th century was one I wrestled with for months, before deciding that the volume of output on climate change alone in the last 20+ years would overwhelm the historical material.  Climate change is the critical issue of our time.  But at some point, I need to collect less and read more - and this website has taken a lot of time and mental bandwidth.  A valued correspondent also pointed out a very fair point - it is difficult to discern today which of the more recent books will have staying power - will truly influence thought and policy going forward.  I buy that.  That said, there are a handful of books from the early 21st century, mostly from writers whose work began in the 20th century.  (It is worth noting that there are a considerable number of climate change-related books in the Collection, mostly written in the last two decades of the 20th century).

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The secondary goal of this website is to provide a broad overview of the development of EC thought and writing, again primarily in the U.S. along with western Europe, using the Collection as the basis for the discussion.   I am neither historian nor scholar.  But I have been a student of history my whole life, (starting as a kid, incidentally, with Random House's "Landmark Series" and the "I Was There" books of the 1950's-70's).  I do not presume to create knowledge but merely to synthesize, with the Collection forming a fascinating backdrop and guide. 

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I am not a bibliographer in the technical sense, and my principal interest in books is in their content and historical importance, rather than the book as object.  Thus, the Catalogue, while providing a summary description of each book, does not include the bibliographical technicalities one might find in a professional catalogue, such as collation, nor is the summary description of the condition of each book at all comprehensive. 

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The Collection is by no means exhaustive, nor is it meant to be.  It includes, however, a fair representation of the most important authors and works that have influenced the development of Western thought, opinion and public policy around appreciation for and protection of our natural resources and environment.  In general, I've not endeavored, and nor is it possible given the breadth of the subject, to be a "completist" - in other words, to collect copies of every book by every important author, nor every book on the subject.  There are multiple authors represented in the Collection that have dozens of books to their credit.  I have only so many bookshelves - and so much money.  But the highlights are here.

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With very few exceptions, the books contained in the Collection were written for general readership - there are myriad works in the field written for scientists, scholars and practitioners - that is for another collection by another collector.  Every name in bold print is represented in some form in the Collection [not every occurrence of every name is bolded however].

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I love books primarily for the ideas they contain - I am not a bibliophile in the sense of focusing purely or even primarily on appearance.  But I am excited when I have in my hands a book which I know has been owned, held, cherished by an author or someone she or he has influenced, or even loved.  And for those books without "collectible characteristics" of signature, inscription, association, provenance or the like - I think it's cool to hold a first printing, knowing that this is the original vessel that the author sent into the world - surely an act of faith - and that it led to something that today we can say was and is important. 

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The Collection focuses primarily on the United States.  Virtually all of the works are written in English, the original language in which the vast majority were published.  The authors discussed are nearly all white, of European background, and a substantial majority are men - particularly until the mid-20th century.  This is unavoidable given the limitations placed on Non-White peoples and all Women throughout most of our history.  Nor is there much material reflecting the environmental ethos of the Native Americans.  The contributions of the many non-White people and Women were simply less likely to be recognized and/or published through most of the past 350 years represented in the Collection.  That is not to say they were any less important, however. 

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Unfortunately, some number of the authors represented in this Collection held views that were pretty awful - in particular some of their racial views were indefensible, even for their time, to my way of thinking.  Some were slave-owners.  Such men as Audubon and Hornaday espoused unsupportable views.  Madison Grant was a conservation giant, and a monster, in my view.  In the Catalogue and History sections of this website I call attention to these examples.  But take heart - for every Audubon and Grant there is a von Humboldt, Thoreau, Higginson or John Bartram, all good people - abolitionists, humanists, forward thinkers.

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While the EC History narrative section will not reference every item in the collection, the Master Lists and Catalogue do.

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I have not used any "artificial intelligence" in creating this website.  I am a Luddite at heart.  There are some who might question how much human intelligence was applied, but that is a different matter :)

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A note on sources.  I have used many sources to compile this website. I have not provided formal footnotes, but I have provided (or will do) enough info in the text and the Sources section to establish attribution for direct quotes and provide additional references where a given source was particularly influential.  I have used Wikipedia a fair bit but have generally cited to it only where I have copied text verbatim.  When the source of info about a book or author in the Collection is the book itself, I generally point that out (although less so in the Catalogue).  I did make a meaningful financial contribution to Wikipedia - it was the right thing to do.

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I like to point out an interesting and simple evolution in language and thought that jumped out to me.  Well into the 20th century, there are frequent references to "wild life" - see for example William Hornaday's influential book Our Vanishing Wild Life, published in 1913. ​ Think about the difference between "wildlife" and "wild life".  The former is a noun - with generally positive associations.  The latter consists of an adjective with rather more negative connotations, paired with a neutral noun.  Words matter - language matters.

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I'll close this section with two quotes.  The first by Wilson Flagg, today a somewhat forgotten author but in his day an influential and popular nature essayist, from the introduction to his book The Woods and By-Ways of New England, written in 1872 but no less relevant today:

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I have written this volume not with any desire to stay the progress of those improvements which are necessary to the wants of an increasing population...[but] may the progress of the civilized arts be modified by a common intelligence, so as not to destroy the land whose population they sustain.  My object is to inspire my readers with a love of nature and simplicity of life, confident that the great fallacy of the present age is that of mistaking the increase of the national wealth for the advancement of civilization.  Our peril lies in the speed with which every work goes forward, rendering us liable, in our frantic efforts to grasp certain objects of immediate value, to leave ruin and desolation in our track which will render worthless all the desirable objects we have attained.

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There are unquestionably modern environmentalists who would object to the primacy of humankind implicit in Flagg's quote.  But I say:  Amen, brother!

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And in the intro to his excellent book Conserving Nature:  How American Nature Writers Shaped the Environmental Movement (2004), Daniel J. Philippon writes about nature writers that their...:

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...words had a conserving effect, but also...we, in turn, should be conserving them.​  "To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering," Aldo Leopold wrote in "Round River" (Round River 146-47), and Leopold's idea has become a well-known rallying cry among advocates for biodiversity.  Not until recently, however, have scholars in the environmental humanities begun to recognize the wisdom of Leopold's claim outside of the sciences.  In Hope Is the Thing with Feathers (2000) Christopher Cokinos has observed that "'[h]istories, like species, can go extinct," and in "Saving all the Pieces" (2001), Michael P. Branch has suggested that, just as we are trying to save the pieces of our evolutionary history, we should also be saving the pieces of our literary history.  I could not agree more. [Philippon, p. 8]

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Nor could I.