You can have your cowboys, astronauts, baseball players and firemen; I've always been a sucker for a naturalist. While this was certainly true a bit when I was younger (although Travis McGee will hold a special place in my heart forever), my fascination with them as a group really took hold when I discovered reading about Charles Darwin who has been the subject of many wonderful articles and books. I was intrigued by what made someone like Darwin tick and from there read about more Victorian era "scientific travelers". If you have someone with a similar interest, here are some titles they would likely find appealing:

Bright Paradise by Peter Raby: A look at decades of naturalists with special attention paid to one of my favorite subjects, Alfred Russell Wallace ("The Other Darwin" in the current issue of National Geographic.) Here's what Kirkus had to say about this very readable title (with tons of quirky personalities): "Raby profiles Mungo Park, Richard Lander, and Heinrich Barth on their African sorties; Joseph Hooker's plant collecting in India and the mountain kingdoms to the north; Charles Darwin's monumental classification undertakings while being ferried about on the Beagle; the scientific entrepreneurs Henry Walter Bates, Alfred Wallace, and Richrad Spruce, who traded in beetles (a Victorian fancy), birds, and dried plants (though it is odd that Raby makes no mention here of the recent biopiracy controversies, particularly with Spruce, whose cinchona and rubber gatherings are a hot topic). And as women explorers have been given short shrift for their contributions, Raby takes pains to chronicle the work of Mary Kingsley in West Africa and Marianne North's superb botanical artwork. Raby then turns his attentions to how the jottings of these explorers were appropriated and deployed by writers as diverse as Charles Kingsley, whose Water Babies Raby considers 'a coded tour round the scientific debates of the mid-century,' and Samuel Burler in his utopian Erewhon, the romantic Rider Haggard, son-of-the-manse John Buchan, Dickens in Bleak House, and, of course, Conrad. Importantly, Raby shows how the works of the explorers shaped a new Darwinian and colonialist worldview, one that remains mighty influential in the modern imagination."

Richard Fortey looks at collections from the past as well as the men and women currently working in the field in his new title Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum. This is a truly wonderful book and remarkably thorough. I've just finished reading it and there were so many parts of it that I wanted to tell people about (it is full of post-its). How can you resist learning about someone like Edward Heron-Allen whose daughter donated a cursed amethyst to the museum at his behest (33 years after his death) and was a "polymath, novelist, palaeontologist and historian of the violin". (He also donated 25,000,000 specimens when he died which "formed the backbone for studies of single-celled Foraminifera". He was a Persian linguist! A poet! An expert on barnacles!

The whole book is full of fellows like Heron-Allen and Fortey is a splendid writer. (Thanks to Jenny D. for posting about this one on her blog so I could discover it and order a copy for myself.)

For those with a more North American interest, I reviewed Tim Traver's Sippewissett or Life on a Salt Marsh for Booklist two years ago where I included these comments: "As he ponders the accomplishments and impact of naturalist luminaries Louis Agassiz, Spencer Baird, and Rachel Carson, he places their historic research in the context of the marsh’s present condition. This transition is made easy by his family’s deep connection to the region, which he shares in passages echoing George Howe Colt’s National Book Award finalist, The Big House (2003). Traver has the same deep attachment to the land as Colt, but his scientific background and attention to the region’s marine biology raises the book to a higher level. Sippewissett is a rare book, as it both informs and entrances. A delight from beginning to end."

New Englanders in particular will love that one.

Claude Arbor's Choosing Wildness: MY Life Among the Ospreys was in my September column as this book easily worked just as well for nature loving older teens as it does for its intended audience of adults. (Although I must warn dog lovers that the author learns a difficult lesson in the opening pages at the cost of some working dogs' lives.) From my review: "Much of Arbour’s work (which is assisted later by his wife), is about observation. He also builds platforms for the ospreys and cares for numerous injured birds prior to their release back into the wild. He recorded the actions of wolves, beavers and other animals and steadily observed the logging of the surrounding forest. Arbour was no quiet voice from the wilderness however. He was someone who saw how he wanted to live and found a viable way to make that happen. That he became an expert in his chosen field is a testament to how far a person can get through hard work and also a reminder of how important it is for those who seek to defend the wild to actually be out there in it."

Arbour's life was a real-time naturalist and keen observers of wildlife will love what he accomplished.

I also reviewed Orion Magazine's collection of nature essays The Future of Nature in that column and recommend that for folks looking to read reports from many different authors all of whom are active in the field and pursuing lives close to the ground. (You have everything here from Niagara Falls to Robert Michael Pyle's lifelong love of butterflies - great stuff.)

If somehow, like me, you got to adulthood without reading Terry Tempest Williams' Refuge then get a copy now and then buy one for everyone else you know who is concerned about the environment. This classic look at the Great Salt Lake and the long connection with it enjoyed by Williams' family is an excellent example of modern nature writing. While the old naturalists might find discussion of atomic testing and cancer to be unfamiliar, it is in many ways a natural progression of the genre and also just fine writing to boot.

You should also consider the Summer issue of Granta which featured a ton of authors writing on nature and a sneak peek at Roger Deakin's notebooks which just came out in Britain and will hopefully be available over here soon. (I am a huge fan of Deakin's work and if you have someone on your list who is a fan of outdoor swimming then his Waterlog is must reading. My review of his book, Wildwood, about trees/wood and forests should be out at Booklist soon. It will be released in January.)

And finally, there was a look at the new book on John Muir's plant collection in the latest issue of Audubon. Nature's Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir's Botanical Legacy looks gorgeous and will shed some more light on the amazing collecting ability of this great American naturalist.

[Post pic of Alfred Russell Wallace's beetle collection via National Geographic; photo of John Muir's Bleeding Heart via Audubon Magazine.]