Terrain.org reviews in this issue:
  

Redefining Terms, Reclaiming Place
Oliver de la Paz reviews The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World, edited by Alison Hawthorn Deming and Lauret E. Savoy

The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World is an anthology that doesn’t operate merely as a collection of essays and poems by writers of color and their reflections about the natural world. Rather, the anthology is a sophisticated argument expertly structured around the following question: “Why is there so little ‘nature writing’ by people of color?”

Constructed Space as a Manifestation of Ideas
Rafael Otto reviews Swedish Modernism: Architecture, Consumption, and the Welfare State, edited by Helena Mattsson & Sven-Olov Wallenstein

Organized as a series of 12 essays featuring the work of 14 writers, Swedish Modernism: Architecture, Consumption, and the Welfare State is densely packed with wide-ranging theory and cultural observation examining the socio-political environment in Sweden from the 1930s onward. The book is compelling in its perception of architecture as a “way to organize consumption and production,” and it establishes the idea that architectural form is a result of cultural conditions and social thinking.

A Symbiosis of Poem and Painting
Derek Sheffield reviews God, Seed: Poetry & Art About the Natural World, by Rebecca Foust and Lorna Stevens

To meet these challenges, it helps to have a visual artist in your corner. Poet Rebecca Foust and artist Lorna Stevens achieve a symbiosis in God, Seed: Poetry & Art About the Natural World that makes a journey rich in sound and shape, hue and sense. The book is organized in three clearly defined sections. The first section abounds with odes and pleasures. There’s fruit and sex and insects—what more could a body ask for?

Delivering the News
Andrew C. Gottlieb reviews Story Problems: Poems, by Rob Carney

Rob Carney is an engine of a man stunned by the inequities of the world and doing his utmost to right the scales in a poetry that’s vivid, direct, funny, political, and rooted in nature. He’s a poet and myth-maker, a shaman of and for the natural world. Story Problems is his third book, and it’s a generous helping, more than 100 pages of poems that are mostly free verse, but that also flirt with form, including haikus, prose poems, and epigrams..

Bird Conservation in the 21st Century
Tom Leskiw reviews The American Bird Conservancy Guide to Bird Conservation, by Daniel J. Lebbin, Michael J. Parr, and George H. Fenwick

The American Bird Conservancy Guide to Bird Conservation is an ambitious publication that, according to the publisher, is “the most authoritative book on bird conservation in the Americas ever published.” Offering the first comprehensive status and threat analysis for habitats in the United States, Bird Conservation also includes information on international bird conservation, and how interested laypersons can contribute to the effort to save birds. Although a wealth of information is presented, all three author-scientists write for the lay audience and jargon is kept to a minimum.