Includes bibliographical references and index.

Critical contexts. Thoreau and American environmentalism: a study in critical reception / Richard J. Schneider -- Pastoral, anti-pastoral, and post-pastoral as reading strategies / Terry Gifford -- Environmental wisdom in two Mexican American novels: an ecocritical reading of And the Earth did not devour him and Bless me / Priscilla Solis Ybarra -- Original nature: Buddhism and American nature writing / David Landis Barnhill -- Wordsworth as environmental "nature" writer / Ashton Nichols -- Critical readings. Walt Whitman, the ecological poet / Jimmie Killingsworth -- The return to the primitive: evolution, atavism, and socialism in Jack London's The call of the wild / Tina Gianquitto -- Cultivation, progress, or conservation: conflicting impulses in Willa Cather's O pioneers! and A lost lady / Matthias Schubnell -- The need of being versed in natural things: Robert Frost and nature / Robert Bernard Hass -- Natural history in Hemingway's The old man and the sea and other works / Bert Bender -- John Steinbeck's environmental evolution / Brian Railsback -- Robinson Jeffers, environmental consciousness, and the poetics of nature / David J. Rothman -- "Call me a ranger": Edward Abbey and the exploratory voice of Desert solitaire / David Copland Morris -- Loyalty to place and land stewardship as ecological good work in Wendell Berry's The memory of Old Jack / Wes Berry -- Reciprocal spirituality: human/animal interface in Linda Hogan's multiple genres / Barbara J. Cook -- Prodigal summer: a narrative ecosystem / Priscilla Leder -- A natural alliance: blending nature literature and outdoor education in the integrated outdoor program / Jeff Hess.