A Sand County Almanac

A detailed Summary of A Sand County Almanac

Book Report: A Sand County Almanac, By Aldo Leopold

Although Leopold's love of great expanses of wilderness is readily apparent, his book does not cry out in defense of particular tracts of land about to go under the axe or plow, but rather deals with the minutiae, the details, of often unnoticed plants and animals, all the little things that, in our ignorance, we have left out of our managed acreages but which must be present to add up to balanced ecosystems and a sense of quality and wholeness in the landscape.

Part I of A Sand County Almanac is devoted to the details of a single piece of land: Leopold's 120-acre farmed-out farmstead in central Wisconsin, abandoned as a farm years before because of the poor soil from which the "sand counties" took their nickname. It was at this weekend retreat, Leopold says, "that we try to rebuild, with shovel and axe, what we are losing elsewhere". Month by month, Leopold leads the reader through the progression of the seasons with descriptions of such things as skunk tracks, mouse economics, the songs, habits, and attitudes of dozens of bird specie

The final pages of A Sand County Almanac, Part IV, titled "The Upshot," Leopold devotes to the concept of a "land ethic" and a plea that we adopt such an ethic into our daily lives. Leopold defines philosophical ethics as "the differentiation of social from anti-social conduct" for the common good of the community, and declares that a land ethic, wherein the ecologies in which we erect our developments would be considered an integral part of the community, amounts to the same thing as social ethics. A land ethic, in the author's terms, means a "willing limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for survival". Leopold shows how human ethics came into being, first on a level between individuals and next on the level between individuals and their society, and states that the extension of ethics to include the environment which gives us sustenance is a logical and natural next step.

In Part II of A Sand County Almanac, titled "The Quality of Landscape," Leopold takes his reader away from the farm; first into the surrounding Wisconsin countryside and then even farther, on an Illinois bus ride, a vi

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Approximate Word count = 753
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels

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A Sand County Almanac

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