It's Earth Day . . .

. . . and UGA Press has many new and forthcoming nature and environment books in the works.

TURTLES OF THE SOUTHEAST is the second title in our series of nature guides to the Southeast. SNAKES OF THE SOUTHEAST is one of our bestselling books. These full-color guides are great for a range of readers, from children to serious naturalists. FROGS AND TOADS OF THE SOUTHEAST comes out in July.

We are very pleased to be adding three books by Barbara Hurd to our list. Her newest, WALKING THE WRACK LINE: ON TIDAL SHIFTS AND WHAT REMAINS will complete a trilogy of introspective nature writing in the tradition of Terry Tempest Williams and Gretel Ehrlich. The first two books—STIRRING THE MUD: ON SWAMPS, BOGS, AND HUMAN IMAGINATION and ENTERING THE STONE: ON CAVES AND FEELING THROUGH THE DARK—will be available as UGA Press paperbacks. All three books are on sale in early June.

A wealth of information about some 170 species of frogs, salamanders, crocodilians, lizards, snakes, and turtles can be found in AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES OF GEORGIA, edited by John B. Jensen, Carlos D. Camp, Whit Gibbons, and Matt J. Elliott. Due out in July, the book has a strong focus on conversation.

Nature deficit disorder is a term that gained national attention with the publication of Richard Louv's book, The Last Child in the Woods. In A NATURAL SENSE OF WONDER: CONNECTING KIDS WITH NATURE THROUGH THE SEASONS, Rick Van Noy explores how parents can get their children outside and into nature in conversational and personal essays.

Also recently published:

CIRCLING HOME by John Lane
Spartanburg, South Carolina native John Lane draws a mile radius circle around his house on a map and sets out to explore everything within that vicinity.

SOLITARY GOOSE by Sydney Landon Plum
An encounter with a wounded Canada goose leads the author to a better understanding of birds, ponds, the impact of humans on nature, and the way that life heals.

SPRAWLING PLACES by David Kolb
Philosopher David Kolb questions widely held assumptions about sprawl and our built environments.

MOTORING: THE HIGHWAY EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA by John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle
MOTORING unmasks the forces that shape the American driving experience—commercial, aesthetic, cultural, mechanical—as it takes a timely look back at our historically unconditional love of motor travel.

Image, top left: "An area of convective activity over the Eastern Pacific Ocean, west of Mexico." Observation Device: GOES-12 4 km infrared imagery. Visualization Date: April 15, 2008 07:28:54. Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Environmental Visualization Program.

Book Awards for Atlanta Writer-Photographer and Wisconsin Poet

Atlanta-based writer and photographer David Kaufman has won the Phillip D. Reed Memorial Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment for his book PEACHTREE CREEK. The award is given every year by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) to writers who most effectively tell their stories about the South’s environment.

Contest judge and Orion magazine editor-in-chief, H. Emerson Blake, says of the book: "Wallace Stegner said that a place is not a place without a poet. Peachtree Creek has found its poet in David Kaufman. PEACHTREE CREEK describes how profoundly we are shaped by our surroundings and how profoundly, and destructively, we are able to modify those surroundings. This is the kind of story that really makes one stop and think about what kind of world we want to live in."

Kaufman received an award plaque and a $1,000 prize. He read from his book at an award ceremony on March 28, at SELC’s headquarters, as part of the annual Virginia Festival of the Book. Another University of Georgia Press book, John Lane’s CIRCLING HOME, was a finalist for the award.

In other award news, Paul Zimmer, author of CROSSING TO SUNLIGHT REVISITED, has received the Posner Book-Length Poetry Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers (CWW). The Posner Award is one of several given out every year by the CWW to Wisconsin residents who shows literary excellence in their work. Geeta Sharma-Jensen, book critic for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, had details on all of this year's winners in a recent column.

Ted Kooser, 2004-2006 Poet Laureate of the United States, has said, "I can't remember when I've read a book of poems I enjoyed as much as Paul Zimmer's CROSSING TO SUNLIGHT REVISITED. Here is an entire life, distilled to a lovely, celebratory essence." Zimmer will be honored at the Council for Wisconsin Writers annual awards banquet on Saturday, May 10, 2008, in Milwaukee.

Images:
Top left: Book jacket of Peachtree Creek
Bottom left: Book jacket of Crossing to Sunlight Revisited
Top right: David Kaufman, author of Peachtree Creek
Bottom right: Paul Zimmer, author of Crossing to Sunlight Revisited