Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire.

Here is the plain story of a man's life, a warm and human biography of Aldo Leopold as son, husband, father, and teacher. Biographer Marybeth Lorbiecki traces Leopold's life, carefully chronicling his personal experiences without overly imposing her own interpretations of how these experiences shaped his character and eventual writings. Nevertheless, she offers rare insights into the human side of this now-revered conservation philosopher. She recounts, for example, how a close friend encouraged him to admit that his earlier ideas about predators were wrong: "You never drop a hint that you yourself have once despoiled [the land], or at least had a strong hand in it," Albert Hochbaum wrote to Leopold in 1944, concluding that, "It is only by accepting ourselves for what we are, the best of us and the worst of us, that we can hold any hope for the future."

In response, Leopold wrote his most famous essay, "Thinking Like a Mountain," about his experience with the dying wolf he had shot and of the "fierce green fire" he had seen in her eyes - the source of this book's title. Lorbiecki's inclusion of 94 photographs of the Leopold family and homes make this biography an especially personal story.

For those of us who treasure Aldo Leopold's writings - some of which appeared in this magazine - this biography will deepen our understanding of love of his timeless words. His field-based, interdisciplinary approach to research and teaching remains the standard for sound ecological scholarship, warning us of the dangers of a narrow disciplinary education: "Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another." For those yet to discover Aldo Leopold, this biography is a wonderful way to begin a special journey, to be followed by Leopold's A Sand County Almanac and Susan Flader's Thinking Like a Mountain.