Natural histories

Stephen Lyn Bales

In sixteen thoroughly engaging essays, naturalist Stephen Lyn Bales ventures far and wide among the richly diverse flora and fauna of his native Tennessee Valley. Whether describing the nocturnal habits of the elusive whip-poor-will, the pivotal role the hedge plant Osage orange played in a key Civil War battle, or the political firestorm that attended the discovery of a tiny fish dubbed the snail darter, Bales illuminates in surprising ways the complicated and often vexed relationships between humans and their neighbors in the natural world. Accompanied by the author's striking line drawings, each chapter in Natural Histories showcases a particular animal or plant and each narrative begins or ends in, or passes through the Tennessee Valley. Along the way, historical episodes both familiar and obscure-the de Soto explorations, the saga of the Lost State of Franklin, the devastation...

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