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Overview
To learn from nature, not about nature, was the imperative that took John Janovy Jr. and his students into the sandhills, marshes, grasslands, canyons, lakes, and streams of Keith County in western Nebraska. The biologist explores the web of interrelationships among land, animals, and human beings. Even termites, snails, and barn swallows earn respect and assume significance in the overall scheme of things. Janovy, reminiscent of Henry David Thoreau in his acute powers of observation and search for wisdom, has written a new foreword for this Bison Books edition.Editorials
Noel Perrin
"Good biologist though [Janovy] is, he's an even better nature writer, with a special affinity for the mysterious and the mystic."
Time
"Keith County Journal has already invited comparison with such lapidary works as Lewis Thomas's Lives of a Cell and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The book belongs in that com-pany. Like Blake seeing a world in a grain of sand, Professor Janovy discerns universes in the creeks, bogs and fields of the Sandhills country. He makes the reader care for creatures as large as the great blue heron, as small as the inch-long plains killifish. . . . [A] jewel of a journal."—TimeNew York Times Book Reivew
"A gracefully written, horizon-expanding book."—New York Times Book ReviewNoel Perrin
"Good biologist though [Janovy] is, he's an even better nature writer, with a special affinity for the mysterious and the mystic."—Noel PerrinTime
"Keith County Journal has already invited comparison with such lapidary works as Lewis Thomas's Lives of a Cell and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The book belongs in that com-pany. Like Blake seeing a world in a grain of sand, Professor Janovy discerns universes in the creeks, bogs and fields of the Sandhills country. He makes the reader care for creatures as large as the great blue heron, as small as the inch-long plains killifish. . . . [A] jewel of a journal."—Time
New York Times Book Reivew
"A gracefully written, horizon-expanding book."—New York Times Book Review