- New Arrivals
Fiction- Historical FictionCrime & ThrillersMysteryScience-FictionFantasyPoetryRomanceChildren’s BooksYoung Adult
- Biographies & MemoirsHistoryCurrent AffairsTech & ScienceBusinessSelf-DevelopmentTravelThe ArtsFood & WineReligion & SpiritualitySportsHumor
Children’s BooksListsGift CardsWhat To ReadMy ListsGames- About & Help
- About Tertulia
- Membership & Co-Ownership
- Shipping & Delivery
- Orders & Payments
- Contact Support
- Send App Feedback
- Follow us
- Download the app
The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
Reader Score
77%
77% of readers
recommend this book
Critic Reviews
Great
Based on 7 reviews on
From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx, this riveting deep dive into the history of our wetlands and what their systematic destruction means for the planet "is both an enchanting work of nature writing and a rousing call to action" (Esquire).
"I learned something new--and found something amazing--on every page." --Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land
A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment--by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth's survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit.
In a vivid and revelatory journey through history, Proulx describes the fens of 16th-century England, Canada's Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia's Great Vasyugan Mire, and America's Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. She introduces the early explorers who launched the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and writes of the diseases spawned in the wetlands--the Ague, malaria, Marsh Fever.
A sobering look at the degradation of wetlands over centuries and the serious ecological consequences, this is "an unforgettable and unflinching tour of past and present, fixed on a subject that could not be more important" (Bill McKibben).
"A stark but beautifully written Silent Spring-style warning from one of our greatest novelists." --The Christian Science Monitor
Book Details
- Publisher: Scribner Book Company
- Publish Date: Jun 27th, 2023
- Pages: 208
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.20in - 5.40in - 0.60in - 0.40lb
- EAN: 9781982173364
- Categories: • Environmental Conservation & Protection - General• Ecosystems & Habitats - Lakes, Ponds & Swamps• Natural History
More books to explore
![Book Cover for: Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska's Tongass Rain Forest [With CD (Audio)], Amy Gulick](https://d16057n354qyo4.cloudfront.net/9781594850912.jpg?nextExtension=webp&version=1709849301)
About the Author
More books by Annie Proulx
What people are saying
"In a meandering essayistic narrative that reads like a walk through a bog or thicket of densely layered ideas, the famed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author invites us to examine the long arc of wetland history and reconsider whether we’ve in fact been afraid of the wrong things."
Bringing the radiothermally generated heat. Sign up for the @WIREDScience newsletter: https://t.co/nTPFj1Lopv…
As the Supreme Court considers the fate of American wetlands, Annie Proulx’s Fen, Bog, and Swamp offers an elegiac love letter to overlooked ecosystems. https://t.co/OMVRiYIdKa
"Fen, Bog & Swamp draws our attention to the largely unloved wetlands that are being destroyed around the world. Proulx wants us to see... and to appreciate the beauty in these swampy and often stinking places. Boy, does she succeed."
Critics’ reviews
Praise for this book
"This sobering history of our world's rich wetlands explains the chilling ecological consequences of their destruction." --New York Times Book Review
"A fierce declaration of peat's importance to climate stability and human survival. Proulx does not imagine she can plug the holes in the peatlands, but she is determined to plug the peatland-size hole in our histories." --The New York Review of Books
"Proulx's astute and impassioned examinations of all kinds of wetlands, including estuaries, show a new side of the novelist we thought we knew." --Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times
"An enchanting history of our wetlands... Imbued with the same reverence for nature as Proulx's fiction, Fen, Bog, and Swamp is both an enchanting work of nature writing and a rousing call to action." --Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
"Poetic, wide-ranging, and a display of erudition seldom offered. Whatever opinion or attitude the reader brings to this presentation, it is worth reading for its word art alone!" --David Sutton, San Francisco Book Review
"The Pulitzer Prize-winning Proulx ("The Shipping News," "Barkskins") turns to nonfiction, writing about climate change, the history of wetlands, and what their destruction means for the planet." --Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"This recent nonfiction book on a small portion of nature packs a punch." --Cassie Gutman, Book Riot
"A fascinating, captivating new book by Annie Proulx that reveals the mystery and majesty of fens, bogs, and swamps." --CJ Lotz, Garden & Gun Magazine
"In Fen, Bog & Swamp, Annie Proulx shows us how to fall in love with wetlands . . . [The book] pays the kind of artistic and emotional attention to swamps that is usually reserved for sunsets and canyons." --Kiley Bense, Inside Climate News
What people are saying
"In a meandering essayistic narrative that reads like a walk through a bog or thicket of densely layered ideas, the famed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author invites us to examine the long arc of wetland history and reconsider whether we’ve in fact been afraid of the wrong things."
Bringing the radiothermally generated heat. Sign up for the @WIREDScience newsletter: https://t.co/nTPFj1Lopv…
As the Supreme Court considers the fate of American wetlands, Annie Proulx’s Fen, Bog, and Swamp offers an elegiac love letter to overlooked ecosystems. https://t.co/OMVRiYIdKa