Dark Nature [is a] signicant [contribution] to the existing scholarship on ecology and nature, for [it] explore[s] what we tend to characterize as the horrors of the natural world that, in turn, are impossible to neglect today, when the planet’s climate is changing so drastically. [This book] prove[s] the necessity of ecocriticism to concentrate on nature’s darkness, and not just on its pastoralism. Only having fully understood nature as both light and dark, welcoming and abhorring, comforting and punishing, humanity will be able to conceive of its own role in the natural world and view the environment as a living and constantly changing organism. . . Dark Nature will thus be of interest to scholars and students in environmental humanities as well as to general audiences who want to understand the duality of nature and why it is so important to know about and accept nature’s darkness.

Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture

Building on Timothy Morton’s concept of 'dark ecology,' Richard Schneider, a leading Thoreau scholar, has assembled a wide-ranging collection of essays that explore an American literary tradition of disturbing, sinister, and fearful encounters with nature. These 'anti-pastoral' writings provide new perspectives on the continually expanding discourse of ecocriticism.

David M. Robinson, Oregon State University, Author of Natural Life: Thoreau's Worldly Transcendentalism

Offering smart treatments of nature’s disinterest, disease, and horrors, these canon-busting essays on both historical and contemporary print and non-print media jolt ecocriticism away from any remaining tendency to rest in pastoral idealism.

Rochelle Johnson, College of Idaho