Donald Culross Peattie became a popular American interpreter of nature in the mid 1930s, and over the next twenty years he created a large and impressive body of work, which has influenced naturalists and scientists as well as other nature writers. He celebrated the richness and diversity of the natural world and the human response to it, taking a broad view of nature and history in books that were often praised for their lyricism and sometimes condemned for their sentimentality. After his death most of his books passed into obscurity, but a few are still read and respected.

Born in Chicago on 21 June 1898, Peattie was the second child of a writing family. His father, Robert Burns Peattie, was a newspaperman, who in the course of his career worked in Chicago, Omaha, and New York. Often in poor health, Robert Peattie wrote vigorous unsigned editorials for a series of...