Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman

Now a feature-length documentary on the Discovery channel narrated by Tom Brokaw.

“Lush, gorgeously written…A profoundly hopeful book.” —Tina Rosenberg, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award

A Kirkus Best Book of 2016
Booklist Starred Review and Best Book of the Year

This journey down the Mississippi River watershed—the heart of conservative America—upends a myth of recent vintage but destructive effect: that protecting the environment is a liberal, elitist concern. In fact, it is working people like those introduced here—Montana cowboy Dusty Crary, Kansas wheat grower Justin Knopf, Louisiana shrimper Sandy Nguyen—who are protecting our wildlands, wildlife, soils, water, atmosphere, wetlands and fisheries, driven by a sense of moral responsibility to their forebears and descendants. Living on the frontlines of our growing challenges, they are prevailing as Americans always have: by coming together with neighbors, even across deep divides.

Crary, who brought together longtime enemies—cattlemen and federal land managers; hunters and “greenies”—expresses the faith all share.. “The best thing I ever done,” he said, “was getting away from just my own kind .. talking to people different than me.”

Praise

“The most powerful, compelling, and eloquent solutions for our problems come from the inside. In this lush, gorgeously written book, Miriam Horn shows men and women preserving the natural world around them—not out of an abstract sense of environmentalism, but because they love the land and water, their communities, and way of life. A profoundly hopeful book.” –Tina Rosenberg, winner of the Pulitzer Prize 

“Refreshingly, in what could have been an extremely political title, Horn and her subjects go out of their way to illustrate how it is only through taking an apolitical and far-reaching view of environmental issues that true success can be found…interesting, even revolutionary ways…to approach conservation issues.”
–Booklist (starred review and a Best Book of the Year)

“A compelling chronicle … Horn translates her passion for ecological balance and environmental sustainability into this passionate, unwavering tapestry” –Kirkus (starred review)

“Horn’s prose flows with the river north to south…[A]n essential read…fascinating.” –Library Journal

“There’s much to be hopeful about in this book and many lessons on what it takes to build the kinds of bridges and foundations that make democracy possible, even in a divided nation.” –Madeline Ostrander, Nation