Beaverland How One Weird Rodent Made America

Following In the rich literary tradition of H is for Hawk and The Soul of an Octopus, BEAVERLAND tells the tumultuous, eye-opening story of how beavers and the beaver fur trade shaped America’s history, culture, and environment.

Before the American empires of steel and coal and oil, before the railroads, there was the empire of fur. BEAVERLAND tells the tumultuous, eye-opening story of how beavers and the beaver trade shaped American history and culture and our environment. Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver’s profound influence on our nation’s early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires.

As Leila’s passion for this weird and wonderful rodent widens from her careful observation of its dams in her local pond, she chronicles the many characters she meets in her pursuit of the beaver: fur trappers and fur traders, trap collectors and fur auctioneers, wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, biologists and beaver enthusiasts. What emerges is a startling portrait of the secretive, largely hidden world of the contemporary fur trade and an immersive ecological and historical investigation of these animals that, once trapped to the point of extinction, have rebounded to become one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Now, beavers offer surprising solutions to some of the most urgent problems caused by climate change.

Beautifully written and filled with the many colorful characters—fur trappers and fur traders, trap collectors and fur auctioneers, wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, biologists and beaver enthusiasts—BEAVERLAND transports readers into scenes of beavers in their ponds and the fur trappers in pursuit of them, widening arcs of information to reveal the profound ways in which beavers and the beaver trade shaped American history, culture, and our environment.

Leila Philip is the author of two award-winning books of literary nonfiction, The Road Through Miyama, which was awarded the 1990 PEN Martha Albrand Citation for Nonfiction, and A Family Place: A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family, which received awards for the documentation of American life and for American history. Both received starred reviews from Kirkus and were reviewed by The New York Times and elsewhere. She has awarded numerous fellowships, including from the John R. Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and The Yaddo Corporation. A contributing columnist at The Boston Globe, Leila writes regularly on the environment, politics, and culture. The Globe has featured her work prominently, and her columns have consistently trended to the first page, reflecting strong reader interest. She currently teaches at the College of the Holy Cross where she is a Professor of Literature and Creative Writing in the English Department and is an active member of the Environmental Studies Program. She lives in Woodstock, Connecticut.