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It is a Summit tradition for a volunteer to choose books related to the natural history of the location. Participants can read the books and discuss them at the Summit.

2010 Book Club choices by Kathy Blank:

The Indifferent Stars Above  by Daniel James Brown.  It tells the story of new bride, Sarah Graves, who with her new husband, her mother and father and eight siblings set out from Illinois to the New West in three covered wagons.  She and her family ultimately join the Donner Expedition.  Along the way the author weaves into the story modern perspectives of psychology, physiology, and politics which make the journey informative as well as hair raising.  

My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir.  The book was written forty years after Muir’s experiences in The Sierra, and it describes  his  necessity for communing with nature.  His reverence for the impact of mountains and water is like none other. 

The other two books are worth mentioning: 

Impatient with Desire by Gabrielle Burton is a novel with Tamsen Donner as the central character.  It is an easy read and centers around Tamsen’s husband who leads the expedition and the reactions and survival of her five children who experience the ordeal. 

Shaping the Sierra (Nature, Culture and conflict in the Changing West) by Timothy P Duane.  This book was published by The University of California Press and would be a great reference book.  It boasts a bibliography of 60 pages with many charts and maps.    

2009 Book Choices by Linda Nurick

Fiction: The Reserve, by Russell Banks

"It's the 1930s and it's war up there - dogfights in the air above Spain, the Hindenburg cruising with its swastikas toward a fiery fate; and down below, in the sublime Adirondack forests surrounding a secluded rustic playground of the very rich, it's a class war of love and madness.  Russell Banks puts it all together in The Reserve, a cool noir thriller in which nothing happens as you imagine it will. This is new and wonderful turf for this masterful storyteller." -William Kennedy


Non-Fiction: Wandering Home by Bill McKibben

An account of McKibben's three-week walk from his current home in Vermont to his former home in the Adirondacks and reflects on the deep hope he finds in the two
landscapes.  As he walks, he contemplates the questions he first began to raise
in his groundbreaking meditation on climate change, The End of Nature: What constitutes
the natural?  How much human intervention can a place stand before it loses its
essence?  What does it mean for a place to be truly wild?

And if you feel like a challenge: World's End by T.C. Boyle

This book received the Pen/Faulkner Award for American Fiction. It's about the Hudson
River Valley (not exactly the Adirondacks, but close!).  Ghosts, ancestors back
to the 17th century, and the Native American Mohonks, all play a part in this award
winning novel. We probably won't discuss this one officially, but it might be an
informative read.