Books

The Cincinnati Arch: More

Before he moved to Cincinnati to work as a college administrator, wilderness lover Tallmadge would have dismissed the term urban nature as an oxymoron. But thanks to his passion for the writings of Thoreau, Muir, and Gary Snyder, and his practice of keen attentiveness to the world, Tallmadge began to perceive the complexity and vitality of natural life found within this wooded city. Not that this perception came easily. Tallmadge’s critique of the sterility of office life is exhilarating in its accuracy and candor, as are his dissections of out notions of time, work, and home. But as Tallmadge began to explore the surprisingly diverse green spaces within Cincinnati, ponder how “wild systems” sustain themselves in gardens and cities, and see the wonders of backyard nature through the inquiring eyes of his young daughter, he found his way to a more inclusive and sustaining understanding of wildness. This lustrous, continually deepening book, clearly the work of many years of observation and deep thought, is an insightful paean that reminds us that while it is thrilling to vacation in the wilderness, it is far more important to treasure everyday nature as manifest within ourselves and at our doorstep.

–Donna Seaman, Booklist

The Cincinnati Arch will be an extremely important addition to America’s literature of nature. Tallmadge reinvigorates the genre’s central vision-quest motif in two ways. First, he integrates it with his life as a householder. The movement from ‘isolatoes’ to families is a necessary and wholesome one at a time when we are trying to connect the religion of nature more robustly to issues of social health. In addition, he follows his quest into the history and topography of a long-settled midwestern city. I predict that The Cincinnati Arch will be looked at as a literary landmark because of its merger between nature writing and urban America. The fact that it is gorgeously written and elegantly conceived shouldn't hurt, either.

—John Elder, editor, American Nature Writing (Scribner’s, 1996); coeditor, The Norton Book of Nature Writing (Norton, 1990); author of Reading the Mountains of Home (Harvard University Press, 1998)

The literature of urban wildlands will grow richer and stronger with John Tallmadge’s remarkable The Cincinnati Arch. A book certain to become a classic at birth, it will join the small roster of enduring works that celebrate city nature. As Leonard Dubkin’s Enchanted Streets did for Chicago, John Kieran’s Nature in New York City for Manhattan and Brooklyn, and Richard Mabey’s Unofficial Countryside for London, Tallmadge’s book will make of Cincinnati a window on the wider world where people and other species live together. A writer of scintillating image and rock-solid intellect, he works the words as only a creature well adapted to the land of language can—but he also knows his wilds, and blends the two in a delectable broth. All urban naturalists, and all those who would love to love their cities more, will read The Cincinnati Arch with keen pleasure, and thank John Tallmadge for it.

—Robert Michael Pyle, author of The Thunder Tree (Houghton Mifflin, 1993); Chasing Monarchs (Houghton Mifflin, 1999); The Audubon Field Guide to North American Butterflies (Houghton Mifflin, 1981); Recipient of the Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing, 1987