A Natural History of Empty Lots

"A loving, deeply pleasurable, and sprawling investigation of place, community, personal history, and larger contexts. A Natural History of Empty Lots has the shape and liveliness of something organic, as if it has grown out of the neglected, teeming hidden places of the landscape Brown knows so well. An incredible book." 
 

"A Natural History of Empty Lots is the best and most interesting book I’ve ever read about the spaces we often overlook. Christopher Brown comes to these places with a deep curiosity and understanding of both human and nonhuman history. An instant classic."
 

"Too often, what we call ‘nature writing’ is nostalgic for what never was. Thank goodness for Christopher Brown, who sees the wonder in what is and what might be. A Natural History of Empty Lots is the nature writing we need now."
 

“Instantly hypnotic, A Natural History of Empty Lots invites you to see the ‘waste’ spaces of the Anthropocene for what they are: a resource that contains more than itself. Christopher Brown is a complete and literate denizen of these zones. His calm, clever writing shows a real care for the natural world, and a real feel for the deep worth of the brownfield liminal.”
 

“A marvelous and wonderfully wide-ranging account of learning to see how wild nature infiltrates the interstices and abandoned places of the Anthropocene.” 

“A Natural History of Empty Lots is a book about the inbetweenlands, the sacrifice zones, the feral strips — landscapes shocked by humanity, quietly healing. The book pads unbotheredly across the barrier between “urban” and “rural”, “wild” and “industrial”, and the one doing the padding, Christopher Brown, is an ideal guide: wise and ironic, observant, and sensitive.”

“Like flowers from broken asphalt this book is a surprise joy—in a time of anxiety, this is a meditation on how, to paraphrase the fictional Ian Malcolm, life finds a way."