Carl Safina named finalist for the 2012 Orion Book Award

Finalists were just announced for the 2012 Orion Book Award, and Carl Safina's THE VIEW FROM LAZY POINT is among them!  To view the full announcement, click here.  According to Orion Magazine's website, "The Orion Book Award is given annually to a book that addresses the human relationship with the natural world in a fresh, thought-provoking, and engaging manner."  The winner will be announced in early May.  Fingers crossed for Carl!

THE VIEW FROM LAZY POINT follows Safina, a MacArthur "Genius Grant" fellow, over the course of a year as he tours the natural world from Long Island in New York to the high Arctic, the tropics, and Antarctica, meditating on humanity and its coexistence with the natural world along the way.

The book appeared in hardcover in January 2011 and in a beautiful paperback edition (see cover below) in January 2012.  Incredible reviews began with the 2011 publication and have continued ever since.  We've highlighted some of these below (click on each publication name to read the full review), and you can view more reviews and news about the book by clicking on the "Safina" label on the right.

"Safina's book soars...I had to--and wanted to--read THE VIEW FROM LAZY POINT very slowly, allowing myself to digest its wealth of information, to revel in the beauty of Safina's writing, and to absorb fully the implications of his musings...What a pleasure it is to find such an enlightening, provocative companion for walking and talking--and reading.  We can ask no more from those who warn about dark days ahead than that they also awaken us to the miracle of everyday life as they try to illuminate a better path forward." --The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice

"A Thoreau for the 21st century." --New York Post, Required Reading

"Each chapter roils with informed, impassioned descriptions...In this wide-eyed way, Safina's view from Lazy Point encompasses the planet, illuminating our interconnected whole." --National Geographic, Book of the Month

"Striking...It is Safina's meditations...which move this book from a modern WALDEN POND, as great as that would be, to something else.  For, really, this is a book about philosophy...It is about what it means to be human in a world where the rhythms of life have been thrown askew, indeed, burst asunder...Read his book and remember, or learn, what it is to live in the embrace of the seasons and to see in all life oneself." --The Huffington Post

"With his grand sense of adventure, eye for beauty, heart for mercy, and high hopes to shake us from our complacency, Safina seems a godsend among modern-day prophets.  His is a voice worth listening to." --The Oregonian

"Before Carl Safina, environmentalists could often be heard wondering where the next Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, or Henry Beston might be hiding...[Safina's] pure sensuous detail, seeing the natural world from a variety of angles, was missing in the generations after Carson and Leopold." --Newsday

 Picador, January 2012