What’s Nature Worth? Narrative Expressions of Environmental Values

Terre Satterfield and Scott Slovic

From the back cover:

Based on interviews with a dozen prominent environmental writers, and featuring examples of their work, What’s Nature Worth? explores how the art of storytelling might bring new perspectives and insights to economic and policy discussions regarding the “value” of nature and the environment.

“Examines how contemporary writers . . . convey the values in nature ‘as yet uncaptured by language,’ as Aldo Leopold once put it. Whether and how this mode of expression can inform public policy debates, as well as transform individual consciousness, is the subject of this innovative, interdisciplinary, and ultimately invaluable book.” -Daniel I. Philippon, author of Conserving Words: How American Nature Writers Shaped the Environmental Movement

“What an original, brilliant, and simple idea! Satterfield and Slovic interview environmental writers about values, ethics, and narrative expression. By allowing the voices of the writers to emerge, this book shows how environmental literature can inform, indeed, transform environmental values discourse. What’s Nature Worth? is rich in text and commentary, providing both a great read and a superb research document.” -Mitchell Thomashow, author of Bringing the Biosphere Home: Learning to Perceive Global Environmental Change

Cover photograph, Billboard near BigWater, Utah, copyright by Stephen Trimble. For a larger image, click on the cover.

Available from the University of Utah Press.