A World Like Our Own: Man and Nature in Madagascar

"Yes, she was the person who showed those slides of the silvery forest when I was an undergraduate, and she was a wonderful mentor to me. Sadly, she died in 2014. Alison wrote several books about Madagascar. Written in 1980, A World Like Our Own is a time capsule and inevitably out of date in some respects. The reason I chose it is that Alison takes the reader all over the island, she writes beautifully, and she introduces you, in lyrical prose, to people and wildlife and environmental problems. She mulls about how, if we’re going to find solutions, they must work for people living in the countryside and not just for the international conservation community. Alison was ahead of her time, writing and thinking about things that way 50 years ago. (I heard her speak at conference a full decade earlier). Her main themes in the book are conservation and environmental challenges today, but she is mindful of deep history as well. I loved this book 40 years ago, and I still do."