I first read it in college, it was on the required reading list. It was a very influential book back then, well-received. It was the book that introduced the concept of “ecology” to a national audience. By “ecology” I mean the branch of biology that studies the relationships of creatures to their environment, to the ecosystem they inhabit. Up until then, ecology was a narrow and obscure discipline, known only to a few specialists.

After all these years it still holds up quite well. The concepts seem so obvious and natural today, but when I first read it it all seemed so novel and unexpected.
Like Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”, its one of those books that changed everything. Yeah, we’ve come a long way in the last half century.