Kenneth Brower

Kenneth Brower is the oldest son of the pioneering mountaineer and environmentalist David Brower. Ken’s earliest memories are of the Sierra Nevada and the wild country of the American West. A freelance writer specializing in natural history and environmental issues, he is the author of many books, among them The Starship and the Canoe, Wake of the Whale, Realms of the Sea, With Their Islands Around Them, A Song for Satawal, Freeing Keiko, The Winemaker’s Marsh, and The Wildness Within.

His work has appeared in the Atlantic, Audubon, National Geographic, Canadian Geographic, The Pros Review, Reader’s Digest, Smithsonian, Sierra, Islands, and numerous other magazines.


Photo by Sandy Clair

Kenneth authored the series The Earth’s Wild Places, which was published by the Friends of the Earth in the 1970s.

Early days with mom and dad in the Sierra at age six.

Caribou steak and pancakes. The 5-week walk across the Brooks Range in 1967, fieldwork for my book EARTH AND THE GREAT WEATHER: THE BROOKS RANGE.

Quotes from Ken’s Writings

“A living planet is a rare thing, perhaps the rarest in the universe, and a tenuous experiment at best. We need all the company we can get on our unlikely journey. If an island be washed away mankind is the less: the death of one species diminishes us, for we are involved in life. The more varied the lifer the better. There is no requirement that our voyage be a monotonous one.”

—Kenneth Brower, from Galápagos: The Flow of Wildness

“From some unknown mainland, an uncertain number of millennia ago, the first canoe pushed off into Oceania. No one knows how that canoe looked. Its makers were not a people who kept archives. They worked from memory, not from blueprints, and their materials were biodegradable. There is good reason to believe that the first canoe was not a canoe at all, but a raft. No one knows how the crew wore their hair, or the language they spoke, or what they were running from, or searching for, perhaps, as they made for that blue horizon. They were setting out, it is certain, into the last great region of the planet’s surface to be explored and colonized by humans. The whole Pacific, a third of the Earth, awaited them. They were embarked on the last great demographic adventure of mankind.”

  —Kenneth Brower, from A Song for Satawal

“Owen remembers smoking hashish in a long silver pipe with a single-breasted Arab girl. The breast had been removed as punishment for infidelity.
“How was it?” I asked him recently.
“About the same as with a girl with two,” Owen answered.
“’No, I mean the hashish.”
“Oh. It was all right, I guess.”
“Owen remember buzzing Bedouin caravans. There was rumor in the Air Corps that the Bedouins sometimes turned GIs over to the Germans, so Owen and the other pilots buzzed caravans in retaliation. The Bedouin camels bucked, threw their loads, and scattered. It must have taken days to collect them, Owen thinks. The Bedouins lay on their backs in the sand and fired their long, banded rifles at the planes. At least one bedouin had learned by how many yards to lead a Martin Marauder, swinging his silver-ornamented, eight-foot-long, pieced wooden barrel well ahead of it, for one plane returned with a rifle ball in its fuselage.”

              —Kenneth Brower, from With Their Islands Around Them 

image

Photo by Barbara Brower

Ken (far right) with his father David Brower at Sierra Club Books in 1967. Together they pioneered the Exhibit Format series. These books were some of the first “coffee table” photo books and contributed greatly to the Club’s conservation efforts.
Ken, David, & Mason Brower Puerto Vallarta

Reviews

The Starship and the Canoe
“This is science fiction come real. The Starship and the Canoe is neither a wilderness survival manual nor a book of blueprints. It is another of those rare books impossible to define: the kind that seeks you in time. And you will know it live it and consult it thereafter simply by name.”
—Norbert Blei, Chicago Sun-Times
“An unusual and often moving double biography. In their individual ways, the Dyson embody the extremes of twentieth-century life—science and technology, and the revolt against them.”
—The New Yorker
Freeing Keko: The Journey of a Killer Whale from Free Willy to the Wild

“This is one of the best and most intelligent books I have read in many years. Brower is a master of the environmental genre, and the strength of this particular story makes it a page-turner powered by so much insight that even the whole biologists won’t be able to get enough of it.”

—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
“This book tells you what really happened to Keiko. I loved it.”
—Temple Grandin
A Song for Satawal

“Like the work of Paul Gauguin and, perhaps, of Margaret Mead, this is a thoroughly romantic account, the product of an astral traveler-in-reverse who finds in the intricate and almost magical traditions of th islanders more to marvel at than John Glenn ever did in space..”

“A marvelous book.”

—Publishers Weekly

Books and More by Kenneth Brower

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Works By Kenneth Brower

Books Authored by Kenneth Brower

  • EARTH AND THE GREAT WEATHER, THE BROOKS RANGE, Friends of the Earth, 1971
  • WITH THEIR ISLANDS AROUND THEM, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974
  • MICRONESIA: ISLAND WILDERNESS, Friends of the Earth, 1975
  • THE STARSHIP AND THE CANOE, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974
  • WAKE OF THE WHALE, E.P. Dutton, 1979
  • MICRONESIA; THE LAND, THE PEOPLE, AND THE SEA, LSU Press, 1980
  • A SONG FOR SATAWAL, Harper & Row, 1983
  • YOSEMITE, National Geographic Society, 1990
  • ONE EARTH, Harper Collins, 1990
  • REALMS OF THE SEA, National Geographic Society, 1991
  • AMERICAN LEGACY: Our National Forests, National Geographic Society, 1997
  • THE WINEMAKER'S MARSH, Sierra Club/Random House, 2001
  • FREEING KEIKO: The Journey of a Killer Whale from Free Willy to the Wild, Gotham Books Oct 2005
  • THE WILDNESS WITHIN: Remembering David Brower, Heyday Books, June 2012
  • HETCH HETCHY: Undoing a Great American Mistake, Heyday Books, August 2013

Books Co-author and/or Edited by Kenneth Brower

  • MAUI, THE LAST HAWAIIAN PLACE, Friends of the Earth, 1970
  • GALAPAGOS, THE FLOW OF WILDNESS (two volumes), Sierra Club, 1968
  • CRY CRISIS: REHEARSAL IN ALASKA, Friends of the Earth, 1974
  • OUR WORLD'S HERITAGE, National Geographic Society, 1987
  • NATURE'S WONDERLANDS, National Geographic Society, 1989
  • DISCOVER AMERICA, National Geographic Society, 1989

Books Edited by Kenneth Brower

  • NOT MAN APART, Sierra Club, 1964
  • EVEREST: THE WEST RIDGE, Sierra Club, 1965
  • NAVAJO WILDLANDS, Sierra Club, 1967
  • KAUAI AND THE PARK COUNTRY OF HAWAII, Sierra Club, 1967
  • BAJA CALIFORNIA AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOPE, Sierra Club, 1967
  • THE PRIMAL ALLIANCE, Friends of the Earth, 1971
  • GUALE, THE GOLDEN COAST OF GEORGIA, Friends of the Earth, 1974
  • A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC (illustrated), Oxford University Press, 2001

Magazines

  • THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
  • OMNI
  • AUDUBON
  • CALIFORNIA
  • PARIS REVIEW
  • COUNTRY JOURNAL
  • READER'S DIGEST
  • HARROWSMITH
  • SKALD
  • THE LIVING WILDERNESS
  • SMITHSONIAN
  • NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
  • SPORT DIVER
  • NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELER
  • GEOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE
  • CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC
  • ISLANDS
  • SIERRA
  • COUNTRY LIVING
  • LAND AND PEOPLE

Audubon

  • "To Tempt a Pacific Eden" (Palau Superport) Sept '76
  • "State of the Reef" (6th Coral Reef Conference, Townsville, Australia) March '89 Barn Owl '02

The Atlantic Monthly (The Atlantic)

  • "Wings of the Rhinoceros" (Coconut rhinoceros beetle, Palau) July '74
  • "On the Reef Darkly" (The blind malacologist Geerat Vermiej) Nov '76
  • "The Urban Farm" (Integral Urban House, Berkeley) Jan '78
  • "Tree House" (George Dyson's home 90 feet up Douglas fir) May '78
  • "Environmental Vigilante" (Eco-terrorist Paul Watson) Nov '80
  • "The Naked Vulture and the Thinking Ape" (California condor) Oct '83
  • "The Pig War" (Control of feral pigs in Hawaii) Aug '85
  • "The Navajo Nation" (Navajo Reservation) Mar '89
  • "The Eighth Continent" (Review of Coral Reefs of the World) June '89
  • "The Destruction of Dolphins" (Tuna-dolphin controversy) July '89
  • "Grey Owl" (Canadian environmentalist and fake Indian Archy Belany) Jan '90
  • "On the Edge of Down Under" (Great Barrier Reef) Jan '91
  • "Of Reefs and Ruins" (Belize) Feb '92
  • "Tusk Tusk" (Review of At the Hand of Man) April '93
  • "Devouring the Earth" (Taiwanese trade in endangered species) Nov '94
  • "Photography in the Age of Falsification" (Digital photography) May '98
  • "Can of Worms" (The "baiters" of Apalachicola NF, Florida) March '99
  • "Ansel Adams at 100," Aug '02
  • “The Dangers of Cosmic Genius,” (Freeman Dyson) Dec 2010
  • “Brave Thinkers 2011" (Richard Muller) Nov 2011
  • "Blue Planet"
  • "Whale Tale"
  • "Of Marlin and Men" (Marlin fishermen & scientists, Hawaii) Unpublished
  • "Kunde Doctors" (Medicine in the Everest region of Nepal) Unpublished

Bay Nature

  • “Moments of Inception” (East Bay Regional Parks) April-June 2014
  • “The Ballad of Bodega Head” (Battling a nuclear reactor proposed for Bodega Bay April/June 2015

California

  • "Disturbing Yosemite” (Resurvey of Joseph Grinnell’s Yosemite transect) May/June 2006
  • “Green Has a New Home” (The David Brower Center) Sept/Oct 2006
  • “The View from Founder’s Rock” March/April 2007
  • “When Ants Can Fly” (Gliding Ants) Sept/Oct 2007
  • “Jungle metropolis" (Manaus) July/August 2008
  • “Nature’s Laboratory", (Moorea) Fall 2009
  • “Natural Affinities” (Reading George Stewart in Antarctica) Summer 2010
  • “A Barrel of Odds and Ends” (Trinidad and Tobago) Spring 2011
  • “Fiat Lux Again” (Ansel Adams & the University of California”) Winter 2012
  • “Climbing the Spiral Staircase,” (growing up at the Browers) Spring 2013
  • “Radical Roots: Finding Environmentalism Amid the Schisms of mid-’60s Berkeley,” Fall 2014
  • “The Starship or the Canoe,” (Exoplanets; Freeman & George Dyson) summer 2017

Country Journal

  • "The Baidarka and the Ark" (Kayak-builder) June '79
  • "Seeking God's Grasp of the Country" (Glacier Bay biologist Greg Streveler) Jan '80
  • "Sucking the Land Dry" (The destruction of Mono Lake) Aug '80
  • "Life on the Stanislaus" (Handicapped river rafters) Dec '80
  • "Yolla Bolly Press" (Rural book-publishing) Dec '83
  • "Following the Condor" (Rancher Eben McMillan & the California condor) Sept '84
  • "A Feeling that goes with the Gouge" (Quebec woodcarver Jacques St. Hilaire) Mar '85
  • "Republic of Birds" (St. Bonaventure Island, Quebec) Feb '86
  • "The Law of the Hoe" (Gardening guru Alan Chadwick & his disciple) July '88

Country Living

  • "The Winemaker's Marsh" Oct '02

Destination Discovery (TDC)

  • "Jewel in the Crowns" (Treetop raft) July '90
  • "Walk Softly, and Carry a Big Lens" (Ecotourism in Belize) June '91
  • "Boxed Canyon" (Glen Canyon) July '91
  • "The Forest Primeval" (Ancient forest in W. Virginia) Dec '91
  • "New World View" (GeoSphere Project) May '92
  • "The View from Cloud 9" (Kuiper Flyng Observatory) Oct '92
  • "Pillars of the Community" (Temperate rainforest) Oct '93

Earth Island Journal

  • “Down from the Mountain" (Doug Tompkins): http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/down_from_the_mountain/

Elements

  • “Water,” Spring 1992

Harrowsmith

  • "Wolf Man of Riding Mountain" (Wolf biologist Paul Paquet) Sept/Oct '87
  • "Mr. Monkeywrench" (Dave Foreman of Earth First!) Sept/Oct 1988

Islands

  • "Beaches I have known" (Beaches of the World) July/Aug '92
  • "Mauritius" Jan/Feb '94
  • "Diving by the Numbers: Thailand's West Coast Isles" April '96
  • "Time and the Volcano" (Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii Island) July/Aug '96
  • "Midway" (The atoll on the departure of the Navy) June '97
  • "In Search of the Perfect Beach" (Koh Samui, Thailand) Dec '00
  • "On the Road in Iceland" March '01
  • "Art Brewer," July/August '01
  • "A Study in Green," (Dominica) Nov '02
  • "Legacy Isles of the Caribbean," (St. Kitts and Nevis) Mar '03
  • “No Trouble Atolls” (the Maldives) Nov ‘04
  • “The Island of Extremes,” (The Big Island) April/May ‘05

Land and People

  • "The Changing Sierra," Fall '02

The Living Wilderness

  • “Greeting the Unicorn” (Bill Curtsinger and the narwhal) Dec, 79

Marin Independent Journal

  • https://www.marinij.com/2019/02/24/marin-voice-fate-of-cattle-elk-at-point-reyes-is-being-decided-right-now/

National Geographic

  • "Life by Night in a Desert Sea" (Blue-water diving, Hawaii) Dec '81
  • "Gulf of Maine" (Unpublished)
  • "Nicaragua's Miskito Cays" (Unpublished)
  • “Still Blue” (Blue whales off Costa Rica) Mar ‘09
  • “Resurrection Island” (South Georgia), Dec ‘09
  • “Mesoamazing” (The Mesoamerican Reef) Oct 2012
  • “Quicksilver” (Bluefin tuna) Mar 2014

National Geographic Special Edition

  • “Waters of Life” in Ocean, Nov 2010
  • “A Parks Odyssey” in America’s National Parks, March 2011

National Geographic Traveler

  • "Gaspé--Quebec's Wild Peninsula" Summer 1984
  • "The Big Island: Hawaii in Essence" Autumn 1985
  • "Riding Mountain National Park"
  • "In Old Age Wandering: A Walk in Navajo Country" Mar/April 1990
  • Jasper National Park. May/June 1991
  • "Oahu" Jan/Feb 1993
  • "California's Big Sur" March/April 1993
  • "St. John" (Virgin Islands)
  • "Jasper National Park" Collector's Edition 1994
  • "Hawaii Volcanoes National Park" Nov/Dec 1994
  • "Autumn in Yellowstone" Sept/Oct '95
  • "Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve, Alaska" May/June '96
  • "Tiger Country" (Chitwan National Park, Nepal & Kanha NP, India) May/June '97
  • "Chile by Land and Sea" (S. Chile from Lake District to Patagonia) Sept/Oct '97
  • "Dual Track in a Dry Place" (Death Valley) Sept/Oct '98
  • "Big Bend" Nov/Dec '99
  • "Face to Face in New Guinea" March '00
  • “The Great White Hope” (Antarctic Peninsula)

National Geographic Adventure

  • "Getting Lost on the West Coast" (Spring '99)
  • “Protecting the Colorado” http://adventureblog.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/04/opinion-protecting-the-colorado-watersheds-last-wild-river/#comments
  • Permalink: http://adventureblog.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/04/opinion-protecting-the-colorado-watersheds-last-wild-river/#comment-1694840

National Geographic Daily News (Online)

  • “Six Ways Sequestration Will Hurt Parks, Wildlife,” Feb 28, 2013
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130520-grand-canyon-uranium-mine-native-americans-roosevelt/
  • “Gamma Rayes and the Grand Canyon,” May 20, 2013
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130520-grand-canyon-uranium-mine-native-americans-roosevelt/
  • “The Great White Whale Fight,” May 31, 2013
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130531-beluga-whale-dolphin-marine-mammal-georgia-aquarium-capture-free-willie-narwhal/
  • “Seaworld Versus the Whale that Killed Its Trainer,” Aug 3, 2013
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/08/130803-blackfish-orca-killer-whale-keiko-tilikum-sea-world/
  • “A Welcome Halt to Aquarium Whale Imports?” Aug 7, 2013
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/08/130807-beluga-whales-dolphin-marine-mammal-georgia-aquarium-capture-russia/
  • “Life in Antarctica Relies on a Shrinking Supply of Krill,” Aug 17, 2013 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/08/130817-antarctica-krill-whales-ecology-climate-science/
  • “High-Tech Tuna Researcher Uncovers Marvels of the Big Fish,” Mar 1, 2014
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140301-bluefin-tuna-barbara-block-ocean-fisheries-marine-science/
  • “Don’t Burned Logged Forests,” July 14, 2014
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140714-rim-fire-salvage-logging-forest-ecology-wildfire-restoration/
  • “Appreciation: Lessons From the Man Who Stopped Grand Canyon Dams,” Dec 2, 2014 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141202-grand-canyon-dams-colorado-river-martin-litton-conservation/
  • “What’s in a name at Yosemite,” Jan 25, 2016
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160125-yosemite-names-ahwahnee-wawona-national-park/

Omni

  • "Miracle" (Miracle of organization) Oct '78
  • "Whale Pilots" (Internation Whaling Commission Meetings, London) Nov '78
  • "Starship and Canoe" (Freeman and George Dyson) Dec '78
  • "Pacific Jewel" (Palau Archipelago) Jan '79
  • "Darwin's Archipelago (Galapagos) Feb '79
  • "Planet Antarctica" Mar '79
  • "The Future of Paradise" (Yellowstone River) April '79
  • "Paradise Lost" (Rainforest loss) May '79
  • "Phoenix of Crested Butte" (Environmentalist mayor Mitchell) June '79
  • "As Go the Whales" (IWC) July '79
  • "Night of the Condor" (Biologist Karl Koford & the California Condor) Aug '79
  • "The Bone Hunter" (Loren Eiseley) Sept '79
  • "In Warm Blood" (Where did mankind go wrong?) Oct '79
  • "Encomeyum" (David Comey) Nov '79
  • "Visions of Mono" (Saving Mono Lake) Dec '79
  • "The Inhaber Affair" (Inhaber-Holdren controversy) Jan '80
  • "Heartland Spike" (Kaiparowitz Pleateau coal) Feb '80
  • "Who'll Stop the Rain?" (Acid Rain) Mar '80
  • "Vela's Vision" (Nuclear proliferalion) April '80
  • "Where Eagles Dare" (Southeast Alaska) June '80
  • "Red Alert" (Survival, Inc.) Oct '80
  • "The Ungreening" (Desertification) Dec '80
  • "Terra Infirma" (Perennial agriculture) Jan '81
  • "Out on a Limb" (Radeau des Cimes) Apr il'87
  • "Sea of Trouble" (Marine pollution) April '89
  • "Starry Blight" (Crown-of-thorns starfish) May '89
  • "Save Our Sea Mammals" June '89

Outside

  • "The Great Trail Debate: Stop Building Trails,” Aug 12, 201
    http://www.outsideonline.com/2105181/great-trail-debate-we-dont-need-any-more-trails

Paris Review

  • "Time and the Jungle" Summer '75

Skald

  • "Alaska" Spring '88

Sierra

  • "Leopold's Gift" Jan/Feb 2001
  • "Just Add Water" Nov/Dec 2001
  • “Reclaiming Wilderness” July/Aug 2014
  • “On the Power of the Sierra Club Cup,” Mar/April 2015.
    http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2015-2-march-april/artifact/power-sierra-club-cup
  • “The Atolls of Arkansas,” Jan/Feb 2019

Smithsonian

  • "Two Worlds of the Harp Seal" July '79
  • "Let's Root for the Coot" Dec 98
  • "The Artful Dodger" (Ansel Adams) Feb '02

Tuscan

  • Tule Canoe, Aug 99
  • Angel Touch, Sept 99
  • August Sebastiani, Oct 99
  • Freedom in the Wetland, Nov 99
  • Muskrat, Dec 99
  • Deluge, Jan 00
  • Fantastic Voyages, Feb 00
  • Otter, March 00
  • Owls, April 00
  • Monster in the Marsh, May 00
  • Springtime, June 00
  • Swallows, July 00
  • Marsh Services, Aug 00
  • Zugunruhe, Sept 00
  • Frogstorm, Oct 00
  • Archipelago, Nov 00
  • Contract, Dec 00
  • Cast of characters, Jan 01
  • Indian Spring, Feb 01
  • Walden West, March 01
  • Wren Nest, April 01
  • Aromas, May 01
  • Owlets, June 01
  • Summertime, July 01
  • Snowy Egret, Aug 01
  • Muskratia, Sept 01
  • Call of the Coot, Oct 01
  • The Living Air, Nov 01
  • Barn Owls, Dec 01
  • The Border, Jan 02
  • Eye on the Night, Feb 02
  • Munsell, Mar 02
  • Ovum, April 02
  • Palimpsest, May 02
  • Cootlings
  • Sea of Reeds
  • Tuft of Reeds
  • Reedsong
  • Owl/redtail
  • Joie de Marsh
  • Winter in the Marsh

Wilderness

  • "Losing Paradise" (Hawaiian Islands) Winter '89

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