The Absent Hand: Reimagining Our American Landscape

For serious readers of ecocriticism, the theories of human geography, and literary essays, and for fans of Rebecca Solnit, Susan Sontag, or Wendell Berry
Lessard is a national bestselling author whose book will benefit communities, organizations, or jurisdictions in the process of trying to curate, conserve, or plan the environment and understand the issues at play in their landscape.
During the 2018 American immigration crisis and #KeepFamiliesTogether campaign, a recurring activist slogan was "There are no illegals on stolen land." This concept echoes throughout The Absent Hand, as Lessard argues the physical world is a point of entry into the experience of transition, experience being the relevant, humanistic word.
Reminiscent of Jedediah Purdy's After Nature, Joan Didion's Where I Was From, and Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac
Lessard's favorite bookstores: Three Lives (NY), BookCulture (NY), Barnes and Noble (NY), Politics and Prose (DC)