The Orion Book Award is given annually to a book that has achieved excellence in addressing a growing ecological awareness and the need for a healthier relationship between humans and the natural world. Four additional books are recognized as finalists.

Information about The Orion Book Award. Criteria and eligibility. Readers Choice Voting.

Nominees for the 2009 Orion Book Award include:

• Barnes, Kim. A Country Called Home (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Bass, Rick. Why I Came West: A Memoir (Houghton Mifflin)
• Bender, Bert. Catching the Ebb (Oregon State University Press)
• Bowden, Charles and Julian Cardona. Exodus/Exodo (University of Texas Press)
• Bringhurst, Robert. The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind and Ecology (Counterpoint)
• Carter, Bill. Red Summer: The Danger, Madness, and Exaltation of Salmon Fishing in a Remote Alaskan Village (Scribner)
• Darby, Andrew. Harpoon: Into the Heart of Whaling (Da Capo Press)
• Dodd, Elizabeth. In the Mind’s Eye: Essays Across the Animate World (University of Nebraska Press)
• Engleman, Robert. More: Population, Nature and What Women Want (New Society)
• Forbes, Jack D. Columbus and Other Cannibals (Seven Stories Press)
• Halpern, Charles. Making Waves and Riding Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom (Berrett-Koehler Publishers)
• Harrison, Robert Pogue. Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition (University of Chicago Press)
• Heuer, Karsten. Being Caribou: Five Months on Foot with an Arctic Herd (Milkweed Editions)
• Hogan, Linda. People of the Whale: A Novel (W.W. Norton)
• Holthaus, Gary. Learning Native Wisdom: What Traditional Cultures Teach Us About Subsistence, Sustainability, and Spirituality (University of Kentucky Press)
• Hurd, Barbara. Walking the Wrack Line (University of Georgia Press)
• Irvine, Amy. Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land (North Point Press)
• Jacobsen, Rowan. Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis (Bloomsbury USA)
• Jones, Van. The Green Collar Economy: How one Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems (HarperOne)
• Kantner, Seth. Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic Alaska (Milkweed Editions)
• Kauffman, Janet. Trespassing: And Other Dirt Stories (Wayne State University Press)
• Kelsey, Elin. Watching Giants: The Secret Lives of Whales (University of California Press)
• Krupp, Fred and Miriam Horn. Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming (W.W. Norton & Company)
• Kunstler, James Howard. World Made by Hand (Atlantic Monthly Press)
• Kurlansky, Mark. The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester, America’s Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town (Ballantine Books)
• Macfarlane, Robert. The Wild Places (Penguin Books)
• Matthiessen, Peter. Shadow Country (Modern Library)
• McMasters, Kelly. Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town (Public Affairs)
• McNamee, Gregory. Otero Mesa: Preserving America’s Wildest Grassland (University of New Mexico Press)
• Millet, Lydia. How the Dead Dream: A Novel (Counterpoint)
• Mitchell, John Hanson. The Paradise of All These Parts: A Natural History of Boston (Beacon Press)
• Nabhan, Gary Paul. Arab/American: Landscape, Culture and Cuisine in Two Great Deserts (Shearwater)
• Nadkarni, Nalini M. Between Earth and Sky: Our Intimate Connections to Trees (University of California Press)
• Price, John T. Man Killed by Pheasant and other Kinships: A Memoir (Da Capo Press)
• Rash, Ron. Serena (Ecco)
• Raymo, Chet. When God is Gone Everything is Holy: The Making of a Religious Naturalist (Sorin Books)
• Rosen, Jonathan. The Life of Skies: Birding at the End of Nature (Picador)
• Rothenberg, David. Thousand Mile Song: Whale Music in a Sea of Sound (Basic Books)
• Russell, Sharman Apt. Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist (Basic Books)
• Salutis, Eva. Leaving Resurrection: Chronicles of a Whale Scientist (University of Chicago Press)
• Shabecoff, Phillip and Alice Shabecoff. Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children (Random House)
• Sherwonit, Bill. Living with Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey (University of Chicago Press)
• Shiva, Vandana. Soil Not Oil (South End Press)
• Shnayerson, Michael. Coal River: How a Few Brave Americans Took on a Powerful Company—and the Federal Government—to Save the Land They Love (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Slattery, Brian Francis. Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America (Tor)
• Slovic, Scott. Going Away to Think: Engagement, Retreat and Ecocritical Responsibility (University of Iowa)
• Speth, James Gustave. The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability (Yale University Press)
• Strand, Ginger. Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power, and Lies (Simon & Schuster)
• Swander, Mary. Out of This World: A Journey of Healing (University of Iowa Press)
• Timpanelli, Gioia. What Makes a Child Lucky: A Novel (W.W. Norton & Co.)
• Trimble, Stephen. Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America (University of California Press)
• Volk, Tyler. CO₂ Rising: The World’s Greatest Environmental Challenge (The MIT Press)
• Welland, Michael. Sand: The Never-Ending Story (University of California Press)
• Wells, Ken. The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous: Fighting to Save a Way of Life in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina (Yale University Press)
• White, Sharon. Vanished Gardens: Finding Nature in Philadelphia (University of Georgia Press)
• Williams, Terry Tempest. Finding Beauty in a Broken World (Pantheon)
• Winn, Marie. Central Park in the Dark: More Mysteries of Urban Wildlife (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Winterson, Jeanette. The Stone Gods: A Novel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Wood, Chris. Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America (Raincoast Books)
• Worster, Donald. A Passion of Nature: The Life of John Muir (Oxford University Press)

Participating in our Readers’ Choice Award? Go here to vote.