Six top books about nature

James P. Sterba has been a foreign correspondent, war correspondent and national correspondent for more than four decades, first for the New York Times and then for the Wall Street Journal. His new book is Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds.

One of Sterba's six favorite books about nature, as told to The Week magazine:

Reel Nature by Gregg Mitman

As 20th-century Americans withdrew from nature, film changed their perceptions of wildlife. Movies and TV delivered wild animals edited and anthropomorphized. Mitman tells in fascinating detail how filmmakers, including Walt Disney, made wild creatures behave like people in loving families and turned man into an intrusive bad guy.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue