What is urban nature? It's everything that's alive and everything of the natural world that enhances life in a city—trees, wildlife, weeds, and clouds. A sane environmentalism needs to break down the opposition between city and country and to look at the interpenetrations of wildness and culture in our great urban theaters. So this book is not only delightful and instructive; it's urgently important.

—Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States

All the senses are alive in the best of these essays and stories. The writing proves the old theory that our finest metaphors come from nature, no matter where we find it.

—Los Angeles Times Book Review

City Wilds is the book I have been waiting for! And I have no doubt that others will feel the same, especially if they teach classes on ecocriticism, nature writing, or urban culture. . . . Not only does Dixon's collection help heal the rift between nature and city, it is also a pleasure to read. The stories and essays are, for the most part, thoughtful, beautiful, attentive, insightful, and grounded. . . . City Wilds is the text I needed to fill a gap in my syllabi, but it is also a collection I enjoyed reading for its own sake, and one that makes an important contribution to the development of a more inclusive environmental consciousness.

—ISLE

It is impossible to do justice to thirty-five stories in one review. So I'll tell you thata they're all interesting and personal—some serious or funny, some joyful or sad, some a combination—and that in all their far-flung diversity, each illustrates that all-important intimacy. . . . City Wilds is a story collection book-loving naturalists would appreciate.

—Canadian Field-Naturalist