Levin, Ted 1948–

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LEVIN, Ted 1948–

PERSONAL: Born November 14, 1948, in New York, NY; son of Melvin (in sales) and Betty (a homemaker; maiden name, Weisberg) Levin; married; wife's name, Linny (a naturalist educator), July 6, 1980 (died November 9, 2000); married Annie Weeden, August 9, 2002; children: Casey, Jordan; (stepson) Williams Smart. Ethnicity: "Jewish/white." Education: Ball State University, B.S., 1970; graduate study at Texas Tech University, 1972–73; Antioch New England Graduate School, M.S.T., 1976. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Jewish. Hobbies and other interests: Camping, reading, baseball.

ADDRESSES: Home and office—P.O. Box 117, Thetford, VT 05074; fax 802-333-4443. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: New York Zoological Society, Bronx, NY, educator, 1971–72, 1974; Mountshire Museum of Science, adjunct naturalist in Norwich, VT, and Hanover, NH, 1977–92. Antioch New England Graduate School, adjunct faculty member, 1976–97; New England College, part-time faculty member, 1978–90. Freelance nature photographer. Community of Thetford, VT, justice of the peace, 1996–2000.

AWARDS, HONORS: Burroughs Medal, 2004, for Liquid Land: A Journey through the Florida Everglades.

WRITINGS:

Backtracking: The Way of a Naturalist, illustrated by Joan Waltermire, Chelsea Green (Post Mills, VT), 1987.

Blood Brook: A Naturalist's Home Ground, Chelsea Green (Post Mills, VT), 1992.

Everglades National Park, photographs by Patricia Caulfield, Abbeville (New York, NY), 1995.

(With wife Linny Levin) Creepy Crawly Creatures, illustrated by Warren Cutler, National Geographic Society (Washington, DC), 1995.

(Photographer, with Steve Lehmer) Frank Asch, Up River, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 1995.

(Photographer) Frank Asch, Sawgrass Poems: A View of the Everglades, Harcourt (Orlando, FL), 1996.

(With Frank Asch) Cactus Poems, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1998.

(Photographer) Frank Asch, Song of the North, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1999.

Liquid Land: A Journey through the Florida Everglades, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Naturalist, photographer, and author Ted Levin shares his love and fascination for America's wild places in essays, children's books, and longer nonfiction such as Backtracking: The Way of a Naturalist and Liquid Land: A Journey through the Florida Everglades. In Liquid Land he focuses on the life of the Cape Sable seaside sparrow, a bird whose home in one of the world's most unique ecosystems has put it on the endangered species list. From the tiny sparrow, Levin expands his view to include the insects, mammals, and reptiles that inhabit the Florida Everglades national park. He also looks at the land itself, which as Carol Haggas explained in Booklist is "one of the toughest and most inhospitable environments on earth." Now, transformed by a botched effort at flood control by the Army Corps of Engineers in the late 1940s, the Everglades is also "one of [the] … most threatened and fragile" places on the planet.

Employing what a Publishers Weekly critic described as an "accessible, engaging narrative," Levin recounts the process through which the fragile natural balance of the Everglades region was destroyed through man's ill-informed action, and the controversial efforts underway half a century later to protect and attempt to restore that balance. According to Audubon reviewer Frank Graham, Jr., Levin's book serves as "a love letter to a historic swamp and a probing look at the people … fighting over its future."