OP: The Stalking Series (3 vols)

David McKay Company, 1964, 1966. Hardcovers. Good.

“We live in a vastly complex society which has been able to provide us with a multitude of material things, and this is good, but people are beginning to suspect that we have paid a high spiritual price for our plenty,” begins Stalking the Wild Asparagus (1962), a hugely popular book on wild foods that was the bugle call of the back-to-the-land movement. 

Written by a then unknown author, Euell Gibbons (1911–1975), whose expertise was developed out of genuine necessity and survival, Asparagus is the culmination of a life lived off the land. The massive success of this first volume led to two others: Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop (1964) and Stalking the Healthful Herbs (1966). (Gibbons did continue to use the “Stalking…” motif for two additional books, memoirs, but we consider these the thematic canon.)

The first volume is the broadest in scope and covers a variety of wild fruits and vegetables. The second focuses largely on shellfish but also includes seaweeds and coastal vegetation. The third tackles wild herbs, both from the culinary perspective and the medicinal. Each one is part reference, part cookbook, and part ethnography, all written with such authority and delight as to be totally digestible from cover to cover. 

These are books we think everyone should know, so we offer here all three, well-read and worn but sturdy and clean. The first book is a second printing and includes, laid in, a clipping of a John McPhee essay on Gibbons, while the other two are first printings. We also have Asparagus and Scallop available in paperback.