The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative (Hardcover)

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The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative By Florence Williams Cover Image

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative (Hardcover)

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An intrepid investigation into nature’s restorative benefits by a prize-winning author.


For centuries, poets and philosophers extolled the benefits of a walk in the woods: Beethoven drew inspiration from rocks and trees; Wordsworth composed while tromping over the heath; and Nikola Tesla conceived the electric motor while visiting a park. Intrigued by our storied renewal in the natural world, Florence Williams set out to uncover the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain.


In this informative and entertaining account, Williams investigates cutting-edge research as she travels to fragrant cypress forests in Korea to meet the rangers who administer “forest healing programs,” to the green hills of Scotland and its “ecotherapeutic” approach to caring for the mentally ill, to a river trip in Idaho with Iraqi vets suffering from PTSD, to the West Virginia mountains where she discovers how being outside helps children with ADHD. The Nature Fix demonstrates that our connection to nature is much more important to our cognition than we think and that even small amounts of exposure to the living world can improve our creativity and enhance our mood. In prose that is incisive, witty, and urgent, Williams shows how time in nature is not a luxury but is in fact essential to our humanity. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.



A contributing editor at Outside magazine, Florence Williams is the author of Breasts, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The Nature Fix. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, and many other outlets. She lives in Washington, DC.
Product Details ISBN: 9780393242713
ISBN-10: 0393242714
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Date: February 7th, 2017
Pages: 304
Language: English
[A] lively
exploration of what modern research has to say about the myriad health benefits
of the great outdoors. . . Ms. Williams resists the tendency of so much nature
writing towards easy epiphanies, adopting a tone that is, instead, pleasingly
puckish. . . [She] puzzles out the pros and cons, concluding, on balance, that
there’s a good case for connecting with nature to extend both the quantity and
quality of life. . .
— Danny Heitman - Wall Street Journal

The Nature Fix offers a cross-continental rumination on nature’s feel-good effects in a world that’s increasingly concrete-centric.

— Portland Monthly

Williams’s findings
are eminently reassuring, and perversely specific.
— Atlantic

…Fascinating…
— New York Times Books Review

…Engaging…
— San Francisco Chronicle

Florence Williams, keen observer, deft writer, creates a fascinating mosaic here. What are the costs—to us!—of humanity’s increasing disconnection from nature? What are the likely benefits—to us!—of retaining that threatened connection?…Large.
— David Quammen, New York Times best-selling author of Spillover

I’m no tree hugger, but The Nature Fix made me want to run outside and embrace the nearest oak. Not for the tree’s sake but mine. Florence Williams makes a compelling, and elegant, case that nature is not only beautiful but also good for us. If Thoreau were steeped in modern neuroscience and possessed an endearingly self-deprecating sense of humor, the result would be the book you hold in your hands.

— Eric Weiner, New York Times best-selling author of The Geography of Genius

The Nature Fix is a beautifully written, thoroughly enjoyable exposition of a major principle of human life now supported by evidence in biology, psychology, and medicine.

— Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

[The Nature Fix] has much to offer to anyone interested in human health, from city planners and health practitioners to educators, scientists… and anyone concerned with their own well-being.

— Esther Jackson, Public Services Librarian at the New York Botanic Garden