Life in the Soil: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners by James B. Nardi

Inside the society of dirt

I fancy myself an amateur naturalist. I like to explore nature and see what I can see: birds, plants, mammals, fungi, butterflies, etc.—whatever I can identify. One aspect of the wild that I’ve never really known much about, however, is the soil. Seeing as how so much life springs forth from the soil, and it’s loaded with living organisms, I wanted to learn more about the ground and its inhabitants. I found what I was looking for with Life in the Soil, the 2007 book by James B. Nardi, a research scientist at the University of Illinois. Suitable for general readers (nonscientists), this book provides a detailed look at what goes on in the dirt beneath our feet.

What is soil made of? How is it formed? How long does it take rocks and plant matter to become soil? What living creatures are involved in this process? How do elements and minerals cycle in and out of the soil? What makes good soil vs. bad? Nardi answers all of these questions and more. The reader comes to a vivid understanding of the soil as a living, breathing, changing community of organisms and nutrients. On the one hand, this is a book that’s deep enough to detail complex chemical reactions and biological processes. On the other hand, it’s accessible enough to first provide elementary explanations of chemical notation and taxonomical hierarchy.

The bulk of this book is a field guide to all the creatures who live in, contribute to, or even just scratch the surface of the soil. The general arrangement is from smallest to largest, moving from microbes to invertebrates to vertebrates. This guide does not differentiate at the species level but rather at the family level. To include thousands of species would have been impossible, but this book will help you differentiate between true scorpions, pseudoscorpions, and microwhipscorpions, or between dung beetles, soldier beetles, tiger beetles, and ptilodactylid beetles, as well as different families of worms, flies, amphibians, rodents, and so on. There is no specific geographic range to this guide. In general, Nardi addresses an audience of American and British readers, but at times he might mention the land leeches of Guatemala, the shield-tailed snakes of India, or a stink badger from Indonesia. Within each family, Nardi discusses life cycles, feeding habits, and most importantly, the effect the organisms have on the soil. This guide is heavily illustrated with black and white drawings. The text makes reference to 69 color plates, but they are nowhere to be found in the ebook edition.

After the field guide portion of the book, Nardi outlines strategies for the creation and preservation of healthy soil, but at the same time he makes it sound like soil degradation is beyond the point of no return, and world famine is imminent. He encourages readers to start their own compost piles, but then he makes that process sound as difficult as possible, as if you need a PhD in biology and chemistry just to rot some vegetable matter. Finally, Nardi gives some tips for those who might like to collect and examine soil samples in order to view some of the creatures discussed in the book. The key audience for this book would be hobbyists in microscopy. Although the information in the book is scientifically comprehensive, the text is written in very simple vocabulary that even a junior high student can understand, so this would be a perfect gift for any kid or grown-up with a microscope. There is also some useful information here for gardeners, but again, without that microscope much of the book won’t apply to your average casual gardener.

Life in the Soil delivers a thorough entry-level education in soil science and biology that elevates the novice naturalist to an intermediate dirt-lover. I could have used those color plates, and at times the presentation of the information wavers between too elementary and not elementary enough. Overall, however, I learned a lot from this book and will likely refer to it on future hikes.