An Hour Before Dawn: Stories of the Outdoors

This collection of columns and articles by Anderson, outdoors editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press , should mainly appeal to outdoors fans in his region. Anderson clearly loves nature; describing a trip to a hunting cabin, he declares, ``I have more country in me than city and more autumn in me than summer.'' His fluid prose is sometimes overdramatic but generally colloquial; his topics include duck hunting in Alaska, a visit to a resident of rural Minnesota who was once dubbed ``Loneliest Woman in America'' and tracking grouse with Minnesota Vikings head coach Bud Grant. More than half the book is devoted to Anderson's 1988 series, ``Empty Skies: America's Ducks in Crisis,'' for which he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Anderson documented illegal harvests of ducks in Louisiana, probed the waterfowl conservation organization Ducks Unlimited and prompted greater waterfowl law enforcement in Louisiana. However, for a book, he might have converted the articles, written in daily journalistic style, into more of a narrative. (June)