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Richard Louv has a palette of many colors, nuances, interrelationships. He has written often about families and children, personal ethics, our national character, even fishing and our ties to the natural world. But with equal intensity, he has turned to the challenges of public leadership, urban design, how regions use their land and shape their communities. His column has appeared for many years in the San Diego Union-Tribune and other newspapers, and and has written for many other leading U.S. newspapers and magazines.
His columns can be
accessed
here.
Louv's seventh book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin 2005), links the lack of nature in the lives of today’s wired generation to some of the most disturbing childhood (and adult) trends such as the rise in obesity, attention disorders, and depression. In it, he notes that children’s play time has fallen by 25 percent in the last two decades, with the radius around the home where children are allowed to roam on their own had shrunk to a ninth of what it had been in 1970.
Louv’s first book, America II (Penguin, 1983) addressed the rise of the new urban form, private governments, and reinvented communities. Childhood’s Future (Anchor Books, 1993), described by the New York Times as “a passionate call for rebuilding community and family life,” was the subject of a Bill Moyers PBS program. Louv then authored 101 Things You Can Do For Your Children’s Future (Anchor, 1994), a guidebook for building supportive, family-friendly communities. Fatherlove (Pocket Books, 1994) helped refocus national attention on fathers’ role in American families. The Web of Life (Conari Press, 1996) explored the connections of family and community. Fly-Fishing for Sharks: An American Journey (Simon & Schuster, 2000) focused on our changing relationship with nature.
Louv is a Visiting Scholar at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, and an advisor to the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child and the Ford Foundation's Leadership for a Changing World award program. He is also a member of The Frameworks Institute. He helped found Connect for Kids, the largest child advocacy site on the World Wide Web. In 1995, he was asked by the United Nations to write the U.N. Year of the Child white paper, “Reinventing Fatherhood.” Louv has received numerous journalism and community awards, including an American Planning Association Journalism Award, an American Institute of Architects Presidential Citation, and most recently a C. Everett Koop Media Award. Louv has appeared on Good Morning America, Today, Donahue, Bill Moyers' Listening to America, NPR's Fresh Air, Talk of the Nation, PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and has spoken before the National Policy Council in the White House.
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