Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight

Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight
Author: David Gessner
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1948814498

"A powerful and timely book from one of the most provocative and engaging voices in contemporary environmental writing." —MICHAEL P. BRANCH, author of How to Cuss in Western When the pandemic struck, nature writer David Gessner turned to Henry David Thoreau, the original social distancer, for lessons on how to live. Those lessons—of learning our own backyard, re–wilding, loving nature, self–reliance, and civil disobedience—hold a secret that could help save us as we face the greater crisis of climate. DAVID GESSNER is the author of Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt's American Wilderness and the New York Times–bestselling All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West. Chair of the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and founder and editor–in–chief of Ecotone, Gessner lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, with his wife, the novelist Nina de Gramont, and their daughter, Hadley.

My Green Manifesto

My Green Manifesto
Author: David Gessner
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2011-07-12
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1571318364

All environmentalism is local: “A wonderfully readable book” about saving the planet by focusing first on our own habitats (The Boston Globe). Though environmental awareness is on the rise, our march toward ecological collapse continues. What was once a movement based primarily on land preservation, endangered species, and policy reform is now a fractured mess of back-to-the-landers, capitalist “green lifestyle” vendors, technology worshipers, and countless special interest groups. Inspired by a rough-and-tumble journey across country and down river, David Gessner, a John Burroughs Award winner, makes the case for a new environmentalism. In a frank, funny, and incisive call to arms that spans from the Cape Wind Project to the Monkey Wrench Gang, he considers why we do or do not fight to protect and restore wilderness, and reminds us why it’s time to join the fray. Known as an environmental advocate “reminiscent of Edward Abbey” (Library Journal), Gessner rebels against this fragmented environmentalism and holier-than-thou posturing. He also suggests that global problems, though real, are disempowering. While introducing us to lovable, stubborn Dan Driscoll, “a regular guy fighting a local fight for a limited wilderness,” he argues for a movement focused on local issues and grounded in a more basic, more holistic—and ultimately more effective—defense of home. “Funny and inspiring.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Leave It As It Is

Leave It As It Is
Author: David Gessner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2020-08-11
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1982105062

Bestselling author David Gessner’s wilderness road trip inspired by America’s greatest conservationist, Theodore Roosevelt, is “a rallying cry in the age of climate change” (Robert Redford). “Leave it as it is,” Theodore Roosevelt announced while viewing the Grand Canyon for the first time. “The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.” Roosevelt’s pronouncement signaled the beginning of an environmental fight that still wages today. To reconnect with the American wilderness and with the president who courageously protected it, acclaimed nature writer and New York Times bestselling author David Gessner embarks on a great American road trip guided by Roosevelt’s crusading environmental legacy. Gessner travels to the Dakota badlands where Roosevelt awakened as a naturalist; to Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon where Roosevelt escaped during the grind of his reelection tour; and finally, to Bears Ears, Utah, a monument proposed by Native Tribes that is currently embroiled in a national conservation fight. Along the way, Gessner questions and reimagines Roosevelt’s vision for today’s lands. “Insightful, observant, and wry,” (BookPage) Leave It As It Is offers an arresting history of Roosevelt’s pioneering conservationism, a powerful call to arms, and a profound meditation on our environmental future.

Now Comes Good Sailing

Now Comes Good Sailing
Author: Andrew Blauner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2023-03-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0691247951

From twenty-seven of today’s leading writers, an anthology of original pieces on the author of Walden Features essays by Jennifer Finney Boylan • Kristen Case • George Howe Colt • Gerald Early • Paul Elie • Will Eno • Adam Gopnik • Lauren Groff • Celeste Headlee • Pico Iyer • Alan Lightman • James Marcus • Megan Marshall • Michelle Nijhuis • Zoë Pollak • Jordan Salama • Tatiana Schlossberg • A. O. Scott • Mona Simpson • Stacey Vanek Smith • Wen Stephenson • Robert Sullivan • Amor Towles • Sherry Turkle • Geoff Wisner • Rafia Zakaria • and a cartoon by Sandra Boynton The world is never done catching up with Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), the author of Walden, “Civil Disobedience,” and other classics. A prophet of environmentalism and vegetarianism, an abolitionist, and a critic of materialism and technology, Thoreau even seems to have anticipated a world of social distancing in his famous experiment at Walden Pond. In Now Comes Good Sailing, twenty-seven of today’s leading writers offer wide-ranging original pieces exploring how Thoreau has influenced and inspired them—and why he matters more than ever in an age of climate, racial, and technological reckoning. Here, Lauren Groff retreats from the COVID-19 pandemic to a rural house and writing hut, where, unable to write, she rereads Walden; Pico Iyer describes how Thoreau provided him with an unlikely guidebook to Japan; Gerald Early examines Walden and the Black quest for nature; Rafia Zakaria reflects on solitude, from Thoreau’s Concord to her native Pakistan; Mona Simpson follows in Thoreau’s footsteps at Maine’s Mount Katahdin; Jennifer Finney Boylan reads Thoreau in relation to her experience of coming out as a trans woman; Adam Gopnik traces Thoreau’s influence on the New Yorker editor E. B. White and his book Charlotte’s Web; and there’s much more. The result is a lively and compelling collection that richly demonstrates the countless ways Thoreau continues to move, challenge, and provoke readers today.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Author: Julian Jaynes
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 580
Release: 2000-08-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0547527543

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

Empire of Deception

Empire of Deception
Author: Dean Jobb
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2015-05-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1616204966

“A rollicking tale that is one part The Sting, one part The Great Gatsby, and one part The Devil in the White City.” —Karen Abbott, author of Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy In a time of unregulated madness, nowhere was it madder than in Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties. It was the perfect place for a slick, smooth-talking, charismatic lawyer named Leo Koretz to entice hundreds of people to invest as much as $30 million--upwards of $400 million today--in phantom timberland and nonexistent oil wells in Panama. It was an ingenious deceit, one that out-Ponzied Charles Ponzi himself. In this rip-roaring tale of greed, financial corruption, dirty politics, over-the-top and under-the-radar deceit, illicit sex, and a brilliant and wildly charming con man on the town and then on the lam, Empire of Deception proves that the American dream of easy wealth is truly a timeless commodity. “Captivating . . . Dean Jobb tells the story of Leo Koretz, a legendary con artist of Madoffian audacity, with terrific energy and narrative brio.” —Gary Krist, author of Empire of Sin “A brilliantly researched tale of greed, ambition, and our desperate need to believe in magic, it’s history that captures America as it really was--and always will be. A great read.” —Douglas Perry, author of Eliot Ness “Reads like a Gatsby-Ponzi mashup . . . Kudos to Jobb for unearthing this overlooked story and bringing to life a charming, witty, naughty, iconic American crook.” —Neal Thompson, author of A Curious Man “The granddaddy of all con men, Leo Koretz gives Jobb the opportunity to exhibit his impressive research and storytelling skills . . . A highly readable, entertaining story.” —Kirkus Reviews

Daughter of the Forest

Daughter of the Forest
Author: Juliet Marillier
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 564
Release: 2010-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429913460

Daughter of the Forest is a testimony to an incredible author's talent, a first novel and the beginning of a trilogy like no other: a mixture of history and fantasy, myth and magic, legend and love. Lord Colum of Sevenwaters is blessed with six sons: Liam, a natural leader; Diarmid, with his passion for adventure; twins Cormack and Conor, each with a different calling; rebellious Finbar, grown old before his time by his gift of the Sight; and the young, compassionate Padriac. But it is Sorcha, the seventh child and only daughter, who alone is destined to defend her family and protect her land from the Britons and the clan known as Northwoods. For her father has been bewitched, and her brothers bound by a spell that only Sorcha can lift. To reclaim the lives of her brothers, Sorcha leaves the only safe place she has ever known, and embarks on a journey filled with pain, loss, and terror. When she is kidnapped by enemy forces and taken to a foreign land, it seems that there will be no way for her to break the spell that condemns all that she loves. But magic knows no boundaries, and Sorcha will have to choose between the life she has always known and a love that comes only once. Juliet Marillier is a rare talent, a writer who can imbue her characters and her story with such warmth, such heart, that no reader can come away from her work untouched. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Middle of Somewhere

The Middle of Somewhere
Author: Suzanne Stryk
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2022-03-22
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1595349626

There’s no such thing as the middle of nowhere. Everywhere is the middle of somewhere for some living being. That was Suzanne Stryk’s mantra as she journeyed through her home state on a mission to re-create Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. The founding father’s work surveys the region’s natural history and, as one might expect from a philosopher-statesman living more than 230 years ago, is fact packed and formally written. The Middle of Somewhere takes a different approach—to interpret Virginia land and life from a contemporary perspective and an artist’s point of view. Stryk kayaks pristine swamps in river country, wanders the galleries of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, hikes rocky trails crisscrossing the Appalachians, and strolls the dusty streets of old coal towns. In these sacred spaces she encounters frogs, millipedes, ravens, dragonflies, sparrows, turtles, and many other species that claim a particular place as home. Weaving in historical anecdotes and personal memories, Stryk relates her encounters with all of these beings in their “somewheres.” The creatures in their habitats and the people she meets are characters in the book, a tapestry of essays, lush sketches, and ephemera. Stryk’s multimedia collages, composed of dead bugs, tourist pamphlets, road maps, pressed leaves, rusty farm equipment, animal bones, and handwritten directions, all artistically arranged over USGS topographic maps, bring the narrative to life. Stryk’s personal reflections and conversational tone make readers feel as if they are traveling across Virginia with a friend, one who is at times funny and at other times deeply reflective. As we accompany her, she challenges us to travel slowly, tread lightly, and look closely at each somewhere that defines a place.

The Testament of Mary

The Testament of Mary
Author: Colm Toibin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2012
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1451692382

A provocative imagining of the later years of the mother of Jesus finds her living a solitary existence in Ephesus years after her son's crucifixion and struggling with guilt, anger, and feelings that her son is not the son of God and that His sacrifice was not for a worthy cause.

The Circle

The Circle
Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2013-10-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385351402

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A bestselling dystopian novel that tackles surveillance, privacy and the frightening intrusions of technology in our lives—a “compulsively readable parable for the 21st century” (Vanity Fair). When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.