Excerpts and Interviews
April 16th, 2007 - Comming into the Country by John McPhee
. . . . an unforgettable account of Alaska and Alaskans . . . a rich tapestry of vivid characters, observed landscapes, and descriptive narrative, in three principal segments that deal, respectively, with a total wilderness, with urban Alaska, and with life in the remoteness of the bush.Go HERE and scroll down for Amazon Reviews
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
The Winter Beach by Charlton Ogburn, Jr.
This timeless nature classic follows the winter sun south to reveal a breathtaking world of crashing breakers, rogue dunes and jeweled sands, and the birds, shrubs, trees, and marine life that inhabit the magnificent Atlantic coast. From Mount Desert Island south along the shore to Cape Cod and Nantucket, to the Long Island beaches and the Chincoteague and Assateague islands off Virginia , and ending on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, this book is said to be “of rare distinction and singular beauty.”
Monday, November 6, 2006 at 7:30 p.m - Darlington's Fall, A Novel in Verse by Brad Leithauser
On the cusp of the 20th century, an encounter with a rare butterfly in rural Indiana sets Russel Darlington’s life in motion and propels the narrative of Brad Leithauser’s unlikely epic poem Darlington’s Fall, a 300-page novel in verse (Knopf, $25). As a promising young professor hungry to explore the new age of Darwin, Darlington takes off for an obscure Pacific island in search of more alluring lepidoptera. It is on Ponape (now known as Pohnpei—a model Nature Conservancy project site in Micronesia) that the romantic naturalist has a fateful encounter with a “fluttering lady … of pure iridescence.” Essentially a love story, Darlington’s Fall is also a fascinating meditation on chance, natural selection, the nature of science and art, and the evolution of species—and the human individual. ( by Ron Geatz in Nature Conservancy Magazine)Tuesday, Sept 26, 2006 - Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Marc Reisner, (New York: Viking, 1986), 564 pp
"Reisner captures Western water history in Cinemascope and Technicolor. Cadillac Desert is timely and of national importance. Hurry up and read this book." The Washington PostSummary by T. A. O'Lonergan
Detailed Critical Review
Review by a Brit
Obituary
Review of Movie based on book
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - Hampsire Days by W. H. Hudson
Listen carefully to dear, old W.H. Hudson. He will tell you of long days rambling down country lanes, of ancient stone walls and green pastures, of deep forests and crumbling cottages, of overgrown churchyards and hidden villages. He will tell tales of rustic farmers and humorous preachers, of skilled fishermen and innocent village girls. He will sing to you of his special love, the birds: of wrens and plovers, of geese and herons, of curlews and peewits, of cuckoos and swallows. He will tell you of wild England as no other writer can.
Hudson is one of the last of the old-style, amateur naturalists, but he is also a writer. His observations are accurate, but poetic rather than prosaic, with just the right mix of fancy and science. And Hudson’s narrative rambles as he does. He will talk about observations he made about bird behavior in the marshes, move on to an incident in the forest where a spider killed a grasshopper, and then to a meditation on death as he rests on an ancient barrow on the heath. Taken from Prof Eric Lehman
More about Hudson
Far Away and Long Ago
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