Into the Wilderness

Amazon.com

In this ambitious and vibrant sequel to The Last of the Mohicans, Elizabeth Middleton, a well-educated spinster of 29, journeys from her home in England to her father's lands in upstate New York in 1792. Her widowed father has promised Elizabeth that she can become the schoolteacher for the local children, but on her arrival at Paradise, her father's property, she learns that he has brought her to America under false pretenses. It is his intention to find her a husband, preferably the well-respected physician, Richard Todd.

Though Elizabeth has no intention to marry, she is immediately drawn, not to Richard, but to backwoodsman Nathaniel Bonner, son of Dan'l "Hawkeye" Bonner, hero of the James Fenimore Cooper classic. Nathaniel's connection to the Mohican (Mahican) people is a strong one; he considers Hawkeye's adoptive father, Chingachgook, his grandfather, and his own wife was a Mahican woman who died in childbirth several years earlier.

Elizabeth learns from her father that her inheritance is a part of his lands, a mountain known as Hidden Wolf, to be granted to her when she marries. She soon finds herself caught between Nathaniel and the Mahicans, who want to buy back the mountain from her father as part of their hunting grounds, and Richard, who wants the land for himself and sees Elizabeth as the route to it. Her father, fearful that the sale of Hidden Wolf to the Mahicans will bring more Indians back to Paradise, favors Richard.

Knowing Richard's main interest in her is her land, Elizabeth resists his attentions as she gets to know Nathaniel and his people. The backwoodsmen and their Indian friends accept her and respect her opinions, and she soon finds herself siding with their claim to Hidden Wolf. Meanwhile, the attraction between her and Nathaniel grows into a love that only adds to the conflict between the whites and the Indians.

Into the Wilderness is an intelligent and beautifully written historical novel that draws the reader into another world. Elizabeth and Nathaniel are well-rounded and intelligent characters, and the secondary characters are also strong, three-dimensional, and often entertainingly quirky. Although the book is long--nearly 700 words--tight pacing makes it an entertaining read. Fans of Diana Gabaldon will want to watch for a cameo appearance by one of the characters of Gabaldon's stunning Outlander series. --Lisa Wanttaja

Book Description

Weaving a tapestry of fact and fiction, Sara Donati's epic novel sweeps us into another time and place...and into the heart of a forbidden affair between an unconventional Englishwoman and an American frontiersman.

It is December of 1792. Elizabeth Middleton leaves her comfortable English estate to join her family in a remote New York mountain village. It is a place unlike any she has ever experienced. And she meets a man unlike any she has ever encountered--a white man dressed like a Native American, Nathaniel Bonner, known to the Mohawk people as Between-Two-Lives. Determined to provide schooling for all the children of the village, she soon finds herself locked in conflict with the local slave owners as well as her own family.

Interweaving the fate of the Mohawk Nation with the destiny of two lovers, Sara Donati's compelling novel creates a complex, profound, passionate portrait of an emerging America.

Customer Reviews:

Enjoyed every bit of the entire series!.......2007-07-18

Each book in this series left me waiting for the next. Extremely well written.. kept me interested from start to finish.

I'm finally done!.......2007-07-07

I can't believe anyone can compare this book to Diana Gabaldon's. Not too long into the book, I began checking what page I was on to see how much more I had to read. I was determined to finish it before I could judge. The plot and the characters are flat but mostly predictable..very predictable. A spinster who quickly falls in love with a white Native American who uses "ain't" too much and calls her "boots." She barely knows him yet she is ready to give up and sell her land to him, his family, and his Native American friends. The dialogue doesn't shine. The plot is once again, flat and predictable. The characters unbelievable. It is important for me to care about the characters when I'm reading a book, especially a book that has this many pages. Ms. Donati should have saved a tree and not tried to resemble Diana Gabaldon.

..Diana Gabaldon's books aren't a perfect 10 either but so much better than this one. I actually enjoyed them and I do recommend them.

This also did not strike me as a believable "Last of the Mohicans" sequel. Not even close.

I gave this 2 stars because this book had potential and it's a great idea..but it's just too ambitious to try and make a sequel to James Fennimore Cooper's literary classic and when failing, comparing it to other great books.

Good historical fiction.......2007-05-28

I love reading the historical fiction genre, but it took me longer than normal to read this novel. It was not because it has an overly complicated plot and it was not boring, but I just wasn't in love with the characters. It is a good enough story and Ms. Donati is a talented writer, but Nathanial and Elizabeth just didn't click for me as the main characters. I liked the post Revolutionary war time-frame and the wilderness aspect of the book held my interest.

Bland.......2007-03-07

I read the book with some interest, I would daze in and out of the 2 dimensional characters as I skipped pages of endless description. A lot of the book was descriptive to the point of "what's the point?' The villan was not too threatening, the main characters were boring and I did not get a real grasp on who they were, I wish Ms. DOnati would have spent as much time developing the characters as she did their intensive family tree. Yawn.

5 Stars for Sara Donati.......2006-11-06

I fully enjoyed, "Into the Wilderness." Anyone who enjoys Diana Gabaldon's books, will also enjoy this series. I just ordered the newest book in the series, and can't wait to get started. The characters in this fast paced work of historical fiction are memorable and lovable. If you buy this book, make sure to order the rest of the series too, because you won't want to wait for them to be delivered!

An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America's Future

Average customer rating:

another brilliant piece of work by Robert Kaplan
Pre-2000 view of future of US
A Book Overtaken by Events
Escaping the Pods with Little Desert Light
Understanding America

An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America's Future
Robert D. Kaplan
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Economic Conditions | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Economic Conditions | International | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Travel | Writing | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0679776877
Release Date: 1999-09-07

Amazon.com

Robert Kaplan has reported from locales as diverse and chaotic as shantytowns in the Ivory Coast, death camps in Cambodia, and the frontlines of the war-ravaged Balkans, but his most challenging assignment may have been covering his own country. In this ambitious and evocative study, Kaplan vividly chronicles his "travels into America's future," a journey that begins in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas--"the starting point for what would one day be called Manifest Destiny"--and continues across the West, where the population is growing faster than anywhere else in the country and multiple American identities reveal a nation in flux. He explores cities such as St. Louis and Omaha, Nebraska, that typify the increased urban fragmentation of the heartland; onward to Tucson, Arizona, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, where great wealth and poverty exist cheek by jowl; through the sprawl of multiethnic Southern California, where the landscape is perched somewhere between urban and suburban; and up through the Pacific Northwest into Canada. He also visits towns along the U.S.-Mexico border, dipping as far south as Mexico City, to investigate the conditions driving so many Mexicans north, despite feverish efforts by the U.S. to keep them out, and the new cultural hybrid being formed by this migration.

Kaplan uncovers a nation polarized along ethnic, economic, and political lines, where the uneven distribution of rapid technological advances allows some groups to surge forward, cultivating a radically different world-view than their poorer, less educated neighbors. Much of his report is bleak, but despite his insistence on documenting the worst, plenty of examples of prosperity and hope appear in these pages. What comes across most clearly is that there is still plenty of room for speculation on exactly how and where the new boundaries will be drawn. In this respect, America's future still carries the promise of the Wild West: equal parts opportunity, possibility, and uncertainty. --Shawn Carkonen

Book Description

"Full of surprises and unusual revelations . . . an informed and disturbing portrait of the new American badlands."--Chicago Tribune

"[Kaplan is] tireless, curious, and smart. . . . I cannot imagine anyone will concoct a more convincing scenario for the American future." --Thurston Clarke, The New York Times

With the same prescience and eye for telling detail that distinguished his bestselling Balkan Ghosts, Robert Kaplan now explores his native country, the United States of America. His starting point: the conviction that America is a country not in decline but in transition, slowly but inexorably shedding its identity as a monolithic nation-state and assuming a radically new one.
Everywhere Kaplan travels--from St. Louis, Missouri, to Portland, Oregon, from the forty-ninth parallel to the banks of the Rio Grande--he finds an America ever more fragmented along lines of race, class, education, and geography. An America whose wealthy communities become wealthier and more fortress-like as they become more closely linked to the world's business capitals than to the desolate ghettoes next door. An America where the political boundaries between the states--and between the U.S. and Canada and Mexico--are becoming increasingly blurred, betokening a vast open zone for trade, commerce, and cultural interaction, the nexus of tomorrow's transnational world. Never nostalgic or falsely optimistic, bracingly unafraid of change and its consequences, Kaplan paints a startling portrait of post-Cold War America--a great nation entering the final, most uncertain phase of its history. Here is travel writing with the force of prophecy.

"Lively . . . Kaplan has a sharp eye for social truth, and his encounters with a chorus of eloquent citizens of the West keeps the narrative humming." --Outside

Customer Reviews:

another brilliant piece of work by Robert Kaplan.......2007-01-20

I like to read a lot about other countries. With this book, I read about my own country and saw it with completely new eyes -- with some alarm, and some acceptance -- but certainly with a renewed perspective.

Pre-2000 view of future of US.......2007-01-19

Kaplan fits in with a growing list of writers from Patrick Buchanan to Al Gore who see lots of trouble for the US in the future. And although this book is written pre-9/11, it is still applicable. I find it interesting at this point 6 years after 9/11 that nothing has really changed in the US. The politics are the same, the issues are the same, the trade and national deficits keep growing, criminal aliens continue to invade, the military is over-committed even worse, and cultural institutions from schools to courts impose their wills on the rest of us. So yes, this almost 10 year old book still has something to say.

This book is really more of a political commentary than a travelogue. Kaplan travels mostly in Western North America. His writings about Mexico are worth while studying if you read nothing else in this book. This part of the book resembles a hard-hitting political expose. Kaplan pulls no punches and states that civility and respect for law are basic American attributes that are, on the whole, lacking in Mexicans. Kaplan's no racist, he just notes that the Mexican culture does not value these things because, among other reasons, the government and police are so corrupt that they are often the greatest danger to the average Mexican. The Mexican Police aren't just corrupt - they are the biggest criminals. How then do you expect to assimilate 20 million criminal aliens who feel this way? (You don't and that is one reason that Kaplan and a growing group feel that there are major changes in store for the US as we know it.)

Kaplan notes that the drug trade is what keeps even some of the Mexicans south of the border. If we ever do succeed in controlling the drug trade, Mexico would erupt over night into chaos, acording to Kaplan, and can you really disagree?

Unlike recent travelling commentators like Brit Martin Fletcher (Almost Heaven), Kaplan does not go out of his way to seek oddballs and nuts. That is one reason why his warnings have so much power.

The American parts of the book point out a growing loss of the middle class in much of America. With factory jobs heading south and overseas, the backbone of the American system is gone and there is nothing to replace it. Only so many of us can sell houses to each other or work for IBM. Where does the average American without a college degree go to find a high-paying job now? Kaplan has no answer.

Kaplan may be overly pessimistic but this book is excellent nevertheless. Feel free to refute his ideas, but you will definitely enjoy Kaplan's descriptions and thoughts. 4 stars.

A Book Overtaken by Events.......2006-06-29

Events, namely one big one (9/11), have pretty much overtaken this book, copyrighted 1998, rendering most of the sociological observations academic or even dated, leaving only a travelogue, albeit a very good one. The message I got from this book is that the U.S. is morphing from a nation-state into something new and hertofore unseen -- a North American entity without borders, an entity with a smaller government concerned mostly with military, environment and protecting the less fortunate among us. Maybe that's how things looked in 1998, but 9/11 presented a paradigm shift and I suspect that Kaplan, writing the same book today, eight years later, might revise some of his observations. In any case, I like Kaplan's books. They are the thinking man's travelogues and whether here or in some third world country, his interactions with the people he encounters are stimulting, educational and fascinating.

Escaping the Pods with Little Desert Light.......2005-08-19

HISTORY IS DESTINY. Believe that and there's still no guarantee you'll read An Empire Wilderness: Travels Into America's Future without frustration. This is no traditional history book.

Here, geography determines history, so that life on the North American continent--from the dense jungles of Qunitana Roo at Mexico's big-toe to Canada's frozen bellybutton in Hudson Bay, and Kansas cornfields somewhere in between--is the logical result of landscape necessity. Military action is an apparent exception.

The Civil War changed everything. It was the pivot point to our present. And ever since, American military might has made the world safe for democracy, although it all may amount to a brief shining moment before democracy, too, fades in the inexorable sweep of historical tides. This could easily happen since the social contract which held us together as a nation, drawn from our viscerally felt relations to the "vast wilderness," no longer holds as national glue, dried out with the nation's expansion across the continent and the effective shrinking of the planet. But, our military should keep us from falling over the edge into the terrors of the Millennium.

These are just a few of the assumptions you've got to buy not to get angst from reading An Empire Wilderness, author Robert D. Kaplan's latest, wide-ranging, difficult and uneven work. Kaplan's project since the late 1980s is to foresee the world we'll find in the 21st century. To do this, he's chosen to write travelogues, and he has journeyed to the front lines at the most dangerous and wretched places of the earth. Kaplan has more than once risked his life to get the story. In the Balkans with warring Croats and Serbs, with the Kurds on the Iran-Iraq border, in Africa, and the Far East.

In 1997, in his To The Ends of The Earth, Kaplan told an "apocalyptic" tale of how most of the world beyond the reach of electricity, good plumbing, and decent food is flying apart. Poverty, disease and rapacious plundering of resources for the primary benefit of the First World will never allow the Third World to catch up, propelling pent forces in the "underground" of the planet to explode, rupturing the comfortable bubble covering Western civilization. Now, Kaplan turns his sights on home.

The American tour Kaplan takes is to no one place--he would journey to the horizons of an America being reborn at the harrowing precipice of the 21st century. Edging the borders of this American Century, Kaplan weaves together a tapestry of pieces bubbling over with keen observation and insight, the best of which have already appeared over the last five years in the Atlantic Monthly. What emerges is a patchwork designed to show the devolution of the United States towards a loosely-held confederation of city-states, an "empire" Kaplan foresees entering a "silver age" of civilized prosperity.

Kaplan follows the trails of soldier-explorers and pioneers who were the first to encounter the wilderness of the North American West. And like them, he finds what may seem strange and new, presenting a picture of North America that those living the experience are not likely to see.

What Kaplan finds at the edge of tomorrow includes: 1) A decentralized empire built of steel, glass, marble and polymers designed from no geographic or cultural origins, inhabited by an international mosaic of people from distant cultures, all living in city-states with a vast no-man's land between. 2) World-wide corporations replacing government services in all but regional defense and dispute resolution.

Kaplan starts and ends his journey to the New America with homages to the military strategic training center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, near where the Spanish conquistadors led by Coronado ended their entry into the American heartland.
Kaplan treks mountain roads, talks with just plain and mightier folk, and ruminates across the continent's Westside--from Canada's Rockies to the Pacific Coast, from Mississippi riverboat casinos to Orange County high-end malls, and from Mexico City north through Sinaloa and Sonora across the border to Tucson. He bypasses Phoenix, writing it off as an oasis of "lawns, shopping centers and office parks." Much of the book is written in a mournful tone, just above a dirge.
"What we call 'the border' has always been a wild, unstable swath of desert, hundreds of miles wide, where culture was always as thin as the vegetation," says Kaplan early on in his discussion of the differences between Mexico and the Arizona borderlands.
Kaplan's view of borderland history minimizes the fact that the Spanish did not come with soldiers alone. Like the good exemplar of Roman tradition it was, Spain presented a fist and an open hand. With the fist came the Conquistadores, who sought gold. With the open hand came the padres, who sought to cultivate souls. Kaplan chooses to see the borderland in terms of the Conquistadors alone, and ignores the padres who stayed. And this was slow, patient work, the cultivating of souls. The only padre Kaplan mentions is Fray Junipero Serra: Kaplan stays at a hotel named for him in Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico.
Many of those who have seen the borderlands desert for the first time see it as empty of life. Kaplan is no different. "A cindery wasteland stubbled by thorns," he calls the Sonoran Desert. He shows no signs of having read the commentators on desert life and histories such as Officer, Nabhan, Fontana, Yetman or Sheridan. But he does quote from names familiar to local politicos--Bowden, Franzi, Smith, McKasson and a mysterious unnamed Tucson city appartchik, who for all their fervor and crisp soundbites, provide here more heat than light.

Kaplan emerges from his short Arizona desert stay with the unremarkable insight that what goes on in D.C. doesn't really make much sense in the real world.

Nevertheless, the best of what Kaplan does in these pages is the result of keen observation and powerful, provocative insight. But don't expect depth.

This is a top-level view, for all Kaplan's riding in Mexican buses. It's a set of first impressions, stoked by a partial historical eye. His writing is not really for those living in the desert or any of the urban "pods."

This book is primarily directed at the members of the elite who live by cellular phone, and whose best address is an electronic mailbox. It will undoubtedly make a very compelling PBS series.
original: 09-14-1998, Tucson Weekly)

Understanding America.......2005-08-03

Kaplan has finally applied his great talents of digging into details and deriving trends to America. This book helps understand at least some parts of the soul of America, undiluted by media hype and political perspectives.

His description of the decline of inner cities is moving. And the rise of gated communities is haunting.

I particularly liked his description and analysis of the Mexican border and how the primary concerns there are not drugs and immigration.

Above all, he writes very well. So even if I doubt some of the conclusions, the book is very interesting to read and provokes a lot of fresh perspectives. Doing this for a country that is 'over-reported' is amazing.

Into the Nature: Of Creatures And Wilderness

Average customer rating:

Into the Nature: Of Creatures And Wilderness

Manufacturer: Gestalten Verlag
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Instructional & How-To | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Design & Decorative Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Mixed Media | Other Media | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Nature & Wildlife | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Themes | History & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 3899550994

Book Description

Into the nature... of Creatures and Wilderness

Nature has been cherished by all of mankind and has been a beloved subject for artists and continues to be today. Artistic confrontation, celebration and manipulation of nature, has never been more prevalent. A young generation of designers, illustrators and artists are taking nature as a starting point and bestowing upon it great importance. Into the Nature takes you on a visual exploration through nature and how it is being perceived, portrayed and visualized in the contemporary visual arts of the twenty first century. From romanticism to art brut, flora and fauna are reinvented through ravishing imagery ranging from classical and analog approaches to cutting edge graphic design, illustration, photography, objects and 3D installations. Blending various mediums and materials, classic and new alike, it presents us with a (r)evolutionary vision of nature.

Average customer rating:

Puritanism and the Creation of a Perfect Society--An "Errand into the Wilderness"

A pioneering work

Miller, and the Puritans, can challenge us still today

Starting Place for Studying the Puritans

An invaluable collection of essays

Errand into the Wilderness
Perry Miller
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | United States | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
History of Ideas | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
General | Classics | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Modern | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century

The Puritan Origins of the American Self

Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea

The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War, Books One Through Three

The American Adam (Phoenix Books)

ASIN: 0674261550

Book Description

The title of this book by Perry Miller, who is world-famous as an interpreter of the American past, comes close to posing the question it has been Mr. Miller's lifelong purpose to answer: What was the underlying aim of the first colonists in coming to America? In what light did they see themselves? As men and women undertaking a mission that was its own cause and justification? Or did they consider themselves errand boys for a higher power which might, as is frequently the habit of authority, change its mind about the importance of their job before they had completed it?

These questions are by no means frivolous. They go to the roots of seventeenth-century thought and of the ever-widening and quickening flow of events since then. Disguised from twentieth-century readers first by the New Testament language and thought of the Puritans and later by the complacent transcendentalist belief in the oversoul, the related problems of purpose and reason-for-being have been central to the American experience from the very beginning. Mr. Miller makes this abundantly clear and real, and in doing so allows the reader to conclude that, whatever else America might have become, it could never have developed into a society that took itself for granted.

The title, Errand into the Wilderness, is taken from the title of a Massachusetts election sermon of 1670. Like so many jeremiads of its time, this sermon appeared to be addressed to the sinful and unregenerate whom God was about to destroy. But the original speaker's underlying concern was with the fateful ambiguity in the word errand. Whose errand?

This crucial uncertainty of the age is the starting point of Mr. Miller's engrossing account of what happened to the European mind when, in spite of itself, it began to become something other than European. For the second generation in America discovered that their heroic parents had, in fact, been sent on a fool's errand, the bitterest kind of all; that the dream of a model society to be built in purity by the elect in the new continent was now a dream that meant nothing more to Europe. The emigrants were on their own. Thus left alone with America, who were they? And what were they to do?

In this book, as in all his work, the author of The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century; The New England Mind: From Colony to Province, and The Transcendentalists, emphasizes the need for understanding the human sources from which the American mainstream has risen. In this integrated series of brilliant and witty essays which he describes as "pieces," Perry Miller invites and stimulates in the reader a new conception of his own inheritance.

Customer Reviews:

Puritanism and the Creation of a Perfect Society--An "Errand into the Wilderness".......2006-08-15

When I was pursuing my Ph.D. in American history more than twenty years ago Perry Miller's studies of Puritan New England represented required reading on this religious group and its settling in North America. Having just reread this volume, originally published in 1956, Miller's work still offers insight into the Puritan mindset. He argues in this book that the Puritans came to America not so much in search of a better livelihood so much as in search of a better world. The quest for a perfect society motivated them beyond all else. I recommend "Errand into the Wilderness" both as an important statement of the intellectual history of the Puritans and an enthralling reading experience by one of the masters of American colonial history.

"Errand into the Wilderness" is a collection of ten essays, mostly previously published, on various aspects of colonial intellectual history. All but one of them deals with Puritan thought, but the one on the Virginia colony also emphasizes the religious/intellectual nature of the "errand" to create a more perfect society in North America. The Puritans explicitly accepted the mission of an "errand into the wilderness" to establish God's kingdom, serving as a beacon to England of what it should become as well. Essays with titles like, "The Marrow of Puritan Divinity," "The Puritan State and Puritan Society," "The Rhetoric of Sensation," and "The End of the World" trace an overriding concern for the salvation of humanity through increasing "perfection" in this life. The utopian element of Puritan thought comes through clearly in these essays, and they present a compelling element of the American experience. Making the world a better place has long been the "stuff" of the American character.

Miller asks several fascinating questions at the conclusion of this volume. "Can an errand, even an errand into the wilderness, be run indefinitely?...Can a culture, which changes to embody itself in a nation, push itself into such remorseless exertion without ever learning whether it has been sent on its business at some incomprehensible behest, or is obligated to discover a meaning for its dynamism in the very act of running....What will America do--what can American do--with an implacable prophecy that there is a point in time beyond which the very concept of a future becomes meaningless? Protestant America, as well as Catholic, has an implicit commitment to this event. What then happens to the errand?" (p. 217) The Puritan sense of the errand into the wilderness is pervasive in American society to the present. Miller's analysis resonates still.

A pioneering work.......2006-01-02

Perry Miller is one of the great founders of the whole academic enterprise called 'American Studies'. In this work he considers the way the religious conceptions of the Puritans and their successors helped form a new society in a new land.

Miller, and the Puritans, can challenge us still today.......2004-08-18

As Perry Miller tells it, his baptism as a historian came on the banks of the Congo River. Seeking something exotic, he instead experienced a "sudden epiphany." Like Emerson who learned to find wildness not in faraway lands but on the Boston Common, Miller too turned to New England to find the wild. More particularly, he turned to New England's past. The essays in "Errand Into the Wilderness" show just how foreign of a country the past is.

While we today often distance ourselves from the Puritans out of revulsion, Miller emphasizes their foreignness so that they might challenge us. As much as we like to dismiss the Puritans as overzealous, prudish witch hunters in funny hats, they have much to teach us. And if Miller, an atheist, can take the Puritans seriously, why can't we? Actually, Miller and his school of historians suggest that it is because they can teach us something that we treat them as simple-minded fanatics. As Miller's student Edmund S. Morgan has written, "We have to caricature the Puritans in order to feel comfortable in their presence. They found answers to some human problems that we would rather forget. Their very existence is therefore an affront, a challenge to our moral complacency." The human problems Miller interrogates in "Errand Into the Wilderness" are ones of faith, existence, community, social decay, conscience, human frailty. These are dilemmas that have not disappeared, even as through the centuries we have lost many of the nuances Puritans employed in grappling with the human condition. Reading Miller allows us to exhume the long-buried wisdom of the dead.

Miller's own wisdom is also that of the dead, as it is four decades since his death. And consequent scholarship challenges many of the things his work takes for granted. Particularly noteworthy here is that the very idea of "wilderness" expressed in Miller's title is something we should rethink. Ironically (or perhaps not), it is a student of Miller's student Morgan who has challenged our way of thinking about "wilderness." William Cronon, in "Uncommon Ground," argues that what we see as wilderness-some sort of virgin nature-exists only in our heads. From the Puritans on down, Americans have repeatedly imagined untouched wilderness in places where in fact humans for centuries have created changes in the land. Instead of looking for a frontier of wilderness, Cronon urges us to follow Emerson home. In abandoning the myth of exotic, frontier wilderness, we free ourselves to find what Emerson called "wildness" where we never thought to look: in our backyard. While Miller wasn't around to learn from Cronon's ideas about wilderness--"Errand" would be a very different book if he had--I'd like to think he'd appreciate them. After all, by giving up his search in the Congo and instead finding a foreign world in the history of his own backyard--and by forcing us to rethink our preconceptions about the history of the American mind--he issues the same challenge.

Starting Place for Studying the Puritans.......2002-02-15

For those wishing to begin learning about Puritan theology, this book is probably the best starting point there is. The book is a collection of essays covering different aspects of the Puritan experience and their belief system. This is intellectual history, and some chapters are quite difficult. Most chapters, however, are highly readable and easy to comprehend. An excellent follow-up book, which disputes the idea of a decline in Puritan piety over the generations, is Harry S. Stout's "The New England Soul." Recommended for any college level reading person.

An invaluable collection of essays.......2000-07-04

Perry Miller's collection of essays ranges from his stomping ground of the Puritans to Virginia and elsewhere in colonial history. Throughout, the most blindingly brilliant American intellectual historian of the twentieth century displays his craft. Unlike his magisterial histories of the New England Mind, these tend to be somewhat easier to follow, as his themes were more compact. If you haven't read Perry Miller, you're missing a first-class thinker; at the least, there's no more important colonial historian, although many are more easily accessible.

A Wild Faith: Jewish Ways into Wilderness, Wilderness Ways into Judaism

Average customer rating:

a guidebook for spiritual survival
Helpful on many levels
thoughtful and useful!
A New Look at an Ancient Faith

A Wild Faith: Jewish Ways into Wilderness, Wilderness Ways into Judaism
Rabbi Mike Comins
Manufacturer: Jewish Lights Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

General | Judaism | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Jewish Life | Judaism | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

General | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 1580233163

Book Description

This comprehensive how-to guide to the theory and practice of Jewish wilderness spirituality unravels the mystery of Judaism's connection to the natural world and offers ways for you to enliven and deepen your spiritual life through wilderness experience. Over forty practical exercises provide detailed instruction on spiritual practice in the natural world, including:

Mindfulness exercises for the trail
Meditative walking
Four-Winds wisdom from Jewish tradition
Wilderness blessings
Soul-O Site solitude practice in wilderness
Wilderness retreat

For wilderness lovers and nature novices alike, this inspiring and insightful book will lead you through experiences of awe and wonder in the natural world. It will show you the depth and relevance of Judaism to your spiritual awareness in wilderness and teach you new ways to energize your relationship with God and prayer.

Customer Reviews:

a guidebook for spiritual survival.......2007-09-23

When exploring the wilderness, it is vital to be prepared and carry the proper gear. Rabbi Comin's guide is a full backpack complete with trail maps, a soul directing compass, and just enough guiding to empower us to create and realize an intimate and personal adventure. I particularly appreciate the trek's preparation that conveys in succinct terms relevant Jewish resources that combines moral, spiritual, modern and environmental ideals so that we have the proper tools to traverse the untamed mountaintops (and cityscapes?) and find there nourishment for worn souls. Rabbi Comins is also an exceptional translator who reveals the essential vibrant aroma and intentions of the Hebrew terms for the English reader. This book is a significant addition to our Permaculture, Ecovillage Design and Jewish resource library.
Alex Cicelsky, Educator, Center for Creative Ecology, www.kibbutzlotan.com

Helpful on many levels.......2007-08-14

A Wild Faith is a highly inspiring yet extremely practical guide to connecting with Judaism through the wilderness. My husband and I just returned from a week of hiking in the Rockies and our trip was very much enhanced by practices such as 25-25-50 walking that Rabbi Comins outlines in this timely book. For anyone who is a fan of the outdoors, I highly recommend Rabbi Comins' lucid, good-humored, well-informed, and profound perspective on Judaism.

thoughtful and useful!.......2007-05-18

Rabbi Comins' book is both theologically stimulating and well grounded (pun intended). It is a great resource for making that essential link between Judaism and the natural world, between our prayer life and our outdoors experiences.

A New Look at an Ancient Faith.......2007-05-02

What a treasure! Rabbi Comins breathes fresh life into Jewish belief. A wonderful call to action.

Average customer rating:

Great Story, Not so Great Narration
Disappointed
A very poor, uninteresting historical fiction.
romance during the (pre-) French and Indian War
romance during the (pre-) French and Indian War

Into the Wilderness: The Long Hunters
Rosanne Bittner
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Romance | Subjects | Books

General | Historical | Romance | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0765340224

Book Description

Rosanne Bittner launches a new romantic/historical series, Westward America!, which will look at the settling of the United States, with each book moving progressively west into a new location and era. Set in 1785, Into The Wilderness depicts the life of those who settled in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania. The term "long hunters" refers to "Daniel Boone" type men who hunted for settlements and forts, sometimes leaving for months at a time. Florence ("Flo") Matthews is sixteen, and has her world turned upside down when a mysterious long hunter, Clete Barnes, saves her from a bear attack in the middle of the night outside her parents' cabin. Unable to stop thinking about her soft-spoken savior, Flo eventually tells her parents of her wish to marry Clete, but is warned by her mother that long hunters, with their travelling ways, are never truly able to settle down. Flo and Clete persist and are soon married, but true to form, Clete soon feels that he must go on another hunt if he is to keep sane. While he is gone, Flo and their young son are taken captive by Iroquois, and Flo's life is irrevoably changed. Clete eventually finds his wife and son, but whether she will take him back -- and whether the Iroquois man whose son she has borne will let her go -- remains to be seen.

Customer Reviews:

Great Story, Not so Great Narration.......2004-05-19

I found this book in the book store, and , being a huge fan of historical fiction, I snatched it right up. This book is very well researched, and the character development is really good. The problem is that the authors narration just wasn't up to par with such a big story. The diolog was all right, but overall, the whole story felt rushed, and a little stilted. The thing is that the actual premise of this book is very good, so good that I will most likely read the other two books in this series just to see what happens. So, if you want a read with a great background, than this is for you, just know that sometimes the storytelling isn't that great.

Disappointed.......2002-11-30

I purchased this book with anticipation, ready to sacrifice sleep to devour it in one reading as I have with many other books by this author. I was sorely disappointed. The effort was great, the historical detail thoroughly researched as far as I could tell. What bothered me most is the lack of character in both Noah and Jess. Normally Bittner will bring you so in touch with her characters, it feels as though you are breathing for them at times. Neither Noah or Jess did that for me. I feel their "love" was rushed and even the fact that they spent a good part of the story apart from one another wouldn't have been so bad IF they had developed a true relationship at the beginning. And speaking of rushed, I feel the story itself was entirely too short. I understand that there are two other books following this one but another hundred pages or so could have filled the lacking characterization of hero and heroine.

I am giving a rating of 3 stars as I feel the book isn't completely horrible just lacking the usual depth of emotion and character that Bittner normally delivers.

A very poor, uninteresting historical fiction........2002-09-21

"Into the Wilderness: The Long Hunters" could have been an interesting historical fiction, as it takes place during The French & Indian War, a war that isn't written about often, but it seemed to focus more on how men reacted to war, than history. At times, I was confused with the English side and French side, but a historical note would have cleared things up, but there was none. The romance wasn't all that great, and at times interfered with the story. The relationship between Noah and Jessica happened quickly and didn't have that "courtship" romance. It seemed Noah "loved" Jessica because there was a resemblance to his late wife and Jessica "loved" Noah because she was a young, naive girl who needed to be taken care of, and was flattered that an "experienced" man had taken an interest in her. Both stories, The French & Indian War and the romance, didn't mix well and because of it, I really had no interest in finishing the story. There also should have been an epilogue explaining how the war ended and how Noah and Jessica's life turned out together. I do not recommend.

romance during the (pre-) French and Indian War.......2002-09-04

This book is okay as romance, but not so good at depicting colonial life in the 13 colonies around the time of the French and Indian War. I rate it only "okay" as a romance because I find it a little hard to believe that the 2 main characters could fall in love so quickly and so easily without really knowing eachother. In the case of Jess, I think that hero worship or puppy love or even a crush would better describe her feelings for Noah. The only hint we readers get about Noah's feelings for the teenage Jess (there is a 13 year age gap between them) are based on her appearance--she resembles his (murdered) wife to a certain degree. I also find it a little hard to believe that Noah's bloodlust and quest for revenge for the death of his wife could so easily be sated by Jess. As I was reading this novel, I could not help but think that it resembles the 1992 movie "The last of the Mohicans" in many ways. (I thought that the movie was better.)
Although the author tried to make the romance feel more historical by including actual people from the era such as George Washington, Governor Dinwiddie, Chief Pontiac, DuQuesne, et al., it still lacks enough background to understand why the French and their Indian allies and the English and their Indian allies were so intent upon killing eachother, destroying the settlements, taking captives, etc. I also found it a little hard to believe that any character would be thinking about independence from Great Britain at this time. People in the English colonies still thought of themselves as English, subjects of King George III, and the incidents that led some of the colonists to rebel 20 years after the French and Indian War had not yet occurred (namely, the colonists were taxed on sugar, tea, and stamps in order to pay for the high cost of the French and Indian War, which began in 1755. The British sent troops, advisors, supplies, weapons, etc., all of which cost a great deal of money and which the government in London expected the colonists to contribute to covering the cost of defending them against the French. Many of the captives were ransomed, that is, the governments (usually the colonial governments) paid the French in Canada to release the captive English. The French also paid the English for the release of their own captives. Sometimes captives were exchanged--English for French. Given that her timeline is a bit off, I find it a little hard to believe the story here. I am not suggesting an academic treatise on the subject. There are many excellent books on the French and Indian War. But without a little more information, all I am left with are descriptions of massacres. I also think that more character development would help the story and would help the reader care a little more about the characters. I realize that the author cannot do too much with 16-year-old Jess because she is just a teenager, but she could have more fully developed Noah's character. I suppose to make it more interesting she could have made the female protagonist older--maybe in her mid twenties, too. Her idea was a good one, and she selected an interesting period in colonial history. It is too bad that the story fell short.

romance during the (pre-) French and Indian War.......2002-09-04

Primitive Wilderness Living & Survival Skills: Naked into the Wilderness

Average customer rating:

The best there is!
Just In Case, or Just For Fun
If you actually want to survive.
Very good book, requires patience to read and digest
excellent seller and product

Primitive Wilderness Living & Survival Skills: Naked into the Wilderness
John McPherson , and Geri McPherson
Manufacturer: John Mcpherson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Outdoor Cooking | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

Instructional | Hiking & Camping | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Survival Skills | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

General | Sports | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Accessories:

Rayovac SPHLTLED 3-in-1 LED Head-Lite

ASIN: 0967877776

Book Description

This book is an in depth "how-to" of outdoor primitive skills.

Customer Reviews:

The best there is!.......2007-08-23

This book is so well written, covering so many primitive skills, that a student could spend years just working off this book alone. In my opinion, this is the best out there.

Just In Case, or Just For Fun.......2007-04-12

Learn to survive if you happen to be stranded in the wilderness with nothing but your bare hands. This information just might save your life one day.

If you actually want to survive........2007-04-10

First read some of these booklets when I was learning brain tanning etc. from Jim Riggs (Blue Mountain Buckskin: A Working Manual For Dry-scrape Braintan; another must-have book). I remember learning the dead falls and finding them the best (I have experimented with others). Since I had no money and little food they were also practical. In fact I got obsessed with the Paiute deadfall and the one by Henry Rhyne. I thought it was amazing to toss a pine needle on a trigger and watch a rock slam down like a guillotine. There are a lot of books out there with traps of dubious quality or time-consuming construction. These truly work if you are hungry.

Very good book, requires patience to read and digest.......2007-04-10

I didn't realize how good this book was until I saw a couple of videos of these people applying these skills with some of their students. What bothers me about the book is the black and white pictures that remind me of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or something creepy.These skills are especially valuable if you're lost in the wilderness with NOTHING on you. However if you do have a knife, rope, a flint etc I don't see the usefulness of knowing how to make rope out of tree bark or how to make yourself a knife out of stone or bone. A lot of this book is dedicated to making buckskin and to be honest that's really not a vital skill to wilderness survival.
This book is not primarily about wilderness survival, more about primitive living skills which aren't of much use when you already have clothes and equipment.

excellent seller and product.......2007-02-13

Item as described and received in a timely manner... an excellent buying experience!

Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate

Average customer rating:

Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate
E. Calvin Beisner
Manufacturer: Eerdmans Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Ecology | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0802844340

Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China

Average customer rating:

Mountain man
A Misty Mountain Hop through Chinese Poetry
Opened Doors
Mountains & Rivers - The Poetic Soul of China

Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China

Manufacturer: New Directions Publishing Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Anthologies | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Chinese | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Asian | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Chinese | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Chinese | Classics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0811216241

Book Description

The earliest and most extensive literary engagement with wilderness in human history, Mountain Home is vital poetry that feels utterly contemporary.

China's tradition of "rivers-and-mountains" poetry stretches across millennia. This is a plain-spoken poetry of immediate day-to-day experience, and yet seems most akin to China's grand landscape paintings. Although its wisdom is ancient, rooted in Taoist and Zen thought, the work feels utterly contemporary, especially as rendered here in Hinton's rich and accessible translations.

Mountain Home collects poems from 5th- through 13th-century China and includes the poets Li Po, Po Chü-i and Tu Fu. The "rivers-and-mountains" tradition covers a remarkable range of topics: comic domestic scenes, social protest, travel, sage recluses, and mountain landscapes shaped into forms of enlightenment. And within this range, the poems articulate the experience of living as an organic part of the natural world and its processes. In an age of global ecological disruption and mass extinction, this tradition grows more urgently important every day. Mountain Home offers poems that will charm and inform not just readers of poetry, but also the large community of readers who are interested in environmental awareness.

Customer Reviews:

Mountain man.......2007-05-09

I'm afraid all I wrote about David Hinton's Wang Wei translations applies to this collection: mannered, affected literal translation of place and personal names, Chinoiserie: Ezra Pounds meets Arthur Waley with 60s real zen somewhere in the background. I don't understand why a man who translates every proper name into quaint English leaves wú tóng (wu t'ung) tree (p.219) when "parasol tree" or even "plane tree" would do. Perhaps H.
thinks Firmiana simplex (Sterculia platanifolia) - the only tree on which the phoenix will next - must be left
alone.

Christopher Busby

A Misty Mountain Hop through Chinese Poetry.......2007-02-27

Ever want to just get away from it all? So did the poets featured in "Mountain Home," a fine anthology of Chinese poetry from the 5th century till well into the Sung Dynasty (ending in 1279). The poems herein all concentrate on nature and the poet's immersion within the natural landscapes of which he's a part, and are replete with subtle evocations of Taoist and Ch'an Buddhist themes and attitudes. Most of the poets were at some point government officials living in the capital who subsequently tuned in and dropped out--sometimes of their own accord, sometimes because it was time for them to retire anyway, but often making the best of ending up on the wrong side of the political ups-and-downs of the age. In any case, each brings his own individual, unique approach to China's long tradition of poetic nature reclusion and has shared that with us in wonderfully well-crafted verse.

While David Hinton's introductions and commentary do a wonderful job in explaining to the reader how each poet is distinct within the tradition, though, the different poems themselves all sort of come across sounding the same in his translation--oh, they're nice, no doubt about that, and the translation work seems mostly carefully accurate and sensitive while rendering the poems in a somewhat modernist American idiom. Still, they all sound a little more like David Hinton than themselves in terms of poetic voice, generally speaking. This is the inevitable quandary faced by most translators, though, especially of poetry, and the job overall is top-notch. And it really is a wonderful collection of poems, full of the calm and quiet of the mountains.

The book includes poems by T'ao Ch'ien, Hsieh Ling-yun, Meng Hao-jan, Wang Wei, Li Po, Tu Fu, Wei Ying-wu, Han Shan, Meng Chiao, Liu Tsung-Yuan, Po Chu-i, Chia Tao, Tu Mu, Mei Yao-ch'en, Wang An-shih, Su Tung-p'o, Lu Yu, Fan Ch'eng-ta, and Yang Wan-li.

Opened Doors.......2006-10-09

This book opened the door for me to the wonderful world of poetry. If you enjoy a simple life and nature, you will find comfort and kindred spirits in these ancient authors. This is a GREAT collection of nature (inner and outer) poems that will leave you begging for more. These are original, true Beat characters offering notes on spiritaulality and humanity. This is a great introduction to old beautiful simple poetry. If you enjoy this book, I suggest more modern poets David Budbill and Gary Snyder, and if you enjoy those writers, I am sure you will also love this book.

Mountains & Rivers - The Poetic Soul of China.......2003-03-08

David Hinton has given us in one volume the perfect window into the poetic soul of China. The Mountains & Rivers tradition inspired both poetry and painting in classic China for centuries and is one of the highest flowerings of human civilization. Hinton compiles all of the best poets and poems of this tradition in good translation. His commentary and mini-bios are dead on. The book would have benefited from scattered illustrations of chinese landscape painting and caligraphy which were inseparable in the Chinese cultural mind.

Average customer rating:

Into the forest - seriously impacts how you view your surroundings
Poignant and beautiful
all time favorite
Very readable and well written
I can relate

Into the Forest: A Novel
Jean Hegland
Manufacturer: Calyx Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0934971501

Amazon.com

Jean Hegland's prose in Into the Forest is as breathtaking as one of the musty, ancient redwoods that share the woodland with Nell and Eva, two sisters who must learn to live in harmony with the northern California forest when the electricity shuts off, the phones go out, their parents die, and all civilization beyond them seems to grind to a halt. At first, the girls rely on stores of food left in their parents' pantry, but when those supplies begin to dwindle, their only option is to turn to each other and the forest's plants and animals for friendship, courage, and sustenance. Into the Forest, an apocalyptic coming-of-age story, will fill readers (both teens and adults) with a profound sense of the human spirit's strength and beauty.

Book Description

Once in a generation we come across a novel that offers a voice and a vision that have the power to change the way we look at ourselves and our world.  Here is such a novel by Jean Hegland, an extraordinary fiction debut...Into the Forest.

Eva, eighteen, and Nell, seventeen, are sisters, adolescents on the threshold of womanhood--and for them anything should be possible.  But even as Eva prepares for an audition with the San Francisco Ballet and Nell dreams of her first semester at Harvard, their lives are turned upside down and their dreams are pushed into the shadows.  In a nation suddenly without electricity or communications, Eva is compelled to dance alone to the music of memory, and Nell's education consists of reading the encyclopedia, devouring knowledge as if it were her last meal.  Theirs is an age of darkness and terror.

A distant war rages overseas.  Resources society had depended on, such as gas and electricity, are no longer available.  Riots spread through the inner cities, while deadly viral infections spread across the countryside.  Isolated in their home in the northern California woods, Eva and Nell live in a world without television or phones, in a time of suspicion and superstition, of anger, hunger, and fear.  Perhaps one day the lights--and their dreams--will return, but orphaned by their parents' deaths and by society, Eva and Nell have been left to forage through the forest, and through their past, for the keys to survival.  As they blaze a path into the forest and into the future, they become pioneers and pilgrims--not only creatures of the new world, but the creators of it.

Into the Forest is the gripping, unforgettable story of these remarkable sisters as they struggle to redefine themselves and their life together.  It is a passionate and poignant tale of stirring sensuality, chilling insight, and profound inspiration--a novel that will move you and surprise you and touch you to the core.

Alison Elliott's film credits include Wyatt Earp, The Underneath, Wings of a Dove, and The Spitfire Grill, which won the Sundance Film Festival's Dramatic Audience Award.

Customer Reviews:

Into the forest - seriously impacts how you view your surroundings.......2007-08-03

This is an amazing book. I became totally engrossed in the characters and their life choices. The ending was astonishing and perhaps not the way I would have gone, but up until that point, I began to listen to the news and see just how possible this scenario could be and wonder how I'd react. It forces you to look around at all you have and wonder what life would be like if you didn't have the most basic of modern conveniences. Great story - great book for discussion - I highly recommend.

Poignant and beautiful.......2007-06-16

Hegland writes with the ease of one who is a born writer- someone who makes language flow with grace, beauty and richness. Her story is relevant and important for Western culture to ponder as the continued waste and destruction of natural resources becomes common place and we no longer question the magnitude of loss. Prophetic and pragmatic, Hegland creates solutions to tribulations of place, time and person that we may find helpful, if not guideposts, to living through crises.
Tangible and poignant, Hegland's story could be our own. As an aside, it is interesting and refreshing that she includes homeschooling as a non-religious, but philosophical, intelligent, realistic, matter-of-life choice for her characters - a rare and inspiring find for those who teach at home. Hegland's book is a page-turning pleasure.

all time favorite.......2007-06-07

This book goes on my list of all time favorites. It is beautifully written, has a unique interesting story and great characters. It really made me think about how we live, what we take for granted and how life might be different in the future. I highly recommend it.

Very readable and well written.......2007-05-03

First of all, this is a very readable book. I voraciously consumed it. You quickly sink into the world that it creates: What happens to two young women, living at the edge of a forest in Northern California, if the social and economic infrastructure of the modern world gradually collapses? This is a book about survival and adaption, but by its geographical and cultural isolation is a pretty limited view of the world. I don't think that these sisters would make the decision they make at the end of the book if they were living in Alaska or Montana, for example.

I'm not sure the book does justice to the civilization (and social structure) that has been left behind, although I think it does an excellent job of chronically the wastefulness of our culture.

All in all, a wonderful first novel, not perfect, but left me wanting to read more of Jean Hegland.

I can relate.......2007-01-22

I am somewhat mystified by the negativity of some of the reviews, but I guess that's people.

As an American Soldier who just came back from Iraq (chaos), who grew up on the edge of a beautiful forest in northern Arizona, who tended to a rather large garden in childhood, and is currently experiencing emotional isolation due to my wife still being in Iraq, I can say that this story had a strong emotional impact for me.

I realize that not many people may be in a position to cry all the way through this book like I did. And there are always the fundementalists who reject it entirely because the sexuality falls out of the norm for a brief instant.

And I don't understand the intense criticism of the end. It seemed to me that they were simply making a commitment. It was ceremonial.

I really liked this book. If you think the electricity is going to shut off someday, forever, you might like it too.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books