Posts tagged: Reviews

New Interactive Book Features Personal Essays About Global Warming

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By , June 26, 2009 2:56 pm

New Anthology Offers Personal Stories and Reflections on Global Warming from New and Established Writers and Photographers

Unique collaboration between nonprofit and publisher will make interactive book accessible to millions of Americans for free.

NEW YORK – A new generation of writers and photographers with a personal connection to global warming are taking inspiration from Henry David Thoreau and other legendary environmental authors by publishing their works in a special anthology from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Penguin Classics.

The nonprofit science group and Penguin Classics selected essays and photos by 67 Americans for the new book Thoreau’s Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming. The contributors include scientists, students, grandparents, activists, veterans, journalists, evangelical Christians, artists, and businesspeople who live in 32 states stretching from Alaska to Florida. A foreword on global warming by award-winning novelist, poet and nonfiction author Barbara Kingsolver helps to set the context.

UCS and Penguin Classics will offer the anthology for free online as an interactive book at www.ucsusa.org/americanstories and a forthcoming eBook. A limited edition hardcover also will be available for purchase. The online interactive book will allow the anthology to be instantly shared with friends through emails and on social media sites.

“This partnership was unique in so many ways, but no more so in the reversal of roles we each played,” said Kevin Knobloch, UCS’s president. “Penguin Classics spearheaded efforts to inform the public about the need to speak out about global warming, while we took the editorial and publishing lead.”

“I have great respect for the work of the Union of Concerned Scientists,” said Elda Rotor, editorial director at Penguin Classics, “and it’s been very satisfying for us to have been able to help generate public participation in this project, and we hope their voices will be heard; particularly as Congress debates legislation to reduce the pollution that contributes to global warming.”

Personal Perspectives from Across the Nation

As Ms. Kingsolver writes in her foreword, to find hope in our future “we must radically reconsider the power relationship between humans and our habitat.” The contributors to Thoreau’s Legacy do just that. We see the changes in New England’s natural beauty through the eyes of an observant ninth-grader. We learn how pollution and a warming climate are affecting the Yakama Indians’ way of life. We follow a family whose faith has led them on a journey to protect the planet. We look into the fearsome eyes of an old polar bear crossing the Alaskan ice. And we get a useful, if painful, lesson from a New Orleans native who can never go home again and who worries for other American cities. These are just a few of the many personal accounts about climate change in this collection.

The Genesis of this Anthology

UCS and Penguin Classics teamed up in September 2008 to encourage writers and photographers to submit their personal impressions of global warming — in words or images — for publication in a new book.

Hundreds of bookstores across the country joined the effort by displaying easels and distributing free bookmarks about the project. Both Penguin Classics and UCS featured the project prominently on their Web sites.

The partners received nearly 1,000 submissions from established and aspiring writers and photographers from across the country. They submitted 200- to 500-word personal accounts or photographs that focused on the places they love and want to protect; the animals, plants, people and activities they fear are at risk from a changing climate; and the steps they are taking in their own lives to stem the tide of global warming.

A team of reviewers from Penguin Classics and UCS selected 67 contributions for the anthology. Working with Mixit Productions, they produced an innovative interactive book. In July a limited edition hardcover coffee table book and a downloadable eBook will also be available.

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The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.

Penguin Classics is the largest and most comprehensive publisher of classic literature in English in the world, and as a publisher is committed to using paper products from manufacturers that are committed to sustainable paper production techniques, and to in-house conservation and recycling in our daily business practice.

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Received: Hawk & Handsaw

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By , June 23, 2009 6:56 pm

Terrain.org recently received:

Unity College, Maine
Editor, Kathryn Miles

Hawk & Handsaw is a handsome new, full-color journal published once a year that offers “works of art from established and emerging writers dedicated to a specific facet of environmental sustainability. The plurality of voices within each issue reveals the range of perspectives and practices as well as the richness that a sustainable life affords.” Work includes nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and art.
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From the editor:
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“Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the contributors to Hawk & Handsaw know which way the wind blows. They know that a sustainable lifestyle can be messy and meaningful, that it requires reflection, deep philosophical commitment and, more often than not, a good sense of humor. To this end, Hawk & Handsaw celebrates the thinking and reflection that ground sustainable practices and practitioners.”
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The new issue, the journal’s second, is beautiful both in scope and production, and includes work by Scott Russell Sanders, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Kathryn Kiripatrick, Carolyln Kraus, Terrain.org editor Simmons B. Buntin, and many others. View the full table of contents here.
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How do you get your hands on this issue? Order a copy or subscribe online. You’ll be delighted once you receive your copy, as we were when we received ours.

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Received: The Author’s Guide to Publishing and Marketing

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By , May 31, 2009 6:12 pm

Terrain.org recently received:

O Books, 2009 (United Kingdom, distributed by Orca NBN in North America)

From the publisher:

Author Tim Ward and publisher John Hunt have teamed up to create The Author’s Guide to Publishing and Marketing, a must read for any would-be author, especially in tough economic times. The book is an invaluable resource for new and experienced writers navigating the challenging terrain of book publishing and marketing. Crammed full of time-saving advice and specific suggestions to help authors make the most of their literary creations.

The book draws from the experience of Tim Ward, author of four prevous books, and John Hunt, publisher of O Books. O Books operates a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in all areas of its business, from its global network of authors to productino, and worldwide distribution.

This book is produced on FSC certified stock, within ISO14001 standards and teh printer plants sufficient trees each year through the Woodland Trust to absorb the level of emitted carbon in its production.

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Terrain.org will not be reviewing this book in a future issue. However, it appears to be a comprehensive, very user-friendly book, and given O Books’s commitment to sustainable publishing, should be at the top of your list for books in this category.

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Received: Voices from the American Land, a New Chapbook Series

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By , May 23, 2009 8:25 pm

Terrain.org recently received:

Voices from the American Land : Winter 2009
Lo & Behold: Household and Threshold on California’s North Coast, by Joanne Kyger

Voices from the American Land chapbooks are published four times a year by the American Land Publishing Project, Inc., a New Mexico nonprofit organization, in partnership with the Center for American Places at Columbia College, Chicago. The ALPP produces four chapbooks a year, offered by subscription, and conducts on-the-land readings and classroom educational activities. The Center publishes an annual collection of the chapbooks as a single volume, distributed nationally to bookstores by the University of Chicago Press.

On the inside cover:

Here begins Voices from the American Land — Joanne Kyger’s chronicle of a literary life infused with the natural scene in a village on the northern California coast. Lo & Behold offers an evocative memoir of the animals, plants, landforms, strange and wonderful visitors, neighbors, an dfamous poets and artists that are part of the poet’s daily round.

Forthcoming authors include Quraysh Ali Lansans [out now] who writes of growing up black (and Native American) in the hard, dusty landscapes of Oklahoma. He is Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Studies and Creative Writing at Chicago State University. Patricia Clark, poet-in-residence at Grand Valley State University, reflects on the numinous interaction of the human spirit with the spirit of the woodlands of Michigan. And Levi Romero, poet and architect-planner, whose work, in English and Spanish, tells of the life on the land in Hispanic northern New Mexico. A critic writes: “No other poet can pull el duende from his labyrinth the way Levi can.” Such as the Voices from the American Land.

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Terrain.org will not be reviewing this chapbook in a forthcoming issue, but we do encourage you to investigate the good work of the American Land Publishing Project and the quarterly Voices from the American Land series at http://www.voicesfromtheamericanland.org/.

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Culture and the Environment — A Conversation in Five Essays

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By , May 21, 2009 9:26 pm

If you haven’t yet seen it, then you need to do yourself a favor and head out to your local literary bookstore, or order online, the latest copy of The Georgia Review (Spring 2009).

Among many other outstanding contributions, it includes “Culture and the Environment — A Conversation in Five Essays:” Scott Russell Sanders (Simplicity and Sanity), Reg Saner (Sweet Reason, Global Swarming), David Gessner (Against Simplicity), Lauret Savoy (Pieces toward a Just Whole), and Alison Hawthorne Deming (Culture, Biology, and Emergence).

From The Georgia Review editor Stephen Corey’s introduction:

The keynote work, Scott Russell Sanders’s “Simplicity and Sanity,” puts forward a wide-ranging examination of humankind’s relationship to the natural world and argues for its radical overhaul.

Reg Saner’s “Sweet Reason, Global Swarming” embraces Sanders’ fears for the literal survival of the human race but gives the argument a different center — one that conjures a dark figure from all of our high school history classes, Thomas Malthus, whose lone claim to renown is a theory we have let slip into the background while confronting myriad more immediate-seeming dangers.

David Gessner then confronts Sanders with “Against Simplicity: A Few Words for Complexity, Slippiness and Joy,” claiming that his sometime-mentor/idol may be entering the fray with the wrong weapon in hand.

Lauret Edith Savoy, in “Pieces toward a Just Whole,” initially lauds Sanders’ position but concentrates the bulk of her essay on certain racial and economic factors that she believes are being overlooked in virtually all discussions of environmental catastrophe.

Alison Hawthorne Deming’s “Culture, Biology, Emergence,” the most sweeping of the five essays in this conjured five-way conversation, moves across eons of time and many disciplines of study to reach a conclusion that is, paradoxically, more desparate and more hopeful than those presented by her four compatriots.

If you are familiar with The Georgia Review (which has no relation to Terrain.org though many of the contributors mentioned above appear in our online pages), then you know that its contributions are of the highest quality. With this environmentally focused issue, the journal clarifies the focus by some of our foremost thinkers and writers, literary or otherwise.

We encourage you to check it out.

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Received: Crazy Love, new poems by Pamela Uschuk

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By , May 21, 2009 4:14 am
Terrain.org recently received:

Published by Wings Press, San Antonio, 2009.

From the publisher:

Through bold and innovative language, a strong female narrative explores the world and provides a voice for those who have been silenced in this empowering and inspirational collection of poetry. Examining a wide range of topics—love, spirituality, nature, and family—the poems give particular focus to politics, discussing how the actions of the government affect individuals on a daily basis. Filled with natural imagery and speckled with traces of the author’s Russian, Swedish, and American heritage, this fresh compilation dares to take risks and ultimately offers hope and inspiration to people from all walks of life.

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Pamela Uschuk is a professor of creative writing at Fort Lewis College, the editor in chief of the literary magazine Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, and the author of four volumes of poetry, including the award-winning Finding Peaches in the Desert and the Pulitzer Prize–nominated Scattered Risks. She lives in Durango, Colorado.

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Look for a review of Crazy Love, which Naomi Shihab Nye describes as “life lived at the fever pitch of awareness and care” in the forthcoming issue of Terrain.org.

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Received: The Edge of the Sea of Cortez, by Betty Hupp and Marilyn Malone

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By , May 11, 2009 7:02 pm
Terrain.org recently received:

A seashore adventure beyond beachcombing…

Published by Operculum, LLC and distributed by The University of Arizona Press

From the publisher:

The Sea of Cortez, also known as the Gulf of California, is framed by the Mexican mainland and the Baja California peninsula. Once called the Vermillion Sea, its long narrow shape results in tidal extremes that provide a unique home for a rich diversity of marine life. The beautiful waters entice tourists from all over the world and beckon marine scientists to discover their secrets.

Lavishly illustrated in the tradition of Dorling Kindersley’s reference books, The Edge of the Sea of Cortez: Tidewalkers’ Guide to the Upper Gulf of California is the only guide to the diverse sea creatures that can be observed along the rocky shores of the Gulf of California. In these pages, you will find a trove of valuable information whether you take this book with you along the beach, meeting the fascinating creatures at the tips of your toes, or simply read about these intertidal denizens from afar.

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While I’m afraid we won’t be able to fit a review of this book into a forthcoming issue, I assure you it is a beautiful, user-friendly book that would serve Sea of Cortez visitors well.

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Received: A Conservationist Manifesto, by Scott Russell Sanders

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By , May 11, 2009 6:33 pm
With this post, we’re committing to posting more often on this blog, in part by noting those publications we receive for review, which may or may not make it into an actual review on Terrain.org. Look for updates at least weekly and more often when possible.

We recently received:

Practical, Ecological, and Philosophical Grounds for a Conservation Ethic

From Indiana University Press, the publisher:

As an antidote to the destructive culture of consumption dominating American life today, Scott Russell Sanders calls for a culture of conservation that allows us to savor and preserve the world, instead of devouring it. How might we shift to a more durable and responsible way of life? What changes in values and behavior will be required? Ranging geographically from southern Indiana to the Boundary Waters Wilderness and culturally from the Bible to billboards, Sanders extends the visions of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Rachel Carson to our own day.

A Conservationist Manifesto shows the crucial relevance of a conservation ethic at a time of mounting concern about global climate change, depletion of natural resources, extinction of species, and the economic inequities between rich and poor nations. The important message of this powerful book is that conservation is not simply a personal virtue but a public one.

Scott Russell Sanders, Distinguished Professor of English at Indiana University Bloomington, is the author of 20 books of fiction and nonfiction, including Writing from the Center (IUP, 1995), Hunting for Hope, and A Private History of Awe. Sanders is winner of the Lannan Literary Award, John Burroughs Essay Award for Natural History, AWP Award in Creative Nonfiction, and the 2009 Mark Twain Award. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana.

What others are saying:

“Sanders’s A Conservationist Manifesto is a book to be savored — for its language, its stories, its sense of place, and for how it reminds us of the profound relationships with nature and each other that can inspire us to change how we live on this planet. . . . A must read for all of us who are wrestling with the future of conservation and searching for how to express the values that will take us to a greener and more sustainable future”
— Will Rogers, President, The Trust for Public Land

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Look for a review of A Conservationist Manifesto in Terrain.org’s next issue, which publishes on September 10, 2009.

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Salmon: A Journey in Poetry

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By , October 21, 2007 5:46 am

Salmon: A Journey in Poetry 1981-2007 — edited by Terrain.org editorial board member Jessie Lendennie — celebrates 26 years of innovative and exciting Irish and international poetry. The organization of the volume is simple: two poems from the poet’s Salmon collection (or collections) and one uncollected poem. Detailed biographical notes for each poet and a complete bilbiography of Salmon’s publications, are also included.
Look for a review by poet Deborah Fries in Terrain.org’s upcoming issue.

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Annotation: Disturbing the Universe by Freeman Dyson

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By , February 2, 2007 3:59 am

Disturbing the Universe by Freeman Dyson

Disturbing the Universe is a mixed-genre account not only of Freeman Dyson’s academic and professional life, but of the scientific and often moral and spiritual development of the Western world, especially the United States as an intellectual melting pot, from World War II until the 1970s. I say mixed-genre because it is part memoir, part scientific reporting, part political commentary, part speculative and philosophical examination—and always utterly fascinating.

Of course, it does not account for all events nor even all major scientific advances during the time; it is not a catalog or encyclopedia, and it is much the better for that. Always told in the first person, Disturbing the Universe is divided into three sections: I. England, II. America, and III. Points Beyond.

As the sections evolve—the first section based primarily on a few specific, narrative examples of Dyson’s childhood as well as a more detailed account of his involvement in England’s Bomber Command, the second on his personal development and scientific involvement in a wide variety of math- and physics-related endeavors of national and global implication, and the third mostly discussing the future of science, and so the future of civilization—Dyson’s approach evolves, as well.

Memoir is strongest in the early sections. Scientific reporting and to a degree political commentary are strongest in the middle and largest section of the book. Philosophical exploration and resultant political commentary, though always specific and gentlemanly, define the third section. Personal essay combining flowing narrative and strong metaphor occurs throughout.

Dyson’s book is a classic example that you must first become an expert in your field to then wax poetic on it. By that I mean that Dyson thoroughly validates his concluding arguments—his vision of mankind’s future—by detailing his experiences, conjectures, and perhaps most importantly failures along with successes.

What captivated me most, however, was not the last but rather the first and second sections of the book. Here we find Dyson writing crisp, entertaining narrative that nonetheless covers complex subjects like nuclear physics and rocket science (particularly in the second section). Toward the end of II. America, though, Dyson weaves in a much stronger critique of political and military actions in relation to his own, clearly acknowledging his role, as much for worse as for better. The chapters “The Ethics of Defense” and “The Murder of Dover Sharp” are particularly pressing and poignant in this respect. Indeed, while we’ve learned a great deal about Dyson the scientist and even Dyson the critical thinker to this point, we may have learned the most about the man as a human being in these two chapters.

Even if we believe as Dyson does that time and space do not work in linear fashion, the book is mostly chronological. Given the technical nature of much of the subject matter, as well as the significant historical events—World War II and the Cold War, predominantly—a chronological approach both makes sense and works well. But Disturbing the Universe also does not rely solely on a linear pattern, as references to historic events, people, and arts (including and perhaps especially literature), and speculation and forethought are eloquently woven throughout the text.

Dyson’s major intents here are threefold. First, he wants to record the amazing time he lived in, as well has his place and role in that time. Second, he wants to demonstrate accountability for many of the actions of the day—both his involvement in scientific discoveries, and his responsibility in activities that he realizes were not right, or at least did not turn out as perhaps then the scientists thought it might. Dyson’s realization of the great harms of nuclear fallout from bomb tests and Orion rocket tests—if ever expanded—is perhaps the strongest example. Third, he wants to build upon his great experience to offer a vision of the future—with a passionate (and still scientifically credible) call for solar energy and an entertaining and thoroughly acceptable thesis on how humans will (not may; he has no doubt of this) expand into space.

While I think the third section is the weakest of the three—simply because it cannot rest on the imagery and compelling historical details of the first two sections—I do not consider the third section a weakness. All three sections and the entire book are wonderfully written, pulling from a wide array of literary techniques that in lesser collections could seem fragmented, but here work in harmony, not unlike the beautifully simple structure of a single atom.

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