^^ Get Free Ebook Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman

Get Free Ebook Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman

Checking out, once even more, will provide you something new. Something that you do not know then exposed to be well known with guide Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman notification. Some knowledge or lesson that re obtained from reading books is vast. A lot more publications Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman you check out, even more understanding you get, and also more possibilities to constantly love reading e-books. Since of this factor, reading publication ought to be begun with earlier. It is as just what you could get from the book Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman

Get Free Ebook Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman

Recommendation in picking the very best book Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman to read this day can be obtained by reading this web page. You could discover the most effective book Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman that is marketed in this world. Not just had actually the books released from this country, yet likewise the various other countries. And also currently, we intend you to check out Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman as one of the reading materials. This is just one of the very best books to collect in this website. Consider the page and also look the books Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman You could find bunches of titles of the books supplied.

By reading Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman, you can understand the expertise and points more, not just regarding exactly what you obtain from people to people. Reserve Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman will certainly be more relied on. As this Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman, it will really provide you the smart idea to be effective. It is not only for you to be success in specific life; you can be effective in everything. The success can be begun by understanding the fundamental knowledge and also do activities.

From the combination of expertise and activities, someone could enhance their ability and capacity. It will certainly lead them to live and work much better. This is why, the pupils, workers, or even companies ought to have reading routine for books. Any kind of book Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman will certainly offer certain expertise to take all perks. This is just what this Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman tells you. It will certainly add even more knowledge of you to life and function better. Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman, Try it and also show it.

Based upon some encounters of many individuals, it is in truth that reading this Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman can help them to make far better selection and provide more experience. If you wish to be among them, let's acquisition this book Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman by downloading guide on link download in this website. You can get the soft file of this book Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman to download and deposit in your readily available digital gadgets. Exactly what are you awaiting? Allow get this book Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman online and also review them in whenever and also any location you will review. It will certainly not encumber you to bring hefty publication Hot, Flat, And Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, By Thomas L. Friedman within your bag.

Thomas L. Friedman’s no. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way. Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy—both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to all of us who are concerned about the state of America in the global future.

Friedman proposes that an ambitious national strategy— which he calls “Geo-Greenism”—is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating; it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure.

As in The World Is Flat, he explains a new era—the Energy-Climate era—through an illuminating account of recent events. He shows how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet (which brought 3 billion new consumers onto the world stage) have combined to bring climate and energy issues to Main Street. But they have not gone very far down Main Street; the much-touted “green revolution” has hardly begun. With all that in mind, Friedman sets out the clean-technology breakthroughs we, and the world, will need; he shows that the ET (Energy Technology) revolution will be both transformative and disruptive; and he explains why America must lead this revolution—with the first Green President and a Green New Deal, spurred by the Greenest Generation.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman—fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the world we live in today.

• Sales Rank: #116169 in Books
• Brand: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
• Published on: 2008-09-08
• Released on: 2008-09-08
• Ingredients: Example Ingredients
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.13" w x 6.00" l, 1.55 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780374166854
• Condition: USED - Good
• Notes: 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Amazon.com Review
Book Description

Thomas L. Friedman’s phenomenal number-one bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see the world in a new way. In his brilliant, essential new book, Friedman takes a fresh and provocative look at two of the biggest challenges we face today: America’s surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11; and the global environmental crisis, which is affecting everything from food to fuel to forests. In this groundbreaking account of where we stand now, he shows us how the solutions to these two big problems are linked--how we can restore the world and revive America at the same time.

Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is “hot, flat, and crowded.” Already the earth is being affected in ways that threaten to make it dangerously unstable. In just a few years, it will be too late to fix things--unless the United States steps up now and takes the lead in a worldwide effort to replace our wasteful, inefficient energy practices with a strategy for clean energy, energy efficiency, and conservation that Friedman calls Code Green.

This is a great challenge, Friedman explains, but also a great opportunity, and one that America cannot afford to miss. Not only is American leadership the key to the healing of the earth; it is also our best strategy for the renewal of America.

In vivid, entertaining chapters, Friedman makes it clear that the green revolution we need is like no revolution the world has seen. It will be the biggest innovation project in American history; it will be hard, not easy; and it will change everything from what you put into your car to what you see on your electric bill. But the payoff for America will be more than just cleaner air. It will inspire Americans to something we haven’t seen in a long time--nation-building in America--by summoning the intelligence, creativity, boldness, and concern for the common good that are our nation’s greatest natural resources.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman: fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the challenge--and the promise--of the future.

Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria: Author One-to-One

Fareed Zakaria: Your book is about two things, the climate crisis and also about an American crisis. Why do you link the two? 

Thomas Friedman: You're absolutely right--it is about two things. The book says, America has a problem and the world has a problem. The world's problem is that it's getting hot, flat and crowded and that convergence--that perfect storm--is driving a lot of negative trends. America's problem is that we've lost our way--we've lost our groove as a country. And the basic argument of the book is that we can solve our problem by taking the lead in solving the world's problem.

Zakaria: Explain what you mean by "hot, flat and crowded."

Friedman: There is a convergence of basically three large forces: one is global warming, which has been going on at a very slow pace since the industrial revolution; the second--what I call the flattening of the world--is a metaphor for the rise of middle-class citizens, from China to India to Brazil to Russia to Eastern Europe, who are beginning to consume like Americans. That's a blessing in so many ways--it's a blessing for global stability and for global growth. But it has enormous resource complications, if all these people--whom you've written about in your book, The Post American World--begin to consume like Americans. And lastly, global population growth simply refers to the steady growth of population in general, but at the same time the growth of more and more people able to live this middle-class lifestyle. Between now and 2020, the world's going to add another billion people. And their resource demands--at every level--are going to be enormous. I tell the story in the book how, if we give each one of the next billion people on the planet just one sixty-watt incandescent light bulb, what it will mean: the answer is that it will require about 20 new 500-megawatt coal-burning power plants. That's so they can each turn on just one light bulb!

Zakaria: In my book I talk about the "rise of the rest" and about the reality of how this rise of new powerful economic nations is completely changing the way the world works. Most everyone's efforts have been devoted to Kyoto-like solutions, with the idea of getting western countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. But I grew to realize that the West was a sideshow. India and China will build hundreds of coal-fire power plants in the next ten years and the combined carbon dioxide emissions of those new plants alone are five times larger than the savings mandated by the Kyoto accords. What do you do with the Indias and Chinas of the world?

Friedman: I think there are two approaches. There has to be more understanding of the basic unfairness they feel. They feel like we sat down, had the hors d'oeuvres, ate the entrée, pretty much finished off the dessert, invited them for tea and coffee and then said, "Let's split the bill." So I understand the big sense of unfairness--they feel that now that they have a chance to grow and reach with large numbers a whole new standard of living, we're basically telling them, "Your growth, and all the emissions it would add, is threatening the world's climate." At the same time, what I say to them--what I said to young Chinese most recently when I was just in China is this: Every time I come to China, young Chinese say to me, "Mr. Friedman, your country grew dirty for 150 years. Now it's our turn." And I say to them, "Yes, you're absolutely right, it's your turn. Grow as dirty as you want. Take your time. Because I think we probably just need about five years to invent all the new clean power technologies you're going to need as you choke to death, and we're going to come and sell them to you. And we're going to clean your clock in the next great global industry. So please, take your time. If you want to give us a five-year lead in the next great global industry, I will take five. If you want to give us ten, that would be even better. In other words, I know this is unfair, but I am here to tell you that in a world that's hot, flat and crowded, ET--energy technology--is going to be as big an industry as IT--information technology. Maybe even bigger. And who claims that industry--whose country and whose companies dominate that industry--I think is going to enjoy more national security, more economic security, more economic growth, a healthier population, and greater global respect, for that matter, as well. So you can sit back and say, it's not fair that we have to compete in this new industry, that we should get to grow dirty for a while, or you can do what you did in telecommunications, and that is try to leap-frog us. And that's really what I'm saying to them: this is a great economic opportunity. The game is still open. I want my country to win it--I'm not sure it will.

Zakaria: I'm struck by the point you make about energy technology. In my book I'm pretty optimistic about the United States. But the one area where I'm worried is actually ET. We do fantastically in biotech, we're doing fantastically in nanotechnology. But none of these new technologies have the kind of system-wide effect that information technology did. Energy does. If you want to find the next technological revolution you need to find an industry that transforms everything you do. Biotechnology affects one critical aspect of your day-to-day life, health, but not all of it. But energy--the consumption of energy--affects every human activity in the modern world. Now, my fear is that, of all the industries in the future, that's the one where we're not ahead of the pack. Are we going to run second in this race?

Friedman: Well, I want to ask you that, Fareed. Why do you think we haven't led this industry, which itself has huge technological implications? We have all the secret sauce, all the technological prowess, to lead this industry. Why do you think this is the one area--and it's enormous, it's actually going to dwarf all the others--where we haven't been at the real cutting edge?

Continue reading the Q&A between Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria

From Publishers Weekly
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Friedman (The World Is Flat) is still an unrepentant guru of globalism, despite the looming economic crisis attributable, in Friendman's view, to the U.S. having become a "subprime nation that thinks it can just borrow its way to prosperity." Friedman covers familiar territory (the need for alternate energy, conservation measures, recycling, energy efficiency, etc.) as a build-up to his main thesis: the U.S. market is the "most effective and prolific system for transformational innovation.... There is only one thing bigger than Mother Nature and that is Father Profit." While he remains ostensibly a proponent of the free market, he does not flinch from using the government to create conditions favorable to investment, such as setting a "floor price for crude oil or gasoline," and imposing a new gasoline tax ($5-$10 per gallon) in order to make investment in green technologies attractive to venture capitalists: "America needs an energy technology bubble just like the information technology bubble." To make such draconian measures palatable, Friedman poses a national competition to "outgreen" China, modeled on Kennedy's proposal to beat the Soviets to the moon, a race that required a country-wide mobilization comparable to the WWII war effort. Recognizing the looming threat of "petrodicatorship" and U.S. dependence on imported oil, this warning salvo presents a stirring and far-darker vision than Friedman's earlier books.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
It’s hard not to admire Thomas Friedman’s reporting, even if it sometimes feels like a sales pitch. That’s why those who agree with Friedman’s analysis were excited about this book: it may not be the best volume available on the subject, but it will encourage millions of people to think about the central role climate change should play in the national discourse. But Bjøorn Lomborg, author of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, wrote that Friedman exaggerates the impact of global warming, uses random research to support his argument, and completely fails to take economics into account when he proposes solutions. Eric Fisher, on the other hand, was so annoyed with Friedman’s drastic tone and predilection for coining sociological “laws” that his review skirted Friedman’s argument and mocked its form, which may represent the reaction of some of those seeking a more sophisticated take on this timely subject.
Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

Most helpful customer reviews

49 of 50 people found the following review helpful.
Friedman takes a long walk to make a short but critical point
By Scott Schiefelbein
NY Times columnist Tom Friedman has written some of the more important current events books of the last twenty years. This effort is a spin-off of his (so far) magnum opus, "The World is Flat." In that book, Friedman chronicled the dizzying array of changes that technology, demographics, and the fall of communism have unleashed upon the world. The message - the world has entered a new epoch fueled by instant communication and the mammoth human resources that have been unleashed in India, Latin America, and even Africa. A clear must-read, "TWIF" is an Important Book.

So it was no surprise that Friedman has cranked out a follow-up. In "Hot, Flat and Crowded," Friedman takes the same dynamics that he described in "TWIF" and examines their consequences on our polluted, energy-starved world. What will we do when literally hundreds of millions of people who previously consumed little or no energy (because they were so poor and had no infrastructure) enter the middle class work force thanks to the benefits of technology?

One of the problems Friedman posed in "TWIF" is that Americans who do not fight to stay ahead will be surpassed by ambitious folks from India, China, Latin America, etc. In "HFC," Friedman posits that a Green Energy revolution is the answer - the world is going to be crying out for alternative energy resources and products that encourage smart consumption of energy. If America can take the lead in these areas, our leadership role in the world is assured.

But Friedman sees problems everywhere - rightly so. Our government and economy are addicted to fossil fuels, and nobody is stepping up to take the leadership mantle.

So why only three stars? Well, first thing - Friedman has never been much of a stylist. The prose is workmanlike, which is fine for a column but gets tedious after a few hundred pages. And the book starts to resemble a piano player playing one note over and over again. This is not a bloated Tom Clancy novel by any means, but one wishes that Friedman could have tightened things up a bit.

But the book is still an important read - because as Friedman points out, our green revolution is most likely to come from the American people (and its entrepreneurs) rather than the political leadership. In that, he is surely right.

234 of 271 people found the following review helpful.
Spurring on Energy Creativity
By John Zxerce
Friedman writes on world population, the increase of the global middle class, and the growing energy crisis. All of this has contributed to a world that is in desperate need of an energy solution. The thing I like about Friedman's approach is he's optimistic and he's practical. His major points are...

-- The battle over green (energy) will define the first part of the 21st century, just like the battle over red (communism) defined the last half of the 20th century.
-- Everyone needs to accept that oil will never again be cheap...
-- Off-shore drilling may be a temporary fix, but it's not the long-term solution.
-- The fossil-fuel age will end only when we invent our way out of it...
-- The last big innovation in energy production was nuclear power half a century ago, which is an important component to solving our energy problem, but we need additional solutions...
-- In order to further real innovation we need people "throwing crazy dollars at every idea, in every garage, that we have 100,000 people trying 100,000 things, five of which might work, and two might be the next green Google."
-- Friedman emphasizes the practical side of green - "It's the incredible sense of opportunity here. It's not just about saving the polar bears. It's not just about saving three generations from climate change. It's also about rising to the greatest economic opportunity that's come along in a long, long, time."

In the end, he is asking for collaboration and innovation. Of course that begs the question - where does the money come from for all of this? It's always easy to point at the government, but when we look at where real economic solutions have come from it's most often private industry. I wish Friedman would have written on how governments can create environments were private industry is incentivized to create, invent, and discover. Even so, Friedman's book is a needed wake-up call.

45 of 49 people found the following review helpful.
A must-read
By Martin N. Pettet
Tom Friedman's book is a journalistic tour de force. He has been everywhere, it seems, and interviewed everyone who matters in doing his research. With that engaging style we are used to from his columns, he confronts here the biggest issues facing our nation and the planet. The book is essentially in two parts; a diagnosis, and a proposed cure. The first section is one of the most succint summaries that I am aware of what has gone wrong in our civilization over the past fifty years. His equations of financial meltdown with global warming are clever...The second half of the book, however, is very different, though no less impressive in its way; a kind of well-informed optimistic wish list of steps to turn the crisis around. It does, however, as Friedman states himself several times, often sound a bit like science fiction. Everything he suggests, from a 'smart' utility grid, to universal green fiscal incentives, is possible, but you come away from the book feeling that their achievement, on the grand or global scale, is rather like trying to scale Mount Everest with a Segway. Friedman points out plenty of examples of individual pioneers, but that's an entirely different thing to remolding the national consciousness from the inside, which is what he proposes. The book is actually replete with example of the vast entrenched obstacles in the way of getting to where he wants to go. It seems a pity, but after reading this book I actually feel more pessimistic about the possibility of America regenerating itself in the twenty first century.

See all 423 customer reviews...

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman PDF
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman EPub
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman Doc
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman iBooks
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman rtf
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman Mobipocket
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman Kindle

^^ Get Free Ebook Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman Doc

^^ Get Free Ebook Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman Doc

^^ Get Free Ebook Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman Doc

^^ Get Free Ebook Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman Doc

^ Download Ebook Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont

Download Ebook Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont

Checking out, as soon as even more, will give you something new. Something that you do not know then disclosed to be well known with guide Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont message. Some expertise or session that re obtained from reviewing e-books is vast. A lot more publications Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont you read, even more understanding you get, and also much more chances to always enjoy reading publications. Due to this factor, reading publication must be started from earlier. It is as what you could acquire from the book Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont

Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont

Download Ebook Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont

When you are rushed of job due date and also have no concept to obtain motivation, Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont book is one of your options to take. Book Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont will certainly offer you the appropriate resource and also thing to obtain motivations. It is not just regarding the jobs for politic business, management, economics, and other. Some ordered works making some fiction works likewise require motivations to get rid of the job. As exactly what you need, this Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont will probably be your option.

To overcome the problem, we now offer you the technology to purchase guide Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont not in a thick published data. Yeah, reviewing Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont by on-line or obtaining the soft-file only to read can be one of the methods to do. You could not really feel that checking out a publication Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont will certainly work for you. Yet, in some terms, May people successful are those which have reading behavior, included this type of this Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont

By soft file of guide Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont to check out, you might not require to bring the thick prints all over you go. At any time you have going to check out Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont, you can open your gadget to review this publication Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont in soft file system. So very easy and also rapid! Reading the soft documents book Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont will give you easy means to review. It could also be quicker because you can read your book Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont anywhere you desire. This on-line Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont could be a referred publication that you could appreciate the option of life.

Because e-book Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont has great advantages to check out, lots of people now expand to have reading habit. Sustained by the industrialized innovation, nowadays, it is uncomplicated to get the publication Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont Also guide is not existed yet on the market, you to hunt for in this web site. As exactly what you could find of this Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont It will actually alleviate you to be the first one reading this publication Some Desperate Glory: The First World War The Poets Knew, By Max Egremont and get the perks.

The story of World War I, through the lives and words of its poets

The hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of what many believed would be the war to end all wars is in 2014. And while World War I devastated Europe, it inspired profound poetry―words in which the atmosphere and landscape of battle are evoked perhaps more vividly than anywhere else.
The poets―many of whom were killed―show not only the war's tragedy but also the hopes and disappointments of a generation of men. In Some Desperate Glory, the historian and biographer Max Egremont gives us a transfiguring look at the life and work of this assemblage of poets. Wilfred Owen with his flaring genius; the intense, compassionate Siegfried Sassoon; the composer Ivor Gurney; Robert Graves, who would later spurn his war poems; the nature-loving Edward Thomas; the glamorous Fabian Socialist Rupert Brooke; and the shell-shocked Robert Nichols―all fought in the war, and their poetry is a bold act of creativity in the face of unprecedented destruction.
Some Desperate Glory includes a chronological anthology of the poets' works, telling the story of the war not only through the lives of these writers but also through their art. This unique volume unites the poetry and the history of the war―so often treated separately―granting readers the pride, strife, and sorrow of the individual soldier's experience coupled with a panoramic view of the war's toll on an entire nation.

• Sales Rank: #941510 in Books
• Published on: 2014-06-10
• Released on: 2014-06-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.26" h x 1.17" w x 6.28" l, 1.00 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From Booklist
Biographer-novelist Egremont goes the extra mile with his selection of Britain’s WWI poetry. Focusing on the 11 soldiers who wrote the best and most famous war poetry, he presents their poems chronologically, in five sets of poems written in each of the war’s five years and a final set of postwar work. He prefaces each set with an account of what happened to the poets during the time in which they wrote them. He introduces everything with a “Prelude” about the run-up to the war, especially for his 11 selectees. As former public-school boys or, in Edward Thomas’ case, an established professional, 9 were junior officers. They were variously shot, gassed, shell-shocked, retired from the front, and driven mad. Six were killed, and line soldier Ivor Gurney, as gifted a composer as a poet, spent most of his postwar years in mental asylums. Hardly supplanting comprehensive anthologies like Tim Kendall’s Poetry of the First World War (2013), ­Egremont’s group-biography-cum-anthology impressively accounts for how—the allusion is to Wilfred Owen—the pity came to be in the poetry. --Ray Olson

Review

“Haunting and beautiful, the work of poets such as Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen continues to fascinate almost 100 years after the war began. . . In his new book, Some Desperate Glory, historian Max Egremont tells the stories of these half-forgotten poets.” ―Ruth Styles, The Daily Mail (UK)

“Elegant and convincing . . . Egremont's [Some Desperate Glory] is an exceptionally thoughtful treatment of 11 complicated men. He lets poignant vignettes take the place of familiar descriptions of the trenches' horrors--from Thomas, on his last night of home leave before his death, tenderly carrying his wife upstairs to bed wrapped in his greatcoat and whispering to her 'all is well between us for ever and ever" to Owen's keen distress as the 'universal perversion of Ugliness' that somehow intensified the death he was surrounded by. Above all, Egremont reminds the reader that the poems record not one amorphous war but 11 individual conflicts.” ―Michael Prodger, Evening Standard

“This is not simply another anthology of the ‘best' poetry of the Great War, though, but an attempt to tell the story of the war through its poets and explore their development through the impact of the conflict on their writing. . . Some Desperate Glory carries a punch . . . . both [Egremont's] choices and the strict chronology that he imposes on them make certain things strike home with a new freshness.” ―David Crane, The Spectator (London)

“Egremont's . . . beautifully written volume makes an ideal guide to this shifting, shadowy realm . . . On visiting Kaliningrad in the 1960s, the poet Joseph Brodsky wrote that the trees ‘whisper in German.' They don't anymore. But Egremont heard their last words.” ―Andrew Stuttaford, The Wall Street Journal on Forgotten Land

About the Author

Max Egremont was born in 1948 and studied modern history at Oxford University. He is the author of several novels and biographies, including Siegfried Sassoon: A Life (FSG, 2005) and Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia (FSG, 2011). Egremont is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in England.

Most helpful customer reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
Part history, part biography, wholly fascinating
By someproseandcon
Egremont’s examination of the First World War as seen through the lives and work of its most famous poets is a fascinating book (the poets include Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Thomas, Robert Graves, Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, Edmund Blunden, Julian Grenfell, Charles Sorley, and Robert Nichols).

Part biography, part history, the book is unique in its organization: a chapter is devoted to each year of the war, detailing the circumstances and mental states of each of the eleven writers who supply the lenses through which we see and understand the horror and the heroism of modern warfare.

For those not particularly interested in poetry, the book should still be of great interest: Egremont is concerned with the meaning and meaninglessness of the WWI, arguing its general significance (“More than twice as many British were killed in the First World War as in the Second”), as well as describing its particularities (after Charles Sorley was killed by a sniper as he led his men into battle at Loos, his manuscript of the poem “When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead” was found on his body , including the line, “It is easy to be dead”).

While Egremont’s book isn’t concerned with interpreting the poetry, poems that are mentioned in the chronological account of the war are included at the end of each chapter, and placing the poems in the context of the time and the battle experiences in which they were written allows readers to see them in a new light.

For those who are familiar with the writers of the late 19th and early 20th century, it’s fascinating to learn how small the artistic community was: Edward Thomas was an intimate of Robert Frost, Siegfried Sassoon befriended Oscar Wilde’s former lover, E.M. Forester worked in Egypt for the Red Cross, Virginia Woolf knew Rupert Brooke and reviewed his posthumous Collected Poems, and Ivor Gurney studied music under Ralph Vaughn Williams after the war.

But the book is at its best in its last chapter, “Aftermath.” Here, Egremont tells of the lives of the men who survived, as well as the ways in which certain poets became more admired after the war, while others fell out of fashion, often due to a writer’s vision of the war or the style in which he chose to communicate that vision. The book asserts that as time passed, “the poets’ war was seen as the truth,” much to the dismay of historians, and that “What the poets wrote was seductive, often spellbindingly good, so much so that it was claimed they contributed to the climate of appeasement in the 1930s: the wish to avoid war at almost any price.” As well, Egremont compares the poetry of WWI with other retellings of the war, from BBC documentaries to television comedies such as "Blackadder."

Most importantly, this book frees the poets from the superficial label of “British World War I poet” and reveals the individual writers in all of their complexities: Fabian socialist, manic depressive, handsome narcissist, pre-war advocate for pacifism, gifted musician, aristocratic fox-hunter, son of poor Jewish immigrants – these are the men who fought and died, or survived to be haunted by a war that transformed the modern world, the men who described the war with such power and poignancy that their language has shaped our view of The Great War.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Great Gift for Veterans
By Shannon
I bought this as a gift for a friend in the military and he absolutely enjoyed it. He thought it was a great read and a really unique gift.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Five Stars
By Will Fischer
Great

See all 6 customer reviews...

Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont PDF
Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont EPub
Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont Doc
Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont iBooks
Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont rtf
Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont Mobipocket
Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont Kindle

^ Download Ebook Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont Doc

^ Download Ebook Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont Doc

^ Download Ebook Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont Doc

^ Download Ebook Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, by Max Egremont Doc

* Free PDF The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton

Free PDF The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton

Undoubtedly, to boost your life high quality, every publication The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton will have their particular session. Nevertheless, having certain understanding will make you really feel much more positive. When you feel something occur to your life, in some cases, reading e-book The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton can aid you to make calm. Is that your actual hobby? Occasionally of course, yet in some cases will be unsure. Your selection to review The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton as one of your reading publications, could be your proper book to review now.

The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton

Free PDF The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton

Book The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton is among the valuable well worth that will make you always abundant. It will certainly not suggest as rich as the money provide you. When some people have lack to encounter the life, people with numerous publications in some cases will be better in doing the life. Why need to be publication The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton It is really not meant that book The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton will give you power to get to everything. Guide is to read and also just what we implied is the publication that is reviewed. You can likewise see exactly how the e-book entitles The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton as well as numbers of e-book collections are providing below.

The benefits to consider checking out guides The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton are concerning boost your life high quality. The life top quality will certainly not simply concerning just how much knowledge you will gain. Even you check out the fun or enjoyable publications, it will aid you to have boosting life quality. Feeling enjoyable will lead you to do something completely. In addition, the publication The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton will certainly provide you the lesson to take as an excellent need to do something. You might not be useless when reading this e-book The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton

Never ever mind if you don't have adequate time to head to guide store and search for the favourite book to read. Nowadays, the online publication The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton is pertaining to give simplicity of checking out behavior. You might not should go outside to browse guide The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton Searching as well as downloading and install guide qualify The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton in this short article will certainly give you much better option. Yeah, online e-book The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton is a type of electronic book that you can obtain in the link download given.

Why must be this online book The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton You might not require to go somewhere to check out the publications. You can read this book The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton whenever as well as every where you want. Also it is in our extra time or feeling tired of the jobs in the office, this is right for you. Get this The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton right now and be the quickest individual who completes reading this book The Springs Of Contemplation: A Retreat At The Abbey Of Gethsemani, By Thomas Merton

In the Sixties, Merton invited a group of contemplative women -- cut off by inflexible rules from any analysis of important movements in the Church and the world -- to make a retreat with him at his abbey in Kentucky. What he and they said on such themes as "Zen, a Way of Living Life Directly," "Prophetic Choices," and "The Feminine Mystique," is the text of this book.

• Sales Rank: #1363667 in Books
• Published on: 1992-05-01
• Released on: 1992-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.00" h x .69" w x 5.00" l, .80 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780374128937
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

From Publishers Weekly
In the post-Vatican II years of 1967 and 1968 Thomas Merton, the renowned Trappist monk, invited a group of contemplative nuns from various communities to meet with him at his abbey in the Kentucky hills. "A many-voiced silence" is the thread that winds through Merton's informal, freewheeling conversations during these two conferences as he and the women confront issues that continue to have an impact on the tradition of contemplative life in America. Merton's fraternal bond with his neighboring Sisters of Loretto is reflected in a previously unpublished essay celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of the congregation. Merton's warmth and humor, his full understanding of the limitations of gender-based stereotypes and his inductive approach to teaching are hallmarks of these dialogues that remain widely relevant. The tapes of the meetings have been edited by Richardson, a member of the Sisters of Loretto.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Merton discovered that restrictions in travel and access to books often isolated contemplative sisters from movements in Roman Catholicism and the world. To facilitate their analysis of new develop ments, he met informally with a group of contemplative prioresses in 1967. The discourses of this retreat and another in 1968 appear here. They cover a broad range of topics, including language, com munity, "the feminine mystique," Zen Buddhism, and the contemplative life as a prophetic life. Collections of his letters, such as The Road to Joy (LJ 7/89), intro duce readers to a personal side of Merton. This volume reveals Merton in such an accessible, conversational way that both large and small collections will benefit from its addition.
-Cynthia Widmer, Downingtown, Pa.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
More of Merton's spirituality for the modern age, here in the form of talks given to nuns on retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. In December 1967 and May 1968, a small group of contemplative sisters met with Merton--or Father Louis, as he was known in religious life--to discuss the purpose of their vocations, the state of the world, the future of the Church, and the nature of prayer and contemplation. It was a time of tremendous uncertainty within the Church, when both the incidentals and the foundations of Catholicism had come under close internal scrutiny, and the very existence of religious life itself seemed threatened: Within a few years, thousands of monks and nuns were to repudiate their vows and return to secular life, and many congregations were to vanish entirely. This atmosphere of confusion is a strong presence in the talks and conversations that comprise this work, in which Merton and the sisters keep coming back to the question of ``What would you do if organized religious life were to disappear?'' Most of Merton's contributions, it must be said, sound pretty dated after 25 years--his excitement over Zen, his hopes that ``integration'' will help resolve ``the Negro question,'' his allusions to Marcuse and McLuhan--but he has some good things to say, especially on the organization of modern society (``Contemplative Life as a Prophetic Vocation'') and the processes of prayer (``Asceticism and Results''). His pronouncements concerning the nascent influence of feminism upon the Church (``The Feminine Mystique'') are sadly facile, however, and highlight one of Merton's great shortcomings as a thinker: his eagerness to pontificate upon unfamiliar themes. The sisters, oddly enough, seem even less sure of themselves here, and in their questions throughout sound more like Merton's straight-men than his colleagues. Pretty slim pickings: a few nice bits sunk in a sea of platitudes. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Most helpful customer reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating to read; a good antidote to "Beneath the Mask of Holiness"
By olderandwiser
This retreat given to several nuns, mostly superiors of their orders, was transcribed, and it shows that Merton returned to his monastic vocation. The things he says indicate his compassion, understanding, and responsibilities he had been given in the monastery--he was master of novices for many years. It is fascinating to read this retreat material and to compare it with his published journals of the same time. This comparison shows the consistency of Merton's private and public views.

Merton is relaxed and often charming. His perceptiveness is obvious. For example, "obedience is meant to free us so that we can follow the Holy Spirit. We respect the authority of others and obey it, but we also have to follow our conscience." Time has proved him right on many issues, and wrong on others. I find his sincerity undeniable, and I think this book gives a wonderful view into his thought processes.

Anyone who is interested in Merton's views on celibacy and its place in religious life will find them in great detail here. Although his college friend Ed Rice claims in his correctly titled "entertainment" on Merton, "Man in the Sycamore Tree", that Merton talked about the possibility of married monks, that doesn't seem to be the case. During this retreat, in May 1968, Merton states that the secular clergy (usually known as parish priests) should be free to marry; he does not espouse marriage for monks (see the chapter "Collaboration, Penance, Celibacy"). For those interested in Merton's life, this book is a "sleeper" which reveals the applications he made of Catholic beliefs to everyday monastic life. I highly recommend this book as an antidote to the sensational and obtuse presentation of Merton by Mark Shaw in "Beneath the Mask of Holiness."

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
A fascinating discussion
By Zach J. Kamla
Thomas Merton is not the typical Catholic, yet is fully rooted in Catholic faith. He explores some troubles with the world with a cutting grace and how contemplatives should address them. For example, he discusses how the will to see problems change sometimes cannot overcome cold comforts--in particular, he talks about how people deplore racism but would not want to suffer the detriment of integration. He states, for example, how many whites felt terrible for the treatment of the blacks, but would not invite blacks to live in their neighborhood because it would decrease property value. He discusses how people tragically get caught up in a given protocol and can only break free with creative contemplation. He discusses why non-violence between MLK or Ghandi worked whereas the hippies were rather impotent. Ultimately, he shows that contemplation can free us from the mundane to really change the world.

He discusses silence very deeply. I read this on an Ignacian Silent Retreat, so it really spoke to me, but reading this in another setting may reduce the power, which seems evident from previous reviews.

If your are a Catholic or Buddhist interested in comparative religion, he has a lecture on Zen. He is very objective, giving credit where credit is due; he does not say, "If only Catholics did this . . ." or "Buddhism is inferior because . . ." Overall, he gives a really to-the-point discussion on meditative practices. No Unitarian, he readily brings up similarities and differences, being fair yet true to his faith. He really moves past the New Age Post-Modern crap which plagues most other comparative analyses.

I would recommend this to any spiritual person going on a quiet retreat or even someone who just wants to spend a weekend alone contemplating God.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Valuable Insights
By Bro. John
This little book is taken from some recordings which were made at a Retreat given at the Abbey of Gethsemani in December of 1967 and May of 1968 for Contemplative Religious Sisters. The Editors have been very faithful to the thought, style and spirit of Thomas Merton. The talks are wonderful. They cover a wide range of topics such as: Changing forms of Contemplative Life, Commitment, Social Responsibility, Respect for Diversity, and such controversial areas as The Feminine Mystique, Zen: as a way of living, and Acting in Freedom and Obedience.

I have read a lot of this author's works over the years and can honestly say that this is Merton at his most candid and best!

Although written for Religious, there is much for anyone interested in pursuing a contemplative way of life.

See all 7 customer reviews...

The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton PDF
The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton EPub
The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton Doc
The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton iBooks
The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton rtf
The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton Mobipocket
The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton Kindle

* Free PDF The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton Doc

* Free PDF The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton Doc

* Free PDF The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton Doc

* Free PDF The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, by Thomas Merton Doc

> Fee Download Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen

Fee Download Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen

If you still need much more books Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen as references, visiting browse the title and also motif in this site is readily available. You will certainly locate more great deals publications Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen in different self-controls. You could additionally as soon as feasible to review guide that is currently downloaded and install. Open it as well as conserve Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen in your disk or gadget. It will certainly ease you wherever you need guide soft file to read. This Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen soft documents to read can be referral for everyone to boost the skill and also ability.

Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen

Fee Download Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen

Exceptional Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen publication is constantly being the most effective good friend for spending little time in your office, evening time, bus, and also almost everywhere. It will certainly be a good way to merely look, open, and read guide Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen while in that time. As understood, experience and skill do not always included the much cash to acquire them. Reading this book with the title Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen will certainly allow you know more points.

As one of the book collections to suggest, this Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen has some strong factors for you to read. This book is extremely appropriate with exactly what you need currently. Besides, you will likewise enjoy this publication Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen to read considering that this is one of your referred publications to check out. When getting something new based upon experience, entertainment, and other lesson, you can use this book Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen as the bridge. Starting to have reading routine can be undertaken from different means as well as from variant kinds of books

In reviewing Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen, currently you might not additionally do conventionally. In this modern-day era, gadget and also computer will help you so much. This is the time for you to open the device as well as stay in this site. It is the best doing. You could see the link to download this Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen here, can't you? Just click the web link and make a deal to download it. You can get to acquire the book Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen by on the internet as well as prepared to download and install. It is extremely different with the traditional way by gong to guide shop around your city.

Nonetheless, reviewing the book Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen in this site will lead you not to bring the published publication all over you go. Just store guide in MMC or computer disk and also they are readily available to read whenever. The thriving system by reading this soft documents of the Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen can be leaded into something brand-new practice. So currently, this is time to prove if reading could improve your life or otherwise. Make Farther Away: Essays, By Jonathan Franzen it certainly work and also get all benefits.

Jonathan Franzen's Freedom was the runaway most-discussed novel of 2010, an ambitious and searching engagement with life in America in the twenty-first century. In The New York Times Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus proclaimed it "a masterpiece of American fiction" and lauded its illumination, "through the steady radiance of its author's profound moral intelligence, [of] the world we thought we knew."

In Farther Away, which gathers together essays and speeches written mostly in the past five years, Franzen returns with renewed vigor to the themes, both human and literary, that have long preoccupied him. Whether recounting his violent encounter with bird poachers in Cyprus, examining his mixed feelings about the suicide of his friend and rival David Foster Wallace, or offering a moving and witty take on the ways that technology has changed how people express their love, these pieces deliver on Franzen's implicit promise to conceal nothing. On a trip to China to see first-hand the environmental devastation there, he doesn't omit mention of his excitement and awe at the pace of China's economic development; the trip becomes a journey out of his own prejudice and moral condemnation. Taken together, these essays trace the progress of unique and mature mind wrestling with itself, with literature, and with some of the most important issues of our day. Farther Away is remarkable, provocative, and necessary.

• Sales Rank: #755000 in Books
• Brand: Franzen, Jonathan
• Published on: 2012-04-24
• Released on: 2012-04-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 7.78" h x 1.12" w x 5.43" l, 1.00 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

Review

“[Franzen's] new collection takes the reader on a closely guided tour of his private concerns . . . the miscorrelation between merit and fame, the breakdown of a marriage, birds, the waning relevance of the novel in popular culture . . . Franzen rewards the reader with extended meditations on common phenomena we might otherwise consider unremarkable . . . the observations [he] makes regarding subjects like cell phone etiquette, the ever-evolving face of modern love and technology are trenchant . . . With Farther Away, Mr. Franzen demonstrates his ability to dissect the kinds of quotidian concerns that so often evade scrutiny . . . It may be eight years before he releases his next shimmering novel; in the meantime Mr. Franzen seems intent on keeping the conversation going. Farther Away at least achieves that.” ―Alex Fankuchen, The New York Observer

“Throughout the book, Franzen suggests that storytelling is a way to interpret and relieve our collective suffering--a vehicle for social connection--and that apathy can be challenged with Molotov cocktails of ‘bottomless empathy, born out of the heart's revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are' . . . Combining personal history with cultural events and the minutiae of daily life, Franzen evokes Joan Didion's tone of rigorous self-examination, and [David Foster] Wallace's wit and philosophical prowess. Whether he is writing about technologies' assault on sincerity or analyzing Alice Munro's short stories, what emerges are works of literary theory and cultural critique that are ambitious, brooding and charmingly funny . . . The essays in Farther Away are rigorous, artful devotions navigating morally complex topics. At the heart of this collection are the ways ‘engagement with something you love compels you to face up to who you really are.' Collectively, they are a source of authenticity and refuge--a way out of loneliness.” ―Kathryn Savage, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Together, the short pieces take a deep, often tangled look at the relationship between writing and self . . . [Franzen's] persistent questioning rings genuine and honest . . . Part of the joy in reading these essays is in their variety: Franzen has thrown together a buffet of essays, speeches, lectures, bits of memoir and journalism, and a few oddballs, like an extended fictional interview with New York State and her entourage (publicist, attorney, historian, geologist) . . . Each finds a home in the collection because, in the end, each informs Franzen's capabilities as a writer . . . The material all fits together as an eclectic mix of Franzen's fiction-style prose--that plain language rendered rich by its novel construction and telling detail--and a candid, earnest investigation of what makes for great writing. It's inspiring on two levels: the quality of the writing, and the content about the quality of writing . . . a collection of thought-provoking, potent essays that rouse a renewed desire to read good books in a culture that is, as Franzen says, marked by its ‘saturation in entertainment.' The texts are both a testament to and an illustration of what attracts people to books--a delicate play between writer, text, character, and reader that prompts excellent questions and provides surprising answers.” ―Emily Withrow, The A.V. Club

“Farther Away is, from beginning to end, a celebration of love: what provokes it and what endangers it, what joys it brings and what terrors it produces . . . Farther Away takes its title from the New Yorker essay in which Franzen first discussed the suicide of his friend the novelist David Foster Wallace . . . art elegy, part literary criticism, part travelogue . . . "Farther Away" is one of the strangest, most powerful documents of mourning that I've ever read. Farther Away reveals a kinder Franzen, a writer who has no truck with sentimentality but is a clear-eyed defender of sentiment. At one point, Franzen lists the many things that he is against: ‘weak narrative, overly lyrical prose, solipsism, self-indulgence . . .' The list goes on. But Farther Away is such a wonderful collection because of the things Franzen is for--the ennobling effects of love and imaginative experience, our need to escape from the isolated self and journey farther away, toward other places and other people. Like the best fiction, Farther Away charts a way out of loneliness.” ―Anthony Domestico, Christian Science Monitor

“Franzen captivates readers whether ranting about such everyday concerns as bad cellphone manners or lamenting the diminishing relevance of the novel or examining the talented, troubled life and suicide of his close friend and literary brother, David Foster Wallace . . . At his best, Franzen exposes himself. He does so often and unapologetically, with understated humor, level-headed alienation and rare insight, typically at the nexus of self-analysis and self-indulgence.” ―Don Oldenburg, USA Today

“[Franzen's] essays are riddled with aphorisms (‘One half of a passion is obsession, the other half is love') and, surprisingly, humour (theory and sex prove incompatible bedfellows when his wife-to-be declares: ‘You can't deconstruct and undress at the same time'). A multifaceted and revealing collection, Farther Away actually brings the reader closer to the author.” ―The Economist

“[Franzen is] after something more elusive: identity, we might call it, which he understands to be not fixed but fluid, a set of reactions or impressions in evolution, a constant variation on the self. ‘[W]hat this means, in practice,’ he notes in the text of a lecture called ‘On Autobiographical Fiction,’ ‘is that you have to become a different person to write the next book. The person you already are already wrote the best book you could. There’s no way to move forward without changing yourself. Without, in other words, working on the story of your own life. Which is to say: your autobiography.’

This is an essential point, the heart of everything, made all the more so because Franzen’s fiction is not autobiographical in any overt way. And yet, what else could it be when literature is, must be, the result of ‘a personal struggle, a direct and total engagement with the author's story of his or her own life’? Such an intention runs throughout these essays, whether critical (takes on Paula Fox, Christina Snead, Donald Antrim, Dostoevsky) or experiential (an account of bird preservation efforts in the Mediterranean, a tirade about the effect of cellphones on urban life) . . . On the surface, these pieces have nothing to do with each other, yet what is either one about if not authenticity? Again and again, that's the question Franzen raises in this collection . . . What Franzen is getting at is the concept of being ‘islanded,’ the notion that―no matter what―we are on our own, all the time . . . In that sense, all of it―from the kid in that car to the teenager wandering New York to the birder on Robinson Crusoe's island―is of a piece with David Foster Wallace and even Neil Armstrong: isolated dots of consciousness in a capricious universe, trying to find a point of real connection before time runs out” ―David Ulin, Los Angeles Times, David Ulin, Los Angeles Times

“This book of essays by Jonathan Franzen covers various subjects but the unifying theme is truthfulness. He stands for lucidity of expression, which is not the same thing as ease. The lesson of Franzen is that honesty and excellence come from blood, sweat and tears . . . This is Franzen at his finest . . . Narcissism must never be confused with love. This is Franzen's distilled wisdom . . . He is unflinching about the price of empathy . . . This is a book for those interested in how to live as well as how to write.” ―Sarah Sands, London Evening Standard

“Farther Away, Jonathan Franzen's recent collection of essays, proves to be a deeply personal portrait of a contemporary writer at work . . . Many of Farther Away's features explore creativity and craftsmanship: their tensions and intersections and how those forces can be used together to create a beautiful object . . . The book, while full of intellect, is also full of puns, anecdotes, and self-effacing jokes about being a cranky, old-fashioned Luddite. In other words, Jonathan Franzen knows what some people think about him, and he couldn't care less, an attitude in keeping with his public personality. Because, despite the fiery exchanges that can erupt around him, Franzen usually appears untouched by the conflagration, reacting with detached humor or insightful observation . . . The most personal moments in Farther Away come in the essays about Franzen's passions . . . These essays have sentiment but also clear-eyed pragmatism. Franzen relates the situations he encounters with the objective eye of a scientist, even though you can clearly feel his emotion just under the surface . . . With Farther Away, Jonathan Franzen has proved once again why his intelligence, empathy, and humor have earned him widespread acclaim--and also why, whether you love him or hate him, we need his voice as a catalyst for literary conversations in the 21st century.” ―Ben Pfeiffer, The Rumpus

“Ultimately, Farther Away is a meditation on the obscure other half of a world right in front of our faces--the private horror of a public figure struggling with depression, the unspoken loneliness of an individual living in a world of people perpetually turned off because their devices are turned on, the perils of a bird in flight, and cherished pages of well-written fiction that enable us ‘to embrace, even celebrate, the dark fact that an individual's life consists, finally, of an accelerating march toward decay and death.' Franzen brings the reader close (uncomfortably, at times) to facets of life not usually examined, and it becomes clear that he is not just talking about songbirds when he writes, ‘It felt wrong to be seeing at such close range a species that ordinarily requires careful work with binoculars to get a decent view.'” ―Noah Stayton, The Millions

“One way or another, the essays in Farther Away are attempts to enlarge the place where literature, and the responsiveness to it, can be preserved.” ―Geoff Dyer, The Guardian

“It takes great courage to ask the annoying questions that everyone else would prefer to ignore . . . What is right action, and how does one live a morally justifiable life? . . . The questions matter almost more than the answers. And Franzen is virtually alone among the crop of American fiction writers of his generation to pose these moral questions to society at large in such a way as to challenge and indict us.” ―Joshua Furst, Forward

“American writer Jonathan Franzen has established a pattern of taking almost a decade between novels. That's one reason his new essay collection, Farther Away, comes as a welcome treat. Another reason is his always probing, and earnestly Midwestern, self-examination.” ―Morley Walker, Winnipeg Free Press

“Franzen's position in literary debates is by now well staked--engrossing plots and characters are king--and here he maintains his ground with characteristic intelligence and earnestness . . . But what distinguishes Franzen's treatment of these matters in Farther Away is the frequency with which he appeals to love . . . Love now suffuses Franzen's writing as it hasn't before, in a manner intertwined with his newly tragicomic outlook. As the world outside of Franzen's window grows grimmer--as America's politics become more dysfunctional, digitization more irrevocable, humanity's adverse effects on the planet more profound--his writing has increasingly located salvation in turning to the worthiest thing you can find and loving the hell out of it . . . Farther Away is a reminder not only of Franzen's greatness as a sentence-by-sentence writer, but also of how much he cares about literature.” ―James Santel, The Los Angeles Review of Books

“[Farther Away] provide[s] a glimpse into the critical faculties of one of our most celebrated contemporary novelists. Franzen's views on technology and writing are particularly salient: The Internet's expansiveness is a kind of prison, and postmodernism actually leads us back to the primitive.” ―Dan Lopez, Time Out New York

“Franzen is without doubt a first-rate critic . . . It's worth the purchase price just to read him on Alice Munro. His reflections on Christina Stead, Donald Atrim and the Swedish detective classic The Laughing Policeman are all essayistic in the best sense: both deeply thought out and wonderfully argued.” ―Richard Warnica, Maclean's

“In that opening address to Kenyon graduates, Franzen said: ‘What love is really about is a bottomless empathy, born out of the heart's revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are.' At their very best, his essays live up to this definition, crossing divides of form, time and space to speak as wisely and warmly as a close, clever and eminently real friend.” ―James Kidd, The Independent

“[Franzen's] fans will . . . be delighted with Farther Away, a collection of his non-fiction that reveals he is an unfairly talented writer and thinker. These essays, memoirs, reviews and pieces of social criticism give Franzen a wide platform from which to show off his artistry with words and, again, his deep concern for environmental issues . . . Franzen is a man of immense intelligence, and a writer of uncommon talent. Farther Away reflects both.” ―Hayden Meikle, Otago Daily Times

“Farther Away, a fine collection of essays so well crafted they have the power to grab you and hold you--right there--in the moment . . . It's safe to say that in Farther Away Franzen offers some of his most compelling work. It is a luscious literary assembly of soulful observations and otherwise thought-provoking musings that cover a diverse range of subjects . . . what a treat it is to have the author pull down the blanket from the head of the big bad wolf of our fears and doubts and stare them down, eye to tormenting eye. Fears, doubts, emotions from which humans run away. And not just run away from, but screaming ad nauseum, because their discomfort so pains them. But these themes of grief and loss--and the art of leaning into them as opposed to crying after some other arrangement--play so well with others here, too. For every brilliant, sobering look at the disconnectedness modern technology often spawns, Franzen also touches upon the possibility of tracing one's own footsteps toward personal progress.” ―Greg Archer, Good Times

“In both these essays and his own fiction, his words betray an immense amount of care. He's a keen-eyed reader, too. . . it's when Franzen writes about the things he loves that this collection soars.” ―John Baily, The Sydney Morning Herald

“The world of literature, besieged as he believes it is, needs authors who care. And Franzen really cares. His attitude might be aggressively highbrow, but his underlying concerns are simple and humane: family, age, grief, love.” ―Tim Walker, The Independent

“You suddenly feel . . . like you're in the company of someone with real insights into modern life, real compassion for people, and formidable tools of communication to get it all across--a bit, in fact, like you're seeing one of his country's best fiction writers successfully transfer his skills into the non-fiction realm . . . Taking Franzen's words to heart, and paraphrasing what he writes about Munro, I'll end by saying "Just read these essays." Franzen takes a long time between novels--nine years between The Corrections and Freedom–but if collections like Farther Away are part of the process he requires, it's a small price to pay.” ―Ian McGillis, The Montreal Gazette

“At heart, [Farther Away] is a defense of the difficult, both within ourselves and in our art. In a culture where forces like Facebook are constantly conspiring to reshape us into more marketable versions of ourselves, Franzen preaches that our salvation depends on not losing touch with the ‘authentic but horrible' . . . If you were feeling uncharitable, you could make the argument that Farther Away is less a philosophical treatise than an exercise in self-defense. But that's unfair . . . If Franzen is guilty of anything it's a refusal to compromise his truth in the name of popularity. And lucky for us, because it is this very willingness to brave our bad opinion that makes his fiction so uncompromisingly alive. It's also what qualifies him to lecture us on embracing our own flawed natures . . . In Farther Away, Franzen has made it his mission to penetrate what he terms the ‘dense modern fog of sentimentality' to get at the ugly truths underneath. He does this not because he enjoys dwelling in the dark, but because the dark is a necessary and rich component of the human experience, one that he believes is being forced more and more underground . . . If you are not convinced of his point of view by the more pedantic pieces in the book, you likely will be by the treatments of some of his favorite writers. The authors he showcases in Farther Away range from Paula Fox and Frank Wedekind to Christina Stead and Dostoyevsky; each utterly singular, all gloriously difficult. Franzen's near reverential reviews of their work serve as vivid reminders that great fiction is about much more than entertainment; it's about bringing communion to people stranded on the island of the self--something that can only be accomplished with a faithful recounting of what it really means to be human, warts and all.” ―Orli Van Mourik, The Brooklyn Rail

About the Author

Jonathan Franzen is the author of four novels (Freedom, The Corrections, Strong Motion, and The Twenty-Seventh City), a collection of essays (How to Be Alone), a personal history (The Discomfort Zone), and a translation of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening, all published by FSG. He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
PAIN WON’T KILL YOU
 

[commencement address, Kenyon College, May 2011]
 
Good morning, Class of 2011. Good morning, relatives and faculty. It’s a great honor and pleasure to be here today.
I’m going to go ahead and assume that you all knew what you were getting into when you chose a literary writer to deliver this address. I’m going to do what literary writers do, which is to talk about themselves, in the hope that my experience has some resonance with your own. I’d like to work my way around to the subject of love and its relation to my life and to the strange technocapitalist world that you guys are inheriting.
A couple of weeks ago, I replaced my three-year-old BlackBerry Pearl with a much more powerful BlackBerry Bold, with a five-megapixel camera and 3G capability. Needless to say, I was impressed with how far the technology had advanced in three years. Even when I didn’t have anybody to call or text or e-mail, I wanted to keep fondling my new Bold and experiencing the marvelous clarity of its screen, the silky action of its tiny track pad, the shocking speed of its responses, the beguiling elegance of its graphics. I was, in short, infatuated with my new device. I’d been similarly infatuated with my old device, of course; but over the years the bloom had faded from our relationship. I’d developed trust issues with my Pearl, accountability issues, compatibility issues, and even, toward the end, some doubts about my Pearl’s very sanity, until I’d finally had to admit to myself that I’d outgrown the relationship.
Do I need to point out that—absent some wild, anthropomorphizing projection in which my old BlackBerry felt sad about the waning of my love for it—our relationship was entirely one-sided? Let me point it out anyway. Let me further point out how ubiquitously the word sexy is used to describe late-model gadgets; and how the extremely cool things that we can do now with these gadgets—like impelling them to action by speaking incantations, or doing that spreading-the-fingers iPhone thing that makes images get bigger—would have looked, to people a hundred years ago, like a magician’s incantations, a magician’s hand gestures; and how, when we want to describe an erotic relationship that’s working perfectly, we speak, indeed, of magic. Let me toss out the idea that, according to the logic of technoconsumerism, in which markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship, in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly, and makes us feel all-powerful, and doesn’t throw terrible scenes when it’s replaced by an even sexier object and is consigned to a drawer: that (to speak more generally) the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes—a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts; a world of resistance—with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self. Let me suggest, finally, that the world of technoconsumerism is therefore troubled by real love, and that it has no choice but to trouble love in turn.
Its first line of defense is to commodify its enemy. You can all supply your own favorite, most nauseating examples of the commodification of love. Mine include the wedding industry, TV ads that feature cute young children or the giving of automobiles as Christmas presents, and the particularly grotesque equation of diamond jewelry with everlasting devotion. The message, in each case, is that if you love somebody you should buy stuff.
A related phenomenon is the ongoing transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb to like from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse: from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial culture’s substitute for loving. The striking thing about all consumer products—and none more so than electronic devices and applications—is that they’re designed to be immensely likable. This is, in fact, the definition of a consumer product, in contrast to the product that is simply itself and whose makers aren’t fixated on your liking it. I’m thinking here of jet engines, laboratory equipment, serious art and literature.
But if you consider this in human terms, and you imagine a person defined by a desperation to be liked, what do you see? You see a person without integrity, without a center. In more pathological cases, you see a narcissist—a person who can’t tolerate the tarnishing of his or her self-image that not being liked represents, and who therefore either withdraws from human contact or goes to extreme, integrity-sacrificing lengths to be likable.
If you dedicate your existence to being likable, however, and if you adopt whatever cool persona is necessary to make it happen, it suggests that you’ve despaired of being loved for who you really are. And if you succeed in manipulating other people into liking you, it will be hard not to feel, at some level, contempt for those people, because they’ve fallen for your shtick. Those people exist to make you feel good about yourself, but how good can your feeling be when it’s provided by people you don’t respect? You may find yourself becoming depressed, or alcoholic, or, if you’re Donald Trump, running for president (and then quitting).
Consumer-technology products, of course, would never do anything this unattractive, because they’re not people. They are, however, great allies and enablers of narcissism. Alongside their built-in eagerness to be liked is a built-in eagerness to reflect well on us. Our lives look a lot more interesting when they’re filtered through the sexy Facebook interface. We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery. And, since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don’t have to have contempt for its manipulability, the way we might with actual people. It’s all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.
I may be overstating the case, a little bit. Very probably, you’re sick to death of hearing social media dissed by cranky fifty-one-year-olds. My aim here is mainly to set up a contrast between the narcissistic tendencies of technology and the problem of actual love. My friend Alice Sebold likes to talk about “getting down in the pit and loving somebody.” She has in mind the dirt that love inevitably splatters on the mirror of our self-regard. The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life. Suddenly there’s a real choice to be made, not a fake consumer choice between a BlackBerry and an iPhone, but a question: Do I love this person? And, for the other person: Does this person love me? There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the technoconsumerist order: it exposes the lie.
One of the heartening things about the plague of cell phones in my Manhattan neighborhood is that, among all the texting zombies and the party-planning yakkers on the sidewalks, I sometimes get to walk alongside somebody who’s having an honest-to-God fight with a person they love. I’m sure they’d prefer not to be having the fight on a public sidewalk, but here it’s happening to them anyway, and they’re behaving in a very, very uncool way. Shouting, accusing, pleading, abusing. This is the kind of thing that gives me hope for the world.
Which is not to say that love is only about fighting, or that radically self-involved people aren’t capable of accusing and abusing. What love is really about is a bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with their struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.
When I was a senior in college, I took the first seminar the college had ever offered in literary theory, and I fell in love with the most brilliant student in that seminar. Both of us liked how instantly powerful literary theory made us feel—it’s similar to modern consumer technology in this regard—and we flattered ourselves on how much more sophisticated we were than the kids who were still doing those tedious old close-textual readings. For various theoretical reasons, we also thought it would be cool to get married. My mother, who had spent twenty years making me into a person who craved full-commitment love, now turned around and advocated that I spend my twenties, as she put it, “footloose and fancy-free.” Naturally, since I thought she was wrong about everything, I assumed she was wrong about t...

Most helpful customer reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful.
In response to the criticism that Franzen is "timid" and "misanthropic"
By A fellow with a keyboard
Reviewer jafrank said, "The tone in most of these pieces is so generically, so cleanly misanthropic that it almost makes misanthropy itself boring. ... it all feels like someone checking things off of an old list of grievances." He also used the word "milquetoast"--I had to look it up, it means "a timid man or boy considered childish or unassertive."

Either jafrank is making shoddy inferences or I am, because I sensed that Franzen was doing exactly the opposite: What jafrank calls a timid display of misanthropic grievances was, from my seat, a bold and compassionate criticism of "porn-soaked modernity," an urgent attempt to have us acknowledge our self-stimulation, our individualism, our faulty understanding of "love," our emptiness.

The book is essentially the work of a social critic, and strange as it may sound to many people who tend to think of critics as being motivated by the lower emotions - envy, disdain, contempt even - critics are, above all, people who are in love with beautiful things, and who worry that those things will get broken.

Let's please not dismiss this book as timid misanthropy, because we urgently need more critics. More Franzens.

---

If you aren't sure whether you'll want to read this book, check out first the chapters "Pain Won't Kill You" and "David Foster Wallace." Those are, I think, the most compelling chapters.

---

If you adored this book, then you might want to check out the works of other highly perceptive social critics: William Deresiewicz, Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, and (of course) David Foster Wallace. And please let me know if you have other recommendations. Good social criticism is hard to find.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
Fun In The Deep End
By Robert Taylor Brewer
Between novels, it was customary for fiction writers to turn out a book of short stories "to keep readers interested". Jonathan Frazen turns this tradition on its ear with Farther Away, a penetrating and often hysterical new book of essays that in spots, combines the overarching tone of Emerson with the inventive intricacy of Evelyn Waugh.

For pure fun, try "Hornets" to see what Frazen does with a borrowed house, airborne insects "with bodies the size of double A batteries" and gasoline. His opening commentary to the graduating class at Kenyon College is more somber without being solipcistic, and if his essay on Christine Stead's masterpiece The Man Who Loved Children doesn't help that novel find an audience, nothing will. He complains persuasively that The Man Who Loved Children has only 14 Amazon reviews but the feeling is that after his new essay, it may acquire many more.

Guaranteed to put you in a New York state of mind is the essay "Interview With New York State". It's called The Empire State for a reason and Frazen is not bashful supplying it. In "Our Little Planet" Frazen does for Iowa what Flannery O'Connor did for Georgia: brief mixtures of movement and environment blended in waves of crackling prose. Frazen is too modest to disclose publicly his golf handicap, but "The Chinese Puffin" captures his iconoclastic thoughts on the sport, as well as his desperation over his swing - and where else but in the mind of a great novelist could you expect to find the observation that "golf" spelled backwards is "flog"?

All in all, this book is chock full of trenchant observations on contemporary life that Frazen readers will appreciate, and it may also win over many who stayed on the literary sidelines.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
what the hell is this?
By mathicus el chivas
Given the outstanding quality of Franzen's fiction, I had high expectations for Farther Away. I had hoped to encounter the warm and generally insightful friendship of Montaigne, or the witty and self-deprecating journalism of Franzen's late literary compatriot, David Foster Wallace. Unfortunately, Farther Away is not any of these things. Of course, the writing is excellent, and his analysis is clear and thoughtful. But the collection lacks coherence, and, at times, feels uninspired (I'm inclined to use the`t' word, but shall here refrain from doing so). It seems that the sole reason Mr.Franzen published this grab bag of book reviews, quasi-memoirs, and miniature essays apparently intended to be humorous, was to make some money, else to keep his name afloat on the internet-o-sphere until 2020, when he will have finished his next novel.

Admittedly, the titular essay is excellent. An introspective account of Franzen's attempt to flee civilization by escaping to a tiny island, it echoes Rousseau's Confessions in that it is partly the product of a man's misgivings about a society undergoing constant technological and social change. While Rousseau warned his audience about the negative social consequences of the progress of the arts and sciences, Franzen warns us about the dangers of smart phones and Facebook. The book reviews, and a few particularly insipid essays, however, are not so great. The long, boring passages on the minutia of bird-watching were difficult to get through, as was the `interview' with New York State, which, whatever his intentions, was definitely not funny.

The book is worth reading, but disappointing. Next time I'm going to be a bit more circumspect when it comes to purchasing non-fiction works written by a master of fiction, regardless of who his friends are.

See all 34 customer reviews...

Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen PDF
Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen EPub
Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen Doc
Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen iBooks
Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen rtf
Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen Mobipocket
Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen Kindle

> Fee Download Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen Doc

> Fee Download Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen Doc

> Fee Download Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen Doc

> Fee Download Farther Away: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen Doc

* PDF Download The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman

PDF Download The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman

Some individuals may be laughing when looking at you checking out The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman in your downtime. Some might be appreciated of you. As well as some may really want be like you who have reading leisure activity. Just what concerning your very own feel? Have you really felt right? Reading The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman is a requirement and also a hobby simultaneously. This condition is the on that particular will certainly make you feel that you must check out. If you know are searching for the book qualified The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman as the choice of reading, you can discover here.

The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman

PDF Download The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman

The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman As a matter of fact, book is truly a home window to the globe. Also many individuals may not appreciate reviewing publications; the books will consistently give the specific details about truth, fiction, encounter, experience, politic, faith, and also much more. We are right here an internet site that offers compilations of publications greater than the book store. Why? We offer you lots of varieties of link to get the book The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman On is as you need this The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman You can discover this book conveniently here.

When going to take the experience or ideas kinds others, publication The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman can be a good source. It holds true. You can read this The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman as the source that can be downloaded here. The way to download and install is also very easy. You could go to the web link page that our company offer and afterwards buy guide making an offer. Download The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman and also you could put aside in your personal gadget.

Downloading and install guide The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman in this internet site lists can provide you a lot more benefits. It will certainly reveal you the very best book collections as well as finished compilations. Numerous books can be discovered in this web site. So, this is not only this The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman Nevertheless, this publication is referred to review considering that it is an inspiring book to offer you a lot more opportunity to get experiences and thoughts. This is basic, read the soft file of the book The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman and you get it.

Your perception of this book The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman will lead you to obtain what you precisely need. As one of the inspiring books, this publication will certainly supply the presence of this leaded The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman to gather. Also it is juts soft documents; it can be your cumulative file in gadget and also other device. The vital is that usage this soft documents publication The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman to read as well as take the benefits. It is what we imply as publication The Birds Of Heaven: Travels With Cranes, By Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman will certainly enhance your thoughts as well as mind. Then, reviewing book will also enhance your life quality better by taking great action in balanced.

A leading naturalist and writer travels the globe in search of a prized-and vanishing-bird

Cranes are ubiquitous in the earliest legends of the world's peoples, where they often figure as harbingers of heaven and omens of longevity and good fortune. They are still held sacred in many places, and for good reason. Their large size and need for wilderness habitat makes them an "umbrella species" whose wellbeing assures that of other creatures and of the ecosystem at large. Moreover, the enormous spans of their migrations are a symbol of, and stimulus to, international efforts at conservation.

In The Birds of Heaven, Peter Matthiessen has woven together journeys in search of the fifteen species of cranes in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, and Australia. As he tracks them (and their declining numbers) in the company of scientists, conservationists, and regional people encountered along the way, he captures the dilemmas of a planet in ecological crisis, and the deeper loss to humankind if these beautiful and imposing creatures are allowed to disappear. The book includes color plates by renowned wildlife artist Robert Bateman.

• Sales Rank: #719946 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.36" h x 1.34" w x 6.18" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Amazon.com Review
Acclaimed writer Peter Matthiessen, a self-professed "craniac," has been observing and studying all kinds of birds most of his life, but his pursuit of cranes is closer to a spiritual quest than a naturalist's exercise. These majestic, mythic, and notoriously shy birds, capable of soaring at heights of 20,000 feet, are often fond of remote and rugged places, so just locating the birds can be difficult enough, determining an accurate number often impossible. Some locales, such as the breeding grounds on the Platte River in Nebraska, boast flocks half a million strong--"by far the greatest crane assemblies on earth"; other areas support only a precious few. Matthiessen's search for 15 different species of cranes has taken him to hidden corners of Siberia, China, Mongolia, Tibet, Sudan, and Australia (where Atherton cranes were not even discovered until 1961). Despite his many years of adventure and wide travels, each crane sighting is still a thrill for him, and his curiosity and contagious enthusiasm bring the book alive. But The Birds of Heaven also serves as an ecological warning: "Perhaps more than any other living creatures, they evoke the retreating wilderness, the vanishing horizons of clean water, earth, and air upon which their species--and ours, too, though we learn it very late--must ultimately depend for survival." --Shawn Carkonen

From Publishers Weekly
rolific and gifted novelist and naturalist, National Book Award-winner Matthiessen (The Snow Leopard) provides literally a worldwide tableau in his quest for various subspecies of cranes. These large flying birds celebrated in myth and folklore are found everywhere from Siberia to Australia, sub-Saharan Africa to North America. The author moves through each of these diverse climes as he not only reminds readers of the awesome beauty of the natural world but also introduces them to fascinating bits of local history and legend. The title of the book derives from the lore of taiga-dwelling shamans, who believe these great birds possess the ability to traverse the three realms of heaven, earth and the underworld. In practical terms, that's not so far off: some species of cranes can fly as high as 20,000 feet, others migrate as far as 3,100 miles. In his wanderings, Matthiessen meets fellow travelers and "craniacs." Ornithologists, guides and hunters offer intriguing anecdotes about cranes and other creatures encountered during their adventures and misadventures in various wildernesses. Additionally, Matthiessen reaches into his store of historical and political knowledge about these remote places. He good-humoredly details, for example, the reluctant cooperation between Russian and Chinese environmental authorities as they try to study and ensure the survival of the various threatened crane subspecies that dwell along their faraway, beautiful, but politically tense borderlands. Eloquent and graceful, this lovely, moving narrative will inspire and delight readers with or without ornithological background or interests. Paintings and illus. not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Cranes from all over the world are declining in numbers and are endangered species. America has only two varieties: the whooping and sandhill crane. Matthiessen makes a persuasive case for helping the birds survive human encroachment into their territories. His journalistic style is equally effective in portraying the mystical and mystifying qualities of these amazing creatures. Bateman's paintings and drawings emphasize the beauty and regal nature of cranes. The painting of the red-crowned cranes standing in the mist is a visual "call of the wild" and worth the price of the book.
Irene F. Moose, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Most helpful customer reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Be in awe of what we have, weep for what we are losing.
By Patricia Kramer
The readers of "The Birds of Heaven" should be prepared for joy, awe, geographic and naturalist education, but also sadness,fear and disgust. Matthiessen travels the world in search of the wild cranes. He is not just an observor, he is part of the effort to study and save these amazing birds. Robert Bateman's drawings are beautiful and serve as references as you read.
Peter Matthiessen travels with George Archibald, from the International Crane Foundation, through Asia revisiting places where cranes were previously abundant. They share the wonder of the many sightings of cranes. Yet Dr. Archibald is quoted as saying,"What a species we are!" after "being astonished anew by the destructive and murderous proclivities of man".
I learned so much from this book and recommend it to those who are not afraid to see the world as it is.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Heaven is a Matthiessen book
By L. Jody Kuchar
I first read Peter Matthiessen in the 1970s: "The Snow Leopard", and was so moved by his writing that I began to read everything I could find that he authored. I have never been disappointed. "The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes" is, like his other books scholarly and absolutely sings with his love of the subject. And the included art is breathtaking. With International Crane Foundation as well as other authorities on wildlife conservation, Matthiessen has written another book that will transport the reader to numerous countries, under numerous skies to see and hear the ancient bugling of the birds of heaven.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Gorgeous illustrations; interesting text
By A Customer
The most striking feature of this book is the color plates, which might make the book a nice gift for a birdlover. This ornithological study works on at least 2 levels:1)it is a detailed study of the current knowledge of 15 species of cranes, most of which are endangered (The Sandhill crane of the US is an exception), efforts for preservation of the species, and ornithological details. To give the briefest example, some of the cranes are migratory,while others are not. Some migrate long distances, as does the crane that nests in Northern Asia and winters in India. The Sandhill crane, of North America, has the longest migration. Most produce only one egg per season, take more than one year to mature (unlike geese), and are subject to predation;the book enumerates the numerous efforts at preservation worldwide, which include using an airplane as an imprinted mother-figure, just like in the film "Fly Away Home." Also there are preservation societies in many countries, including Cornell U. and in Wisconsin in America. 2) It also works as an historical and geographical travel guide to many remote areas of the world, including China, Mongolia, Siberia, Southern and Southeast Asia,Japan, Korea (where cranes inhabit the demilitarized zone) , Australia, England, Africa, and America-- all continents except South America. These cultures are alien in terms of religion, culture,politics and geography at least to me so reading about them presents a formidable challenge. The book is lavishly illustrated with pictures of these beautiful and diverse birds.

See all 18 customer reviews...

The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman PDF
The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman EPub
The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman Doc
The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman iBooks
The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman rtf
The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman Mobipocket
The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman Kindle

* PDF Download The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman Doc

* PDF Download The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman Doc

* PDF Download The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman Doc

* PDF Download The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, by Peter Matthiessen, Robert Bateman Doc