Results 1 to 4 of 4
- The faraway nearby / by Solnit, Rebecca.;
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- Subjects: Solnit, Rebecca.; Autobiography; Narration (Rhetoric); Storytelling.;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Orwell's roses / by Solnit, Rebecca,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A fresh take on George Orwell as a far more nature-loving figure than is often portrayed, and a dazzlingly rich meditation on roses, gardens, and the value and use of beauty and pleasure in the face of brutality and horror. "In the spring of 1936 a man planted roses." That man was George Orwell, shortly before he went off to fight against fascism in Spain. Today, those rosebushes are still thriving. This is the starting point for Rebecca Solnit's new book, which presents another side of Orwell, a neglected arcadian Orwell who took enormous pleasure in the natural world and found great meaning and value in it. Orwell's planting of the roses is an axle from which Solnit's chapters radiate out like spokes as she brilliantly explores its various contexts, perspectives, and meanings, following the contours of Orwell's life and tracking how deeply enmeshed the love of nature is in all his writing. Journeying to the cottage in Wallingford where Orwell lived in 1936, she examines his desire to be agrarian and settled, how gardening restored him, and how planting something can be an act of fidelity and faith. Probing at the beauty and meaning of roses, she draws in the revolutionary photography and politics of Tina Modotti and makes a clandestine visit to a Columbian rose factory, where 80% of America's roses for sale are grown. She tracks the history of gardening, showing how the desire to garden is culturally determined and often rooted in class, recounts the immense battles over breeding and genetics in Russia during Stalin's time, and probes into the colonialist roots of Orwell's forebears, who worked in opium production in India and profiteered from sugar and slavery in Jamaica. Solnit shows how these points of intersection illuminate Orwell's work, and how that illumination shines forth on larger questions about beauty, pleasure, meaning, relationship, and hope. Her book establishes that "Orwellian" could stand for something more than ominous, corrupt, and sinister"--- Subjects: Biographies.; Orwell, George, 1903-1950; Orwell, George, 1903-1950.; Authors, English; Gardening.; Nature.; Roses.;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Embrace fearlessly the burning world : essays / by Lopez, Barry Holstun,1945-2020,author.; Solnit, Rebecca,writer of introduction.; Lopez, Barry Holstun,1945-2020.Essays.Selections.;
"This collection represents part of the enduring legacy of Barry Lopez, hailed as a 'national treasure' (Outside) and "one of our finest writers" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) when he died in December 2020. An ardent steward of the land, fearless traveler, and unrivaled observer of nature and culture in all its forms, Lopez lost much of the Oregon property where he had lived for over fifty years when it was consumed by wildfire, likely caused by climate change. Fortunately, some of his papers survived, including four never-before published pieces that are gathered here, along with essays written in the final years of his life; these essays appear now for the first time in book form. Written in his signature observant and vivid prose, these essays offer an autobiography in pieces that a reader can assemble while journeying with Lopez along his many roads. They unspool memories at once personal and political, including tender, sometimes painful stories from Lopez's childhood in New York City and California; reports from the field as he accompanies scientists on expeditions to study animals; travels to Antarctica and some of the most remote places on earth; and to life in his own backyard, adjacent to a wild, racing river. He reflects on those who taught him: the Indigenous elders and scientific mentors who sharpened his eye for the natural world--an eye that, as the reader comes to see, missed nothing. And with striking poignancy and searing candor, he confronts the challenges of his last years as he contends with the knowledge of his mortality, as well as with the dangers the Earth-and all of its people--are facing"--- Subjects: Biographies.; Essays.; Travel writing.; Personal narratives.; Lopez, Barry Holstun, 1945-2020; American essays.;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Lands of lost borders : out of bounds on the Silk Road / by Harris, Kate,1982-author.;
"In the spirit of The Places in Between and Into the Silence, this is a transcendent memoir about travelling wildly out of bounds on the fabled Silk Road. "Carried me up into a state of excitement I haven't felt for years. It's a modern classic."--Pico Iyer. As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she most craved--that of a generalist explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and metaphysician, with a flair for basic science and endless slogging--had gone extinct. From what she could tell of the world from small-town Ontario, the likes of Marco Polo and Magellan had mapped the whole earth. So she looked beyond this planet, vowing to become a scientist and go to Mars. Well along this path, Harris set off by bicycle down a short section of the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel Yule. This trip was just a simulacrum of exploration, she thought, not the thing itself--a little adventure to pass the time until she could launch for outer space. But somewhere in between sneaking illegally across Tibet, studying the history of science and exploration at Oxford, and staring down a microscope for a doctorate at MIT, she realized that an explorer, in any day and age, is by definition the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. Forget charting maps, naming peaks, leaving footprints on another planet: what she yearned for was the feeling of soaring completely out of bounds. And where she'd felt that most intensely was on a bicycle, on a bygone trading route. So Harris quit the laboratory and hit the Silk Road again with Yule, this time determined to bike it from beginning to end. Like Rebecca Solnit and Pico Iyer, Kate Harris offers a travel account at once exuberant and meditative, wry and rapturous, and above all full of hope. Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of the self that, like our planet, can never be fully mapped. Weaving adventure and deep reflection with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders celebrates our connection as humans to the natural world, and ultimately to each other--a belonging that transcends any fences or stories that may divide us."--- Subjects: Harris, Kate, 1982-; Cycling;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 1 to 4 of 4