Cimarron
Edna Ferber 1930 (The Oklahoma land rush of 1889 gives Yancey Cravat an opportunity to rescue his wife from civilized mediocrity, and head west for the untamed life of the pioneer.) Yancey Cravat is the Cimarron—the wild one, like an aimless river or a jousting bighorn sheep. He may tote legal volumes as easily as […]
Go Down, Moses
William Faulkner 1942 (Vivid tales from the deeply rooted McCaslin family of Mississippi explore the human desire to dominate others.) Faulkner raises a novel, especially Go Down, Moses, like a mountain range. A small peak here, another one some indefinite distance to the side but nearer to the viewer, another apparently between them but actually much […]
The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger 1951 (He may not know what he wants to be in life, but he sure knows one thing he doesn’t want to be—phony! Unfortunately, the world doesn’t seem to agree with him). Holden Caulfield is a unique and precious personality in literature. Although I surely would not want to be subjected in all my […]
The Right Stuff
Tom Wolfe 1979 (Seven pilots scale the ziggurat of manliness on the quest to be America’s space heroes.) Tom Wolfe probably awoke one morning and thought to himself, wouldn’t it be great if reading about current events were as fun as reading novels? And with as simple an idea as that, he kicked off the movement […]
A Sand County Almanac
July 9, 2014 / 3 Comments on A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold 1948 (An ecologist contemplates and celebrates the land, and recommends an expansion of our moral world.) In today’s courses on ecology, forestry, conservation, environmental philosophy or land use, three personalities are routinely introduced as the fathers of modern concern for nature, the three who first and most strongly urged us to enlarge our […]
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