Literature: American Environmental History


Roots of American Environmentalism

 Roots of American Environmentalism
 Edited by Jon Adams and Philipp Balcke
 Paperback
 196 pages
 $12.00
 March 2012
 ISBN 978-0-9797613-2-4

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Roots of American Environmentalism is an anthology that explores the various attitudes toward land and its use from the American colonial period to the end of the nineteenth century. The major focus is on the differing concepts of "land," "wilderness," and "nature" and the way they are represented in historical texts. In order to facilitate access to the historical text, each is provided with a commentary that focuses on its significance for environmental issues.

In selecting the texts included here, the editors have concentrated on three major archetypes in the attitudes toward the American environment: the primitive, as represented in James Fenimore Cooper's frontier hero, Natty Bumppo, the pastoral, as represented in Jonathan Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, and the commercial, as represented in Washington Irving's restless Yankee, Ichabod Crane.


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Literature: American Short Story


Origins of the American Short Story

 Origins of the American Short Story
 Edited by Wolfgang Hochbruck,
 Aynur Erdogan, and Philipp Fidler
 Paperback
 189 pages
 $13.50
 December 2008
 ISBN 978-0-9797613-1-7

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Origins of the American Short Story is an anthology of prose texts that first appeared in various American magazines in the latter half of the 18th century. These magazines, most of them short lived, represented a struggling literary culture that began to flourish only later in the next century.

In selecting the stories included here, the editors concentrated on three key features: the use of American topics, settings, and characters; the evidence of artistic form in shaping the narrative; and the potential for multiple, even ambiguous readings. In addition to these features, the anthology reveals how various types of short prose, such as the tale, sketch, historiette, and anecdote, were crucial in the formation of the American short story, especially as it was later developed in the works of Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville.


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Fiction: A Novel of the Sea


The Cruise of the Jest

 The Cruise of the Jest
 Jon Adams
 Paperback
 266 pages
 $15.85
 January 2008
 ISBN 978-0-9797613-0-0

. . . a completely extraordinary piece of classic coming-of-age literature.
Foreword Magazine

. . . sail far beyond traditional thematic elements of a coming-of-age story.
The US Review of Books

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His father told him to sail Jest, a 35-foot boat, from San Francisco to Hawaii. No, he thought. No, he couldn’t imagine himself doing that. He couldn’t imagine spending days at sea and sailing thousands of miles with nothing but an empty horizon before him. But he knew his father would be after him. So he took Jest out of her slip in Sausalito and tried to hide in a small, out-of-the-way harbor. When that didn’t work, he tried to run away by sailing down the coast to Mexico. But that wasn’t enough either. He had to keep running by sailing across the ocean to the South Seas. He sailed farther than he planned, farther than he even thought possible, until eventually, after thousands of miles, he sailed alone around the world.


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