Thoreau on Birds Review

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Thoreau on Birds Review"There are little strains of poetry in our animals," Thoreau observed. "What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own."It is fitting that this volume, out of print since 1910, be brought back to life. Nineteen reduced-scale illustrations by Louis Agassiz Fuertes resonate off Thoreau's own descriptions and affections.
The book is divided into twenty-three categories of birds, and within each section the diary entries are arranged chronologically. The index is useful and, like Thoreau himself, a blend of the downright and the unaccountable; for example, among all those birds one can find "Blueberry trees," "Frog, dreaming," and "Suckers, dead." Thoreau's purposes and results, as John Hay points out in the introduction by quoting Thoreau himself, remind us that "there is a world in which owls live."Thoreau on Birds Overview

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On The Mesa Review

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On The Mesa ReviewNichols' primary objective in this short work of non-fiction is to describe (in intricate detail) a year in the life of a stock pond. He begins with its birth from a flash flood, and then chronicles the happenings throughout the year, including all the small species that live off the fleeting resource. The book is bursting with paeans to rodents, snakes, flies, lichens, manifold species of birds, coyotes, beetles, giant salamanders, etc, etc. Any lover of nature writing will revel in Nichols' skill in bringing this world to life; he executes Thoreau's injunction, and skillfully backs life into a corner and learns what it has to teach. Nichols' relationship with his environment is deep, and the work benefits from his long hours spent in quiet observation of it.
The books is also a memoir describing a blossoming relationship with a woman and fellow-nature lover who also frequents the mesa, as well as the author's dealings with a local group of citizens fighting to save the mesa from encroachment. It is in these personal passages that we get the linear narrative, which helps bind together the nature passages.
The book succeeds as description of mesa nature, as poetry of the southwest, as memoir of a writer/naturalist, as a chronicle of the loss of nature to development's unthinking rapacity. The chapters are short, on average 3-5 pages, and interspersed with photographs from the author. After reading On the Mesa, I was inspired to get outside (in the middle of winter) and touch noses with the non-human world.
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I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau Review

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I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau ReviewI'm not sure where to start in this review: do I talk about what a great addition it is to Thoreau scholarship? or do I slam the previous review for being so totally wrong?
Let's start with Cramer's book. In many ways this is a "Best of.." Henry Thoreau collection! Thoreau's journals run into many, many volumes and are easily over 2 million words, and few of us have read the entire thing! And, unless you're an Historian like me, you probably don't want to!
But Cramer has done everyone a service by taking the best of Henry's journals and put them into one volume. It spans his entire journal writing life, from his first entry on October 22, 1837 to his last entry on November 3, 1861-he would die less than 6 months later at the age of 44.
Everything you would want from Thoreau is in this book; his social commentary, his humor, his Natural observations, his spiritual views. But more than this, Cramer has annotated the selections in order to explain what exactly Thoreau is talking about, or what was going on in Henry's life at the time that caused him to write or think the way he did. A good example: in March of 1851 Thoreau writes a lengthy passage about slavery and the Fugitive Slave Bill. Cramer amplifies this passage by explaining the historical context behind Thoreau's rant. He then goes on to mention that this passage, and others, later appeared in Thoreau's amazing essay, "Slavery in Massachusetts."
This is the way the whole book reads. You look first at Thoreau's awe-ispiring, beautiful words. Then you read the footnotes to see why Thoreau said what he said, or to find an explanation about whom or what Thoreau is talking about. It puts Thoreau into an historical context and by reading this book you see that, while Thoreau was ahead of his time in some ways, in others he was very much a product of his era.
It's very well done, indeed. As a Thoreau Historian (and the guy who often portrays Thoreau) I have used the book a number of times for research, or to find a cool little quote to give my presentation some extra "ooomph"! I highly recommend it!
As for the other review here: the reviewer clearly doesn't know a lot about Thoreau's life. Thoreau did not go up the Connecticut River: it was the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
"Thoreau helping Bronson Alcott build his house and living in the attic...while tutoring" the Alcott girls??? Thoreau's "mental love affair with with the pre-teen Louisa and the reason he abruptly left the Alcott household"????
Where do these ideas come from? There's a reason why they aren't in Thoreau's journals; they NEVER HAPPENED!!
Henry never lived with the Alcott family. Ever. He briefly tutored Louisa but it was not in any Alcott home. And he never helped Alcott build any house other than a summer shack they worked on together for Emerson in 1847-48.
None of the Alcott houses ever burned. And after Thoreau's death his journals were actually protected by his sister Sophia. She later gave Bronson some of them. Eventually, many years later, they wound up in the NY Public Library, where they still reside today.
"Mental love affair"? the reviewer has been reading too much crap, like "American Bloomsbury" or "Mr. Emerson's Wife". Cramer's book is REAL history, not some fictionalized account of Thoreau's life. Please forget everything you've ever read about Concord if it was written by Susan Cheever or Amy Belding Brown.
As for the "rather strange bilblical references" Cramer used as annotations, there's a reason; Thoreau's writings are filled with Biblical references!!
If you're going to review a history book, please have some historical knowledge about the subject!
In a nutshell: buy Cramer's book! Along with his recent Annotated "Walden" you will have an exquisite collection that will help you understand Thoreau, his writing process and the times he lived in.I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau Overview

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