This is the long story of Sally Ann from a fourteen-year-old child-woman who met an older man at a village dance, through to motherhood while the Battle of Britain raged overhead. Her father, old Mr Sutton, a gentle kindly man, telling his wry humorous tales from an earlier age when his father seemed to employ the entire village. Solemn young Sidney who managed his life to the last farthing, farms in partnership with his shy, sensitive older brother who suffered a catastrophic personal loss; only saved by a supportive auctioneer who provided a lifeline of man-to-man friendship. This is also the story of the birth of the Second Agricultural Revolution told in three ages: nineteen twenty-nine; nineteen thirty-nine; nineteen forty-nine. Daily life in the English countryside emerges through the stormy lives of the main characters.

Originally published in 1974, this book evaluates and compares three important styles of sociological research: positivism, symbolic interactionism and critique. The book describes and evaluates each research technique as an experience for the researcher, and the author explains what they themselves have learned of sociological meaning from engaging in it. The book traces the main ideas through their last generations of sociologists and asks what future there is in a particular method.

Sociology is about society, but what about people? The person in the sight of sociology is all too often a matchstick being. In this original and stimulating book the person is characterized by what is inherent in a social being, and the result is a rich narrative, the story of the person told through events in life. The author holds that for sociological purposes, the person must be seen as perfect: perfectible, perfecting and perfect. He outlines the 'trialectical' nature of such a theory, offers a test of it in the making of madness and claims that such a change in vision is appropriate for the sociologist's critical engagement in the world. It may be claimed that Colin Fletcher has created a new realm of theorizing and a piece of literature for sociology. And, perhaps as important, the reader may catch the rare experience of being spoken with as a person by another person.

Sociology is about society, but what about people? The person in the sight of sociology is all too often a matchstick being. In this original and stimulating book the person is characterized by what is inherent in a social being, and the result is a rich narrative, the story of the person told through events in life. The author holds that for sociological purposes, the person must be seen as perfect: perfectible, perfecting and perfect. He outlines the 'trialectical' nature of such a theory, offers a test of it in the making of madness and claims that such a change in vision is appropriate for the sociologist's critical engagement in the world. It may be claimed that Colin Fletcher has created a new realm of theorizing and a piece of literature for sociology. And, perhaps as important, the reader may catch the rare experience of being spoken with as a person by another person.

Writing fiction after years of diligent and conscientious attention to detail, was a revelation. The story simply flowed chapter by chapter; the development of characters who in turn dictate the course of the story was a special delight. Then I learned that quite often one paragraph dictates the flow and rhythm of the next, as much as the characters dictate their own behaviour. John a skinny boy we first met in an English churchyard planting primroses on his brother's grave, becomes a central figure to this story. He survived against odds to raise a large family yet emerges as a complex character. The birth of a calf is a thrill for the whole family that owes nothing to financial security or base ambition or fear of starvation; it is a new life, an elementary joy. Even the most ancient, gnarled, grizzled farmer will stroke the calf as tenderly as a new mother, and John was no exception. He returned to check the cow four or five times in a few hours. Later in the evening he came out of the house saying he would "Just have a last look before bed." Outwardly, an apparently simple villager, yet also capable of filling the place of the late priest, his mentor, during the terrifying downward spiral of the Black Death. A time when the death toll was so heavy that all must have feared for their own survival. John's eldest child Edith, inherits his strength and holds the family together through turbulent times, culminating in the Peasant's Revolt. The young king's fear and revenge threatened any excited young man who might have followed the meetings from town to town until they reached the rising industrial city of Salisbury. The newly built spire of the cathedral gleamed in sunlight, mocking the furies at street level. Incensed by the monstrous poll tax furious rebels provoked a military crackdown. Even the deafening racket of the weaving shops had been silenced till order was restored. But revenge was taken brutally for the remainder of a long, bloody summer.

At the opening of this story, a group of farmers market traders a clothier have all survived the Peasant's Revolt, yet still feel threatened by the young king's revenge. A poor widow lost her husband and son in the violence, a farmer's son from White Clyffe swept up in the excitement was arrested in Salisbury at the height of the rebellion and has not been seen since, a clothier abandoned his established business near Bridgewater fearing suspicion of involvement, conspiracy. Their lives, loves and fears are explored among the villages and towns of the West of England. The story moves from rural Wiltshire to the rapidly industrialising city of Salisbury, commercial activity in the Severn Estuary and an escape to Honfleur in France.

At age sixty-seven, Colin Fletcher, the guru of backpacking in America, undertook a rigorous six-month raft expedition down the full length of the Colorado River--alone. He needed "something to pare the fat off my soul...to make me grateful, again, for being alive." The 1,700 miles between the Colorado's source in Wyoming and its conclusion at Mexico's Gulf of California contain some of the most spectacular vistas on earth, and Fletcher is the ideal guide for the terrain. As his privileged companions, we travel to places like Disaster Falls and Desolation Canyon, observe beaver and elk, experience sandstorms and whitewater rapids, and share Fletcher's thoughts on the human race, the environment, and the joys of solitude.

In this latest book, Fletcher writes about some of the most profound pleasures that nature has brought him over the years.