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In this remarkable collection of 22 essays, the award-winning
author of The River Why braids his contemplative, activist, and
rhapsodic voices together into a potently distinctive whole,
speaking with power and urgency about the vital connections between
our water-filled bodies and this water-covered planet. Photos.
The ugly truth about dams is about to be revealed.Â
During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the whole
messy truth about the legacy of last century’s big dam building
binge has come to light. What started out as an arguably good
government project has drifted oceans away from that original
virtuous intent. Governments plugged the nation’s rivers in a
misguided attempt to turn them into revenue streams. Water control
projects’ main legacy will be one of needless ecological
destruction, fostering a host of unnecessary injustices.
            The
estimated 800,000 dams in the world can’t be blamed for
destroying the earth’s entire biological inheritance, but they
play an outsized role in that destruction. Cracked: The
Future of Dams in a Hot, Crazy World is a kind of speed date
with the history of water control -- its dams, diversions and
canals, and just as importantly, the politics and power that
evolved with them. Examples from the American West reveal that the
costs of building and maintaining a sprawling water storage and
delivery complex in an arid world—growing increasingly arid under
the ravages of climate chaos—is well beyond the benefits
furnished. Success stories from Patagonia and the Blue Heart of
Europe point to a possible future where rivers run free and the
earth restores itself.Â
When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of sixty after a bout with
brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted
readers who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of
the twenty- first century. Doyle writes with a delightful sense of
wonder about the sanctity of everyday things, and about love and
connection in all their forms: spiritual love, brotherly love,
romantic love, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon. At a
moment when the world can sometimes feel darker than ever, Doyle's
writing, which constantly evokes the humor and even bliss that life
affords, is a balm. His essays manage to find, again and again,
exquisite beauty in the quotidian, whether it's the awe of a child
the first time she hears a river, or a husband's whiskers that a
grieving widow misses seeing in her sink every morning. Through
Doyle's eyes, nothing is dull. David James Duncan sums up Doyle's
sensibilities best in his introduction to the collection: "Brian
Doyle lived the pleasure of bearing daily witness to quiet glories
hidden in people, places and creatures of little or no size,
renown, or commercial value, and he brought inimitably playful or
soaring or aching or heartfelt language to his tellings." A life's
work, One Long River of Song invites readers to experience joy and
wonder in ordinary moments that become, under Doyle's rapturous and
exuberant gaze, extraordinary.
When Brian Doyle died of brain cancer at the age of sixty, he left
behind dozens of books -- fiction and nonfiction, as well as
hundreds of essays -- and a cult-like following who regarded his
writing on spirituality as one of the best-kept secrets of the 21st
century. Though Doyle occasionally wrote about Catholic
spirituality, his writing is more broadly about the religion of
everyday things. He writes with a delightful sense of wonder about
the holiness of small things, and about love in all its forms:
spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, friendly love, love
of nature, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon. At a time
when our world feels darker than ever, Doyle's essays are a balm
for the tired soul. He finds beauty in the quotidian: the awe of a
child the first time she hears a river, the whiskers a grieving
widow misses seeing in her sink every day -- but through his eyes,
nothing is ordinary. David James Duncan sums up Doyle's
sensibilities best in his introduction to the collection: "Brian
Doyle lived the pleasure of bearing daily witness to the glories
hidden in people, places and creatures of little or no size or
renown, and brought inimitably playful or soaring or aching or
heartfelt language to his tellings." In a time when wonder seems to
be in short supply, Your One Wild and Precious Life, Doyle and
Duncan invite readers to experience it in the most ordinary of
moments, and allow themselves joy in the smallest of things.
A random bolt from a DC-8 falls from the sky, killing a child and
throwing the faith of a young Jesuit Jesuit into crisis. A boy's
mother dies on his fifth birthday, sparking a lifetime of repressed
anger that he unleashes once a year in reckless duels with the
Fate, God, or Power who let the coincidence happen. A young woman
on a run in Seattle experiences a shooting star moment that pierces
her with a love that will eventually help heal the Jesuit, the
angry young man, and innumerable others. The journeys of this
unintentional menagerie carry them to the healing lands of Montana
and a newly founded community-where nothing tastes better than
Maker's Mark mixed with glacier ice, and nothing seems less likely
than the soul-filling delight a troupe of spiritual refugees, urban
sophisticates, road-weary musicians, and local cowboys begin to
find in each other's company. With Sun House, David James Duncan
continues exploring the American search for meaning and love that
he began in his acclaimed novels The River Why and The Brothers K.
Finally in trade paperback, complementing Bantam's new release of River Teeth and our consistently bestselling edition of The River Why, here is The Brothers K, a lyrical and lovely novel of family.
In his passionate, luminous novels, David James Duncan has won the devotion of countless critics and readers, earning comparisons to Harper Lee, Tom Robbins, and J.D. Salinger, to name just a few. Now Duncan distills his remarkable powers of observation into this unique collection of short stories and essays.
At the heart of Duncan's tales are characters undergoing the complex and violent process of transformation, with results both painful and wondrous. Equally affecting are his nonfiction reminiscences, the "river teeth" of the title. He likens his memories to the remains of old-growth trees that fall into Northwestern rivers and are sculpted by time and water. These experiences--shaped by his own river of time--are related with the art and grace of a master storyteller. In River Teeth, a uniquely gifted American writer blends two forms, taking us into the rivers of truth and make-believe, and all that lies in between.
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