Henry Salt abandoned his mastership at Eton in the 1880s to devote himself to causes including vegetarianism, socialism, animals' rights, conservation and prison reform. In 1890 he published the initial version of Thoreau's "Life". With the help of American friends, he revised the book and published it anew in 1896. This third version is Salt's final reading of Thoreau based on works published up to 1908, including Thoreau's complete "Journal". Combining a narrative of Thoreau's life with a treatment of his ideas and writings, it is a penetrating study of Thoreau, which stresses his distinctive individuality. Through analysis of the text and a concise biography, the editors illustrate Salt's growth as a scholar and his changing views on Thoreau and Thoreau's philosophy. The introduction details Salt's stylistic improvements to the 1908 edition as well as the inclusion of anecdotes and facts gathered from Samuel Arthur Jones, F.B. Sanborn, Ernest W. Vickers, Raymond Adams, Fred Hosmer and Gandhi. This book is suitable for scholars of Thoreau and readers interested in Thoreau, American Transcendentalism or American literature.

Description: Procreative Ethics addresses questions at the beginning of life from a point of view that is alternatively philosophical and Christian. The author seeks to defend philosophically some positions taken partly on Christian grounds while also trying to make the implications of Christian convictions intelligible to those who do not necessarily share those convictions. The author positions himself neither as a ""moral friend"" nor ""moral stranger,"" preferring instead the role of ""moral acquaintance"" to his audience. From that position, the goal is to find areas of fruitful agreement while clarifying differences that may lead to truer reconciliations further on in the conversation. The book opens with an attempted natural law defense of artificial contraception; devotes four chapters to criticism of current defenses of abortion; and then takes up, in six remaining chapters, such matters as genetic enhancement of children, the justice or injustice of genetic revision, the harm conundrum or non-identity problem, designing for disability, and reproductive cloning. Endorsements: ""Fritz Oehlschlaeger has written a remarkable book that needs to be read by everyone with a stake in moral questions at life's beginning. Displaying theological and philosophical sophistication as well as a profound wisdom, these arguments must be taken seriously by those who agree with Oeschlaeger as well as those who do not."" --Joel James Shuman King's College ""Writing with a modesty that betrays the depth of argument that characterizes Procreative Ethics, Fritz Oehlschlaeger has written the most important book in bioethics in recent memory. Bioethics has long suffered from a stale imagination. Oehlschlaeger, an acknowledged outsider to the eld, brings to his work a fresh imagination shaped by literary texts and a profound humanity. Hopefully many will want to emulate his work in other areas of bioethics."" --Stanley Hauerwas Duke University ""In this new book Fritz Oehlschlaeger has made masterful and persuasive arguments about the moral challenges looming at the beginning of human life. And he does this as a highly informed non-specialist--an English professor no less "" --Robert Benne Roanoke College About the Contributor(s): Fritz Oehlschlaeger is Professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is co-author of Articulating the Elephant Man: Joseph Merrick and His Interpreters (1992) and Love and Good Reasons: Postliberal Approaches to Christian Ethics and Literature (2003).

Arguably one of the most important American writers working today, Wendell Berry is the author of more than fifty books, including novels and collections of poems, short stories, and essays. A prominent spokesman for agrarian values, Berry frequently defends such practices and ideas as sustainable agriculture, healthy rural communities, connection to place, the pleasures of work, and the interconnectedness of life. In The Achievement of Wendell Berry: The Hard History of Love, Fritz Oehlschlaeger provides a sweeping engagement with Berry's entire corpus. The book introduces the reader to Berry's general philosophy and aesthetic through careful consideration of his essays. Oehlschlaeger pays particular attention to Berry as an agrarian, citizen, and patriot, and also examines the influence of Christianity on Berry's writings. Much of the book is devoted to lively close readings of Berry's short stories, novels, and poetry. The Achievement of Wendell Berry is a comprehensive introduction to the philosophical and creative world of Wendell Berry, one that offers new critical insights into the writing of this celebrated Kentucky author.

Insisting on the vital, productive relationship between ethics and the study of literature, "Love and Good Reasons" demonstrates ways of reading novels and stories from a Christian perspective. Fritz Oehlschlaeger argues for the study of literature as a training ground for the kinds of thinking on which moral reasoning depends. He challenges methods of doing ethics that attempt to specify universally binding principles or rules and argues for the need to bring literature back into conversation with the most basic questions about how we should live.

"Love and Good Reasons "combines postliberal narrative theology--especially Stanley Hauerwas's Christian ethics and Alasdair MacIntyre's idea of traditional inquiry--with recent scholarship in literature and ethics including the work of Martha Nussbaum, J. Hillis Miller, Wayne Booth, Jeffrey Stout, and Richard Rorty. Oehlschlaeger offers detailed readings of literature by five major authors--Herman Melville, Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, Henry James, and Stephen Crane. He examines their works in light of biblical scripture and the grand narratives of Israel, Jesus, and the Church. Discussing the role of religion in contemporary higher education, Oehlschlaeger shares his own experiences of teaching literature from a religious perspective at a state university.