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In a remote corner of the Arctic in 1941, a meteor shower flashed
across the sky for an unusually long time. Taking this to be a
sign, one of the local Inuit proclaimed himself Jesus Christ.
Another proclaimed himself God. Anyone who didn’t believe in them
was Satan. Violence ensued. At the End of the World isn’t just
the remarkable story of a series of murders that occurred on the
Belcher Islands, a group of wind-blasted rocks in Canada’s Hudson
Bay. It’s also a starting place for a deeper cultural
exploration. Against the backdrop of the murders, which highlight
the fact that senseless violence in the name of religion is not a
contemporary phenomenon and that a even people as seemingly
peaceful as the Inuit can turn to chaos at the hands of one
person’s delusion, Millman addresses the burgeoning dawn of the
digital era, following the murders’ trail to show how our
obsession with screens is not unlike a cult and offering a warning
cry against the erosion of humanity and the destruction of the
environment. The story becomes a confluence of the consequences of
generational trauma, outside religious evangelism, systemic racism
against indigenous people, the perilous passage from the natural to
the digital world, and what it means to be human in a time of
technological dominance and climate disasters. At the End of the
World, available for the first time in paperback, is not a
straightforward tale of true crime but an examination of many of
the issues that have become dominant in the global conversation. In
snippets of reflection, Millman asks us to look north for answers
to many of the questions we all hold, literally, in our hands.
"This little book is big fun."-Michael Pollan An illustrated
mini-encyclopedia of fungal lore, from John Cage and Terence
McKenna to mushroom sex and fairy rings Fungipedia presents a
delightful A-Z treasury of mushroom lore. With more than 180
entries-on topics as varied as Alice in Wonderland, chestnut
blight, medicinal mushrooms, poisonings, Santa Claus, and waxy
caps-this collection will transport both general readers and
specialists into the remarkable universe of fungi. Combining
ecological, ethnographic, historical, and contemporary knowledge,
author and mycologist Lawrence Millman discusses how mushrooms are
much more closely related to humans than to plants, how they engage
in sex, how insects farm them, and how certain species happily dine
on leftover radiation, cockroach antennae, and dung. He explores
the lives of individuals like African American scientist George
Washington Carver, who specialized in crop diseases caused by
fungi; Beatrix Potter, creator of Peter Rabbit, who was prevented
from becoming a professional mycologist because she was a woman;
and Gordon Wasson, a J. P. Morgan vice-president who almost
single-handedly introduced the world to magic mushrooms. Millman
considers why fungi are among the most significant organisms on our
planet and how they are currently being affected by destructive
human behavior, including climate change. With charming drawings by
artist and illustrator Amy Jean Porter, Fungipedia offers a
treasure trove of scientific and cultural information. The world of
mushrooms lies right at your door-be amazed! Features a real cloth
cover with an elaborate foil-stamped design
The Last Speaker of Bear is the patchwork story of a life spent
traveling in the north from Alaska to Siberia. Lawrence Millman
first visited northern Canada as a child and has spent four decades
since on some thirty-five expeditions in search of undeveloped
landscapes and traditional cultures, not to mention untamed
wildlife. While much of his experience is centered in
Canada-including territories from Yukon to Quebec and
Newfoundland/Labrador-he includes stories from villages in
Greenland, Iceland, and Norway as well. Early on, Millman developed
a reverence for the wisdom of indigenous and native communities
with histories spanning centuries: Inuit, Inuk, Innu, Alutiiq,
Cree, and others. Whether dining on mushrooms, fungus, tobacco
leaves, or unusual foods that would have made even Andrew Zimmern
or Anthony Bourdain turn up their noses, or exploring northern
tundras, rugged mountains, or remote islands, he paints a picture
of people often living in tenuous conditions but rooted in a faith
that their worlds will provide for them. Relationships with bears,
caribou, reindeer, walruses, seals, whales, and abundant avian life
serve spiritual, companionship, and sustenance purposes. Traditions
grounded in family and community rituals thrive, as do lost
languages, natural medicine, and time-honored ways to survive
difficult circumstances.. In this collection of vignettes, Millman
reminds us of the potency of endangered knowledge as well as the
importance of paying close attention to the natural world. He opens
our eyes to a life in remote places thousands of miles from the
fast-paced, urban world so many of us inhabit.
Award-winning travel writer Lawrence Millman tromps through western
Ireland's rugged countryside to record the oral history of its
people before their hard-earned traditions are permanently stifled
by industrialization and development. In doing so he produces a
"lovely nugget of good writing" (New York Times) that relays the
stories of traditional laborers-tinkers cartwrights, rat-charmers,
coopers, thatchers, farriers, gleemen, pig-gelders-with candor and
depth.
A classic of northern exploration and adventure, LAST PLACES is Lawrence Millman's marvelously told account of his journey along the ancient Viking sea routes that extend from Norway to Newfoundland. Traveling through landscapes of transcendent desolation, Millman wandered by way of the Shetland Islands, the Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador. His way was marked by surprising human encounters--with a convicted murderer in Reykjavik, an Inuit hermit in Greenland, an Icelandic guide who leads him to a place called Hell, and a Newfoundlander who warns him about the local variant of the Abominable Snowman. By turns earthy and lyrical, LAST PLACES is an ebullient celebration of the exotic North.
In 1934, in the depths of the Great Depression, Elliott Merrick and
his wife bought a ramshackle farm on a Vermont hillside for $1,000.
Merrick, a young writer with a healthy dose of idealism and a
determination to live in the country, had just sold his first book
to Maxwell Perkins at Scribner's. "I had an idea that I would be
rich and famous henceforth," Merrick wrote, but added, "nothing
could be farther from the truth . . . As I look back, I'm amazed
that we could so blithely have crossed our great Rubicon on a
spiderweb. But it turned out to be one of those fortunate
mistakes-one of those fraught-with-peril enterprises that you might
never have embarked on if you had known the consequences-like being
born, for instance." Green Mountain Farm describes Merrick's and
his family's often haphazard attempts to make a go of it on these
stony, wintry acres, in a house that was falling down around them.
As Merrick puts it, "We did everything wrong, but it came out
right." They were dirt poor, but through it all, believed
wholeheartedly in going directly after the things they wanted most:
to write and to farm, however they could. A lyrical, funny, richly
fulfilling book about old houses, farming, writing, and the joys of
country life, this book is as fresh today as when it was originally
published more than fifty years ago.
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Northern Nurse (Paperback)
Elliott Merrick; Edited by Lawrence Millman
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R513
R416
Discovery Miles 4 160
Save R97 (19%)
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Out of stock
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The public agreed, keeping it on the New York Times bestseller list
for 17 weeks. Now a new edition of this classic is available from
The Countryman Press. By turns lyrical, comic, and genuinely
moving, Northern Nurse tells the story of Australian nurse Kate
Austen and her adventures at Labrador's Grenfell Mission. Written
by her husband, Elliott Merrick, it celebrates not only the
unspoiled realm of the North, but also a woman's self-fulfillment
there.
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