“The fact that it’s been ten years since Michael Perkins and I started publishing our works through our own Bushwhack Books dawned on me at one point. It seemed like something to celebrate,” the carefully-spoken Nixon said.
Sunday, Dec. 15: Pagels is best-known for research and publication involving a cache of over 50 ancient Greek texts discovered translated into Coptic in Upper Egypt in 1945. After completing her doctorate at Harvard University, she participated with an international team of scholars to edit, translate and publish several of these texts as The Gnostic Gospels. It was the loss of her young son that inspired her deep exploration on the questions asked in this illuminating book.
Saturday, Dec. 7: Cooper, the author of the much-loved, Newbery Medal-winning five-book series The Dark Is Rising, learned to love literature in the family bomb shelter as her mother read aloud by candlelight to pass the time during the Blitz.
Sometimes described as a “National Geographic for Millennials,” Atlas Obscura was founded in 2009 by journalist Joshua Foer and documentary filmmaker Dylan Thuras. In 2016, the company began organizing guided tours to some of the remarkable sites that it describes so enticingly. That same year, it also published its first book for the armchair traveler: Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders (Workman). Now a brand-new Second Edition has just been released, adding more than 100 new places and featuring a dozen city guides and a fold-out map for a round-the-world dream itinerary. A version for younger readers, The Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid, was released in the fall of 2018.
In a contrary motion that J. S. Bach likely would have appreciated, Like Falling through a Cloud moves from an ethereal, poetic confusion in its earliest pages toward an all-too-grounded diagnostic clarity as the reality sinks in and the author advances, often with great reluctance, from consultation to consultation as the unnamable is named.
Woodstock reading on Sunday, November 3: Many of the myths regarding Joplin read out like cautionary, puritanical sermons, luridly celebrating her passionate performances as something inspired and beyond her control, meanwhile excoriating her for her weakness, the demons and hedonism that ultimately defeated her. The standard line on Janis has allowed precious little acknowledgment of her personal agency, her seriousness of purpose and her accelerating artistic growth and self-determination, all of which are major and richly substantiated themes in George-Warren’s deeply engaging new biography.
The book being discussed, Rising Out of Hatred: the Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, recounts how Derek Black, heir apparent to the “largest racist web site in the world,” learned to question the beliefs he’d been taught his entire life and repudiate the movement. From November 3-9 a number of community events have been organized to provide opportunities to grok the message of dialog and redemption central to Black’s transformed thinking.
Tuesday, Oct. 22: Kimball left city life behind and, with her new husband from New Paltz, took on the immense job of starting and running a CSA near Lake Champlain, known as Essex Farm. It currently comprises 1,100 acres and is managed with horsedrawn farm machinery rather than tractors, using no chemical pesticides or fertilizers. The goal was to supply its 150 members year-round (up to 200 now) with ingredients for three organic meals a day – not just vegetables, salad greens, herbs and a few fruits, but also grains, flour, beans, eggs, meat, dairy, honey, maple syrup, cut flowers, even soap. Kimball calls it “the world’s first full-diet CSA, as far as we know.”
“Ancient Baseball is a response, of sorts, to the way that Major League Baseball has ruined the game for me and so many others,” says author Mikhail Horowitz.
Saturday, Oct. 5: The 200th anniversary of the birth of American poet, journalist, essayist and humanist Walt Whitman is this month, and a dear colleague of his (or the people now taking care of his old cabin) will be throwing his birthday party — John Burroughs.