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Nine Ways to Cross a River

2008-12-10 Biography & Autobiography
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Release : 2008-12-10
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 342/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Nine Ways to Cross a River by : Akiko Busch

Download or read book Nine Ways to Cross a River written by Akiko Busch. This book was released on 2008-12-10. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Thoreau to Edward Abbey to Annie Dillard, American writers have looked at nature and described the sublime and transcendent. Now comes Akiko Busch, who finds multitudes of meaning in the practice of swimming across rivers. The notion that rivers divide us is old and venerated, but they also limn our identities and mark the passage of time; they anchor communities and connect one to another. And, in the hands of writer and swimmer Akiko Busch, they are living archives of human behavior and natural changes. After a transformative swim across the Hudson just before September 11, Busch undertook to explore eight of America's great waterways: the Hudson (twice), the Delaware, the Connecticut, the Susquehanna, the Monongahela, the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Current. She observes each river's goings-on and reflects on its history (human and natural) and possible futures. Some of the rivers have rebounded from past industrial misuse; others still struggle with pollution and waste. The swims are also opportunities to muse on the ordinary passages faced by most of us-the death of a parent, raising children, becoming older-and the ways in which the rhythms and patterns of the natural world can offer reassurance, ballast and inspiration. A deeply moving exploration of the themes of renewal and reclamation at midlife, Nine Ways to Cross a River is a book to be treasured and given to friends.

The Meaning of Rivers

2011-03-15 Literary Criticism
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Release : 2011-03-15
Genre : Literary Criticism
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 78X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Meaning of Rivers by : T. S. McMillin

Download or read book The Meaning of Rivers written by T. S. McMillin. This book was released on 2011-03-15. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the continental United States, rivers serve to connect state to state, interior with exterior, the past to the present, but they also divide places and peoples from one another. These connections and divisions have given rise to a diverse body of literature that explores American nature, ranging from travel accounts of seventeenth-century Puritan colonists to magazine articles by twenty-first-century enthusiasts of extreme sports. Using pivotal American writings to determine both what literature can tell us about rivers and, conversely, how rivers help us think about the nature of literature, The Meaning of Rivers introduces readers to the rich world of flowing water and some of the different ways in which American writers have used rivers to understand the world through which these waters flow. Embracing a hybrid, essayistic form—part literary theory, part cultural history, and part fieldwork—The Meaning of Rivers connects the humanities to other disciplines and scholarly work to the land. Whether developing a theory of palindromes or reading works of American literature as varied as Henry David Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and James Dickey’s Deliverance, McMillin urges readers toward a transcendental retracing of their own interpretive encounters. The nature of texts and the nature of “nature” require diverse and versatile interpretation; interpretation requires not only depth and concentration but also imaginative thinking, broad-mindedness, and engaged connection-making. By taking us upstream as well as down, McMillin draws attention to the potential of rivers for improving our sense of place and time.

Thinking Like a River

2023-06-30 Social Science
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Release : 2023-06-30
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 373/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Thinking Like a River by : Franz Krause

Download or read book Thinking Like a River written by Franz Krause. This book was released on 2023-06-30. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kemi River is the major watercourse in the Finnish province of Lapland and the »stream of life« for the inhabitants of its banks. Franz Krause examines fishing, transport and hydropower on the Kemi River and analyses the profoundly rhythmic patterns in the river dwellers' activities and the river's dynamics. The course of the seasons and weekly and daily rhythms of discharge, temperature, work and other patterns make the river dwellers' world an ever-transforming phenomenon. The flows of life and the frictions of everyday encounters continually remake the river and its inhabitants, negotiating national strategies, economic power, people's ingenuity, and the currents of the Kemi River.

How to Disappear

2020-02-11 Nature
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Release : 2020-02-11
Genre : Nature
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 427/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis How to Disappear by : Akiko Busch

Download or read book How to Disappear written by Akiko Busch. This book was released on 2020-02-11. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is time to reevaluate the merits of the inconspicuous life, to search out some antidote to continuous exposure, and to reconsider the value of going unseen, undetected, or overlooked in this new world. Might invisibility be regarded not simply as refuge, but as a condition with its own meaning and power? The impulse to escape notice is not about complacent isolation or senseless conformity, but about maintaining identity, autonomy, and voice. In our networked and image-saturated lives, the notion of disappearing has never been more alluring. Today, we are relentlessly encouraged, even conditioned, to reveal, share, and promote ourselves. The pressure to be public comes not just from our peers, but from vast and pervasive technology companies that want to profit from patterns in our behavior. A lifelong student and observer of the natural world, Busch sets out to explore her own uneasiness with this arrangement, and what she senses is a widespread desire for a less scrutinized way of life—for invisibility. Writing in rich painterly detail about her own life, her family, and some of the world’s most exotic and remote places, she savors the pleasures of being unseen. Discovering and dramatizing a wonderful range of ways of disappearing, from virtual reality goggles that trick the wearer into believing her body has disappeared to the way Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway finds a sense of affiliation with the world around her as she ages, Busch deliberates on subjects new and old with equal sensitivity and incisiveness. How to Disappear is a unique and exhilarating accomplishment, overturning the dangerous modern assumption that somehow fame and visibility equate to success and happiness. Busch presents a field guide to invisibility, reacquainting us with the merits of remaining inconspicuous, and finding genuine alternatives to a life of perpetual exposure. Accessing timeless truths in order to speak to our most urgent contemporary problems, she inspires us to develop a deeper appreciation for personal privacy in a vast and intrusive world.

River of Words

2010-08-01 Biography & Autobiography
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Release : 2010-08-01
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 278/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis River of Words by : Nina Shengold

Download or read book River of Words written by Nina Shengold. This book was released on 2010-08-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate group portrait of contemporary Hudson Valley writers.

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