Download or read book In Paradise written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling final novel by a writer of incomparable range, power, and achievement, a three-time winner of the National Book Award. Peter Matthiessen was a literary legend, the author of more than thirty acclaimed books. In this, his final novel, he confronts the legacy of evil, and our unquenchable desire to wrest good from it. One week in late autumn of 1996, a group gathers at the site of a former death camp. They offer prayer at the crematoria and meditate in all weathers on the selection platform. They eat and sleep in the sparse quarters of the Nazi officers who, half a century before, sent more than a million Jews in this camp to their deaths. Clements Olin has joined them, in order to complete his research on the strange suicide of a survivor. As the days pass, tensions both political and personal surface among the participants, stripping away any easy pretense to resolution or healing. Caught in the grip of emotions and impulses of bewildering intensity, Olin is forced to abandon his observer’s role and to bear witness, not only to his family’s ambiguous history but to his own. Profoundly thought-provoking, In Paradise is a fitting coda to the luminous career of a writer who was “for all readers. He was for the world” (National Geographic).
Download or read book Far Tortuga written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1988-01-12 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An adventure story and a deeply considered meditation upon the sea itself. "Beautiful and original...a resonant and symbolical story of nine doomed men who dream of an earthly paradise as the world winds down around them." —Newsweek
Download or read book Shadow Country written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2008-08-19 with total page 912 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • “Altogether gripping, shocking, and brilliantly told, not just a tour de force in its stylistic range, but a great American novel, as powerful a reading experience as nearly any in our literature.”—Michael Dirda, The New York Review of Books Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone by Bone—Peter Matthiessen’s great American epic about Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson on the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century—were originally conceived as one vast, mysterious novel. Now, in this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has marvelously distilled a monumental work while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with brilliant rewriting throughout. Praise for Shadow Country “Magnificent . . . breathtaking . . . Finally now we have [this three-part saga] welded like a bell, and with Watson’s song the last sound, all the elements fuse and resonate.”—Los Angeles Times “Peter Matthiessen has done great things with the Watson trilogy. It’s the story of our continent, both land and people, and his writing does every justice to the blood fury of his themes.”—Don DeLillo “The fiction of Peter Matthiessen is the reason a lot of people in my generation decided to be writers. No doubt about it. Shadow Country lives up to anyone’s highest expectations for great writing.” —Richard Ford “Shadow Country, Matthiessen’s distillation of the earlier Watson saga, represents his original vision. It is the quintessence of his lifelong concerns, and a great legacy.”—W. S. Merwin “[An] epic masterpiece . . . a great American novel.”—The Miami Herald
Download or read book Men s Lives written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-04-25 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eloquent portrayal of a disappearing way of life of the Long Island fishermen whose voices--humorous, bitter and bewildered--are as clear as the threatened beauty of their once quiet shore.
Download or read book At Play in the Fields of the Lord written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-05-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a malarial outpost in the South American rain forest, two misplaced gringos converge and clash in this novel from the National Book Award-winning author. Martin Quarrier has come to convert the elusive Niaruna Indians to his brand of Christianity. Lewis Moon, a stateless mercenary who is himself part Indian, has come to kill them on the behalf of the local comandante. Out of this struggle Peter Matthiessen creates an electrifying moral thriller—adapted into a movie starring John Lithgow, Kathy Bates, and Tom Waits. A novel of Conradian richness, At Play in the Fields of the Lord explores both the varieties of spiritual experience and the politics of cultural genocide.
Download or read book The Snow Leopard written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the Penguin Orange Collection, a limited-run series of twelve influential and beloved American classics in a bold series design offering a modern take on the iconic Penguin paperback Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books | 50 Covers competition For the seventieth anniversary of Penguin Classics, the Penguin Orange Collection celebrates the heritage of Penguin’s iconic book design with twelve influential American literary classics representing the breadth and diversity of the Penguin Classics library. These collectible editions are dressed in the iconic orange and white tri-band cover design, first created in 1935, while french flaps, high-quality paper, and striking cover illustrations provide the cutting-edge design treatment that is the signature of Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions today. The Snow Leopard In 1973, Peter Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller traveled high into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. Matthiessen, a student of Zen Buddhism, was also on a spiritual quest to find the Lama of Shey at the ancient shrine on Crystal Mountain. The result is a remarkable account of a journey both physical and spiritual, as the arduous climb yields to Matthiessen a deepening Buddhist understanding of reality, suffering, impermanence, and beauty.
Download or read book Nine Headed Dragon River written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 1998-04-28 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In August 1968, naturalist-explorer Peter Matthiessen returned from Africa to his home in Sagaponack, Long Island, to find three Zen masters in his driveway—guests of his wife, a new student of Zen. Thirteen years later, Matthiessen was ordained a Buddhist monk. Written in the same format as his best-selling The Snow Leopard, Nine-Headed Dragon River reveals Matthiessen's most daring adventure of all: the quest for his spiritual roots.
Download or read book Bone by Bone written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2000-07-18 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Watson's voice is an artistic triumph. . .[Bone by Bone] may well come to be regarded as a classic." --San Francisco Chronicle Book Review In Bone by Bone, Peter Matthiessen speaks in the extraordinary voice of the enigmatic and dangerous E. J. Watson, whom we first saw, obliquely, through the eyes of his early twentieth-century Everglades community in Killing Mister Watson. This astonishing new novel, calling to account the violence, virulent racism, and destruction of the land that fueled the so-called American Dream, points an accusing finger straight into the burning eyes of Uncle Sam. Here is the bloodied child of the Civil War and Reconstruction who dreams of recovering the family plantation. He becomes the gifted cane planter nearing success on a wilderness river when he gives in fatally to his accumulating demons. Powerfully imagined, prodigiously detailed, Bone by Bone is a literary tour de force as bold and ambitious as Watson himself. "Like a true tragic figure, [Watson] knows and understands; he does not wriggle to save his own skin," said The New York Times. "This is a work of genuine dignity."
Download or read book The Cloud Forest written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1987-01-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic work of nature and humanity, by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard and the new novel In Paradise Peter Matthiessen crisscrossed 20,000 miles of the South American wilderness, from the Amazon rain forests to Machu Picchu, high in the Andes, down to Tierra del Fuego and back. He followed the trails of old explorers, encountered river bandits, wild tribesmen, and the evidence of ancient ruins, and discovered fossils in the depths of the Peruvian jungle. Filled with observations and descriptions of the people and the fading wildlife of this vast world to the south, The Cloud Forest is his incisive, wry report of his expedition into some of the last and most exotic wild terrains in the world. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Download or read book Lost Man s River written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-08-22 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When his novel Killing Mister Watson was published in 1990, the reviews were extraordinary. It was heralded as "a marvel of invention . . . a virtuoso performance" (The New York Times Book Review) and a "novel [that] stands with the best that our nation has produced as literature" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now Peter Matthiessen brings us the second novel in his Watson trilogy, a project that has been nearly twenty years in the writing. A story of epic scope and ambition, Lost Man's River confronts the primal relationship between a dangerous father and his desperate sons and the ways in which his death has shaped their lives. Lucius Watson is obsessed with learning the truth about his father. Who was E. J. Watson? Was he a devoted family man, an inspired farmer, a man of progress and vision? Or was he a cold-blooded murderer and amoral opportunist? Were his neighbors driven to kill him out of fear? Or was it envy? And if Watson was a killer, should the neighbors fear the obsessed Lucius when he returns to live among them and ask questions? The characters in this tale are men and women molded by the harsh elements of the Florida Everglades--an isolated breed, descendants of renegades and pioneers, who have only their grit, instinct, and tradition to wield against the obliterating forces of twentieth-century progress: Speck Daniels, moonshiner and alligator poacher turned gunrunner; Sally Brown, who struggles to escape the racism and shame of her local family; R. B. Collins, known as Chicken, crippled by drink and rage, who is the custodian of Watson secrets; Watson Dyer, the unacknowledged namesake with designs on the remote Watson homestead hidden in the wild rivers; and Henry Short, a black man and unwilling member of the group of armed island men who awaited E. J. Watson in the silent twilight. Only a storyteller of Peter Matthiessen's dazzling artistry could capture the beauty and strangeness of life on this lawless frontier while probing deeply into its underlying tragedy: the brutal destruction of the land in the name of progress, and the racism that infects the heart of New World history.
Download or read book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1992-03-01 with total page 1774 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) chronicle of a fatal gun-battle between FBI agents and American Indian Movement activists by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard and the novel In Paradise On a hot June morning in 1975, a desperate shoot-out between FBI agents and Native Americans near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, left an Indian and two federal agents dead. Four members of the American Indian Movement were indicted on murder charges, and one, Leonard Peltier, was convicted and is now serving consecutive life sentences in a federal penitentiary. Behind this violent chain of events lie issues of great complexity and profound historical resonance, brilliantly explicated by Peter Matthiessen in this controversial book. Kept off the shelves for eight years because of one of the most protracted and bitterly fought legal cases in publishing history, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse reveals the Lakota tribe’s long struggle with the U.S. government, and makes clear why the traditional Indian concept of the earth is so important at a time when increasing populations are destroying the precious resources of our world.
Download or read book Indian Country written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Penguin Paperbacks. This book was released on 1992 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After winning an eight year legal battle, here is the controversial book that powerfully sheds new light on the plight of Native Americans. Matthiessen's urgent accounts and absorbing journalistic details make it impossible to ignore the message they so eloquently proclaim.
Download or read book Wildlife in America written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Penguin Group USA. This book was released on 1977 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic history of the rare, threatened, and extinct animals of North America is a dramatic chronicle of man's role in the disappearance of great and small species of our land. "Should be the number one source volume for everyone who embraces the philosophy of conservation".--Roger Tory Peterson. Illustrations throughout.
Download or read book African Silences written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-04-25 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African Silences is a powerful and sobering account of the cataclysmic depredation of the African landscape and its wildlife. In this critically acclaimed work Peter Matthiessen explores new terrain on a continent he has written about in two previous books, A Tree Where Man Was Born -- nominated for the National Book Award -- and Sand Rivers. Through his eyes we see elephants, white rhinos, gorillas, and other endangered creatures of the wild. We share the drama of the journeys themselves, including a hazardous crossing of the continent in a light plane. And along the way, we learn of the human lives oppressed by bankrupt political regimes and economies, and threatened by the slow ecological catastrophe to which they have only begun to awaken.
Download or read book Sand Rivers written by Peter Matthiessen and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book End of the Earth written by Peter Matthiessen and published by National Geographic Society. This book was released on 2003 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Matthiessen chronicles two voyages into the frozen seas that surround a landmass larger than the continental United States, most of it buried under eternal snow and ice as much as three miles deep. Ninety percent of the world's fresh water is locked in this immense ice cap, a remote region profoundly important to our environment. The author addresses the subject with authority and passion, discussing everything from global warming and the ozone layer to the vital role of krill, the teeming crustacean that is the cornerstone of the marine food chain." "Nature lovers - birders especially - will be fascinated by descriptions of more than half of the penguin species and an astonishing array of seabirds, from tiny storm-petrels to magnificent albatrosses, which may soar for years without alighting on land; here too are close encounters with whales, leopard seals, and elephant seals, and elusive creatures such as the oceanic orca. There are also remarkable descriptions of the seldom seen polar rookeries where thousands of emperor penguins stand motionless for months at a time, brooding their giant eggs through the long, cold darkness of Antarctic winter."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Tigers in the Snow written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Harvill Secker. This book was released on 2000 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tiger is an endangered species. There are now only a few thousand tigers surviving in Asia in their natural habitat. The largest of the species, the Siberian tiger, is now confined almost entirely to the thinly-populated Russian Far East where it is increasingly under threat from intensified poaching and the destruction of its habitat. Peter Matthiessen, in addition to being a distinguished novelist, has written classic accounts of his observation of wildlife around the world and his study of the Siberian tiger displays his deep knowledge of, and feeling for, the natural world. He tells the story of the tiger's origin and evolution and describes its role in the mythology and culture of the peoples amongst whom it lived and by whom it was hunted. His illuminating text is accompanied by Maurice Hornocker's magnificent photographs of this fabulous animal.
