4.5 

Home Ground

By Barry Lopez & Debra Gwartney &
Home Ground by Barry Lopez & Debra Gwartney &  digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

Published to great acclaim in 2006, the hardcover edition of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape met with outstanding reviews and strong sales, going into three printings. A language-lover's dream, Home Ground revitalized a descriptive language for the American landscape by combining geography, literature, and folklore in one volume. Now in paperback, this visionary reference is available to an entire new segment of readers. Home Ground brings together 45 poets and writers to create more than 850 original definitions for words that describe our lands and waters. The writers draw from careful research and their own distinctive stylistic, personal, and regional diversity to portray in bright, precise prose the striking complexity of the landscapes we inhabit. Home Ground includes 100 black-and-white line drawings by Molly O’Halloran and an introductory essay by Barry Lopez.

Contributors include: Jeffery Renard Allen, Kim Barnes, Conger Beasley, Jr., Franklin Burroughs, Lan Samantha Chang, Michael Collier, Elizabeth Cox, John Daniel, Jan DeBlieu, William deBuys, Gretel Ehrlich, Charles Frazier, Pamela Frierson, Patricia Hampl, Robert Hass, Emily Hiestand, Linda Hogan, Stephen Graham Jones, John Keeble, Barbara Kingsolver, William Kittredge, Jon Krakauer, Gretchen Legler, Arturo Longoria, Bill McKibben, Ellen Meloy, Robert Morgan, Susan Brind Morrow, Antonya Nelson, Robert Michael Pyle, Pattiann Rogers, Scott Russell Sanders, Eva Saulitis, Donna Seaman, Carolyn Servid, Kim Stafford, Mary Swander, Arthur Sze, Mike Tidwell, Luis Alberto Urrea, Luis Verano, D. J. Waldie, Joy Williams, Terry Tempest Williams, and Larry Woiwode.

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Home Ground Reviews

4.5
“This book is full of words used to describe the American landscape as defined by a group of writers.”
“Per FTC guidelines, I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads giveaways. I don't typically review books that I've not read all the way through, but this is certainly an exception worth making. This is basically an encyclopedia of geographic terms described by the literary world. As such, it's not the sort of book you sit down and read cover to cover. It is, however, entertaining to the point that you find yourself wandering across the pages, reading each entry as though it were something you were passing on the highway or in the woods. Not only is each entry accurate, it is created by a person with a literary background, and often times contains a quote from another literary source as an example. As a geographer, I found this "nearly pocket-size" guide to be fascinating.”

About Barry Lopez

Barry Lopez was an essayist, author, and short-story writer who traveled extensively in both remote and populated parts of the world. He is the author of Arctic Dreams, which received the National Book Award; HorizonOf Wolves and MenHome Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape; and eight works of fiction, including OutsideLight Action in the CaribbeanField Notes, and Resistance. He is the author of Syntax of the River: The Pattern Which Connects with Julia Martin. His essays are collected in two books, Crossing Open Ground and About This Life. Lopez lived in western Oregon.

Debra Gwartney

Debra Gwartney is the author of the memoir Live Through This, which expands the story of her relationship with her daughters that was broadcast on This American Life in 2002. Her short stories, personal narratives, essays, and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and journals. Recent publications include a memoir in Triquarterly, an essay in Modern Bride magazine, and a “Modern Love” essay in the New York Times. She is a former reporter for the Oregonian and was a nonfiction scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her honors include fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission, Literary Arts, the Hedgebrook Writers’ Colony, the Wurlitzer Foundation, and the American Antiquarian Society, and the John Eliot Teaching Award at Portland State University. She lives in Western Oregon.

Other books by Debra Gwartney

Molly O'Halloran

Molly O'Halloran is an illustrator and cartographer whose work has appeared in volumes of fiction, travel writing, essays, and archaeological editions. She has lived and worked in Chicago, the Upper Sonoran Desert, the northern Sierra Nevada, and the Great Basin and now calls Austin, Texas, home.

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