Book Description
With her distinctive, impassioned voice and familiar felicity of language, Terry Tempest Williams talks about wilderness and wildlife, place and eroticism, art and literature, democracy and politics, family and heritage, Mormonism and religion, writing and creativity, and other subjects that engage her agile mind—in a set of interviews gathered and introduced by Michael Austin to represent the span of her career as a naturalist, author, and activist.
Customer Reviews:
One-of-a-kind reflective memoir........2007-01-06
A Voice in the Wilderness: Conversations with Terry Tempest Williams is a selection of interviews with naturalist, author, and activist Terry Williams, as collected by Michael Austin. The discussions cover Williams' love of wildlife, her reflections upon eroticism, art, family, literature, democracy, politics, Mormonism and much more. A mind-expanding and highly contemplative reflection upon the multifaceted dimensions of life, A Voice in the Wilderness draws the reader in with its succinctly worded insights into the foibles and paradoxes of daily life. An index allows for quick reference to key subjects in this one-of-a-kind reflective memoir.
Book Description
By the time Anna Howard Shaw was barely twelve years old, she had crossed the stormy Atlantic (one and a half times), survived a grueling journey from Massachusetts to the unexplored woods of Michigan, and helped create a house and home in the middle of nowhere. By most measures, Anna Howard Shaw's life was hard and filled with struggle.
But a life in the North American wilderness also had many pleasures. Anna was young, happy, and strong. What Anna didn't have was school.
With incredible fortitude and purpose, not only did Anna go on to teach school herself, she also accomplished a great many other things, including helping to win the right to vote for women. With his magical storytelling and radiant artwork, Don Brown welcomes us into the pioneer life of a most extraordinary woman.
Customer Reviews:
Again, Brown tells history with expression and accuracy.......2001-09-08
This book reads smoothly and the illustrations are beautiful. The illustrations add to the text. They are riveting. As I read this story, I felt as if I was "Anna" as she travelled through her journey. The author note at the end was beneficial and children have the opportunity to locate additional information on Anna Howard Shaw.
Anna, the protagonist empowers children to feel they can make a difference in our country.
Book Description
Long-time Chicago Tribune columnist John Husar dedicated his life to the outdoors, his and columns and actions directly contributed to the opening of thousands of acres of park land across the midwest; for the first time ever his best columns and stories are collected for outdoor lovers to enjoy.
Customer Reviews:
read it - you won't regret it.......2004-05-31
John Husar's writings don't only apply to fishermen, hunters, or any denomination of people, but to anyone who loves to experience travels, adventures, or living in general, because he wrote not just about the outdoors, but how extraordinary life is. This book is a must-have for anyone who likes good stories told by an exellent storyteller. And who knows, you might learn somthing. Read it, you won't regret it
This book is inspiring!!.......2004-05-19
Reading this book filled me with inspiration to get out and enjoy the outdoors. John Husar's writing is absolutely poetic. He was an artist who painted with humble words. It's an easy read -you can pick up any page and start from there, because it's a collection of his columns. Thank you for making this book!
After reading a few columns, I took my kids out for a walk in the woods for the first time this year. This book is not just for the fisherman/hunter, it's for anyone who loves the outdoors and appreciates natural beauty. It's timeless and classic. I even gave it to a few friends for Father's Day.
A must have book.......2004-05-14
The writings of John have been missed in the Chicago Tribune. Thank you for the wonderful book ! I look forward to the next book with more stories.
He has taken me on advertures around the world with such respect for nature and the environment.
Great stuff!.......2004-05-11
Mr. Husar was an avid hunter and fisherman but this book should appeal to anybody who loves the great outdoors. He didn't write about how to catch big fish but about how to have fun while doing it.
I really like that it's a collection of newspaper columns -- you can grab it and read one or two columns at a time, depending on how much free time you have, or read it straight through.
I'll keep this one on my shelf for a long time.
John Husar - A Voice In The Wilderness.......2004-05-05
What a wonderful book.....Mr. Husar has a way of capturing the essence of the outdoor experiece in a artfully brilliant and often humerous way......showing great respect for all God's creatures.
Average customer rating:
- Great Survey of American Neo-Romantics
- An extraordinary work
- Some pertinent information
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Voices in the Wilderness: Six American Neo-Romantic Composers
Simmons Walter
Manufacturer: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0810857286 |
Book Description
Simmons examines those composers whose styles maintain continuity with the values and principles developed during the 19th century. The six composers chosen are each presented through a biographical overview, followed by a comprehensive assessment of their bodies of work. Each composer's musical output is discussed according to its stylistic origins and affinities with other composers, phases or periods of development, as well as strengths and weaknesses. Each chapter concludes with a discography of essenti
Customer Reviews:
Great Survey of American Neo-Romantics.......2005-05-13
I was familiar with Walter Simmons writing from his magazine reviews, and I had found him an almost invariably trusted guide to good music. When I found that he had written a book focused on six of my favorite American composers, I was excited but dismayed by the price of the book. Nevertheless, I took the plunge, and the cost became immediately greater: Simmons led me to search out even more recordings by these composers.
Although I was already a devoted follower of the music of Paul Creston, Simmons' analysis added immensely to my understanding of the music. Flagello and Giannini had also been a passion, as had Ernest Bloch. I was forced to look overseas for a recordng of one Bloch work with which I had newly become familiar: "Helvetia: The Land of Mountains and Its People," a thoroughly enjoyable symphonic work.
Each section of Simmons' book follows a similar pattern: a BIOGRAPHY of the composer, followed by a discussion of the MUSIC, typically broken into three or more periods, a CONCLUSION, NOTES, SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY, and ESSNETIAL DISCOGRAPHY. For those intimidated by the cost of the book, consider the fact that it will serve as a constant reference and provide many many hours of absorbing reading. But be prepared to spend even more as you discover recordings of works you suspect you must have.
For those concerned about any technical jargon that might hinder comprehension, be assured that Simmons writes with eloquence in a way to help even the minimally musicologically educated reader to follow his analyses.
If you have even a minimal interest in American music, or in music that touches the heart while showing considerable knowledge of structure, you owe it to yourself to obtain this book. Make it number 1 on your wish list, or, as I did, take the plunge now. You won't regret it.
An extraordinary work.......2005-04-25
This book is the first of a projected series of books by the distinguished writer on music, Walter Simmons. I've admired his writings for many years and had heard about this book from several friends who recommended it highly. I now see why. Not only does Simmons have a particularly graceful writing style, he is able to explain with clarity some complicated matters, describing music in non-technical language that most reasonably educated readers would be able to understand. His contention that these six composers have been generally under-appreciated and misunderstood is argued cogently and convincingly, and he shares insights not seen anywhere else. There is a section on each of the six composers - Bloch, Hanson, Giannini, Creston, Barber, and Flagello (I was particularly heartened by the inclusion of the shamefully neglected Giannini and Flagello) -- that contains a brief biography and then a fairly detailed description of his major (and many smaller) works in the order they were composed. Recommendations are made for recordings for those wishing to explore the music itself.
I for one am eager to read each of the five prospective books to follow this one. The subjects of the remaining books will cover American neo-classicists, American opera composers, American nationalists and populists, three traditionalists of the Juilliard School, and American traditionalists of the post-1930 generation. When this series is finished it will, on the evidence of this first volume, comprise one of the very most valuable overall studies of American classical music in print.
Strongly recommended.
Scott Morrison
Some pertinent information.......2004-05-06
I realize that my rating is not objective, as I am the author. However, I think readers might want to know that the six composers featured in this book are: Ernest Bloch, Howard Hanson, Vittorio Giannini, Paul Creston, Samuel Barber, and Nicolas Flagello.
Book Description
Nearly four million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, a debilitating neurological disorder affecting the memory that places great stress on the sufferer as well as the caregivers.
Robert and Anne Simpson share the story of Bob's early onset of Alzheimer's in order to give families accurate, firsthand information about the disease and to give support and practical help to patients and caregivers. Their dramatic story, told from both of their perspectives, uses journal entries, conversations, letters and prayers, to trace the onset, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease.
All who are trying to find a way through the wilderness of Alzheimer's will find understanding, compassion, practical advice, and spiritual hope in this story.
Customer Reviews:
Warm and Helpful.......2000-11-20
Beautifully written in the voices of both patient and caregiver, it offers welcome insight, support, and practical help for all those undertaking a similar journey through the wilderness of Alzheimer's.
Through the Wilderness of Alheimer's.......2000-04-06
This is an excellent book, not only for those dealing with care for alzeimer's, but anyone caring for loved ones that are aging, have dementia, or other limiting problems.
Through the Wilderness of Alheimer's.......2000-04-06
This is an excellent book, not only for those dealing with care for alzeimer's, but anyone caring for loved ones that are aging, have dementia, or other limiting problems.
Average customer rating:
- Good healing for depression, unified religion for new millenium
- ...Spirit Calls by Jerry Kays
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SPIRIT CALLS...a voice from the wilderness: Transcending Religion via the Essence of Metaphor
Jerry C. Kays
Manufacturer: BookSurge Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1419612581
Release Date: 2005-11-01 |
Book Description
Jerry Kays' Spirit Calls takes us on his lifelong journey to find spirituality and God. This highly personal journey examines the traditional religions of the world, including New Age philosophy, along with his enlightening observations of the role of politics in spirituality throughout history. This modern day journey of man's age old quest to find God is highly relevant as Kays uses current events to help describe his personal conclusions on discovering God and spirituality. Kays brilliantly uses a few simple formulae to illustrate highly complicated concepts, making Spirit Calls a challenging and rewarding journey.
Customer Reviews:
Good healing for depression, unified religion for new millenium.......2007-01-21
Jerry describes his depressive state of mind in very convincing way. After years of depression and personal problems, Jerry C. Kay came to the conclusion to overcome it with new ideal religion, which can be taken from all other religions, like Christianity, Judaism, New Age etc,. He claims there is good in every religion, but every and each of them have faults. Christianity has Trinity, Judaism is too monotheistic and Islam has a person as a profit. This new religion can help a person with depressive state of mind to be successful in life. This is pretty interesting idea, but the problem, per my opinion is, that it is still man made religion, therefore worthless. This is good book for somebody who lost a son or family member to deep depression and wonts to help himself by inventing a self- help therapy. The beauty is you invent YOUR OWN religion, as compared to conventional one. Interesting idea, but I don't find it a practical one, since people prefer a religion that in existence already. How many people will start their own religion, when you are already depressed? Overall it is interesting book about his journey through depression
...Spirit Calls by Jerry Kays.......2005-12-30
In an epoch of brutality termed "compassionate conservativism" and warfare wherein solitary martyrs lose their lives fighting the most advanced military in the world, unorthodox author Jerry Kays has emerged as a new and powerful voice for universality, sanity, and a potent spirituality unmarred by predication.
With an almost Hegelian conviction in what Kays terms the "trinity" (thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or, alternately, positive, negative, and neutral), the senseless polarity of contemporary thought patterns is revealed with a deft and journalistic touch that is both highly personal and intrinsically universal. Kays appears unafraid to broach any topic, historical or current, and his thought-provoking editorial covers topics ranging from Constantine to black holes.
Though Kays identifies himself as a liberal, his arguments against the rule-by-fear Right are vigorously well-wrought. His remorseless attacks are aimed at a world "based solely upon lies and false promises," and yet his accusations and analyses are tempered by an obvious abiding love for the world and its inhabitants. With a deliberate, holistic approach, Kays loops from Genesis and the Fall to a compellingly precognizant notion of our own imminent decline, a renewal of the Fall via a thoughtless immersion in dualistic thinking and egos run amuck.
Teaching without dogma and ruminating on the hues and essence of existence, Kays reaches a profound point of understanding that is not that of a man sitting underneath the Bodhi tree but rather more akin to the entirety of humanity sitting joyously beneath the vast and welcoming dome of the universe.
--Ellen Tanner Marsh, NYT best selling author
Average customer rating:
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This Wilderness of War: The Civil War Letters of George W. Squier, Hoosier Volunteer (Voices of the Civil War)
George W. Squier ,
John David Smith , and
Richard M. McMurry
Manufacturer: University of Tennessee Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1572330066 |
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Every autumn all over the country, students and teachers turn to the legend of Johnny Appleseed, an American folk hero popularized by Walt Disney Studios and hundreds of local events. As the republication of the classic anthology, Johnny Appleseed: A Voice in the Wilderness shows, the real man is even more fascinating than his popular persona.
Born in Leominster, Massachnusetts, in 1774, John Chapman became famous in mid-western America as a conservationist, horticulturist, hero of the War of 1812, and spiritual visionary. What most Americans do not know about this folk legend is that his inner life was the source of his remarkable personal characteristics. John Chapman lived a simple life, in harmony with nature and at peace with local Native American tribes.
By his ownb account, Chapman was influenced by the 18th-century Enlightenment scientist and spiritual visionary Emanuel Swedenborg, and he became a one-man wilderness lending library of Swedenborg's writings, passing out unbound signatures and treatises to pioneer families whom he met in his journeys through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. He would enter settlements like a town crier, proclaiming enthusiastically, "Good news fresh from heaven!"
Known as the "St. Francis of the frontier," John Chapman loved animals and provided for horses whose age and infirmities would otherwise have marked them for death. And, according to a report in his own day, he himself "seems to be almost independent of corfporeal wants and sufferings. He goes barefooted, can sleep anywhere. . . and lives upon the coarsest and most scanty fare. He has actually thawed the ice with his bare feet."
Average customer rating:
- Fascinating Book about the Women of Algonquin Park
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Algonquin Voices - Selected Stories of Canoe Lake Women
Gaye I. Clemson
Manufacturer: Trafford Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Thomson, Tom
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ASIN: 1553694899
Release Date: 2006-07-06 |
Product Description
Ths book shares the life experiences of over 20 women, who led very different lives but had one common frame of reference. They all lived at one time or another on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park in the 20th Century. This book captures the stories of various aspects of their life on the lake as pioneers, business women, leaders and feminists from 1905 to the present.
Customer Reviews:
Fascinating Book about the Women of Algonquin Park.......2003-11-23
Canada's Algonquin Park located about a 3-4 drive from Toronto was first created in 1893 as a wildlife sanctuary and to conserve the headwaters of the rivers that flow out of the park. Located on the edge of Canada's "shield" or wilderness, it is Ontario's oldest and largest park.
From the time of its existence the Park's astounding beauty has attracted many worldwide artists including Canada's famous Group of Seven. This group comprised seven Canadian artists whose speciality was the drawing and painting of landscapes. It has also been the backdrop of many of the paintings of another great Canadian artist Tom Thomson. Unfortunately, Thomson died mysteriously in 1917 in a canoe accident at Canoe Lake located in the Park.
Author Gaye Clemson has for the past forty- eight years vacationed at Canoe Lake situated in Algonquin Park. When I asked her why is she so attracted to the Park, her reply was "it is my summer home and is deeply imbedded in my soul. I love its wilderness, its tranquility and being close to nature. Being there brings me spiritual strength and peace and an opportunity to get back to the basics of life."
Clemson was fascinated with the history of the early settlers and more particularly the women that inhabited the Park and Canoe Lake. Over a span of several years, with the help of her two children and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Clemson conducted meticulous research pertaining to these first leaseholders. (It is to be noted that the land where the dwellings sit are not owned but rather leased from the Ontario Government. The present day leases will expire in 2017).
Her findings culminated in an interesting compilation of essays and black-and-white photos entitled Algonquin Voices: Selected Stories of Canoe Lake Women.
These writings describe a variety of topics such as the impacts of weather, animal experiences, family traditions, interesting characters, means of transportation to and from the Park, the first buildings, hotels, and businesses. However, what is unique and refreshing about these essays is that many of these narratives are from a woman's perspective.
Clemson best sums up the predominant qualities of these women when she quotes from one of the inhabitants, a Mary Percival, who stated: "We were gems-of-all trades, not Jacks-of-all-trades. We coped alone. Did every job and fixed every problem with no help most of the time. It took ingenuity, that's what it took, courage and ingenuity."
Perhaps, that in a "nutshell" sums it all up and when you read
Clemson's essays you walk away in wonderment as to how these pioneers survived under such harsh conditions.
There is no doubt that Clemson's findings will be of immense benefit to those of us who have travelled to Algonquin Park or are planning a trip in the near future. It will also serve as a valuable resource in the understanding of the paintings of Canada's Group of Seven.
This review first appeared on reviewer's own site
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- A Voice in the Wilderness of Rafinesque Biography
- A Famous Kentucky Eccentric
- An awesome book!
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Constantine Samuel Rafinesque: A Voice in the American Wilderness
Leonard Warren
Manufacturer: University Press of Kentucky
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 081312316X |
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Half a century after the death of Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1840, a small number of researchers, biographers, and historians of natural science suggested that the famed botanist's last name should become the newest adjective in the English lexicon. Had they succeeded, "rafinesque" would have forever been a literary tool to describe those poor souls, occasionally reaching but always aspiring to lofty heights, who brought chronic calamity and defeat upon themselves through grandiose, narcissistic visions of their own importance.
Why did some push for one man's name to become a signifier of a whole range of human behavior? As noted professor, researcher, doctor, and author Leonard Warren shows in this long-overdue biography, Rafinesque displayed unique extravagance in his behavior, his imagination, and his lightning intelligence. Among his achievements were pre-Darwinian theories of the gradual evolution of differing plant species through minute changes in response to environmental stimuli (Darwin later acknowledged Rafinesque's pioneering work in the field). Rafinesque also named more than 6,700 species of plants during his travels—mostly on foot—across the length and breadth of nineteenth-century America.
Rafinesque was the first professor of natural history west of the Allegheny Mountains, teaching at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. Yet despite his accomplishments, he never lacked for detractors, and he rarely failed to provide his adversaries with rich fodder for criticism. His imagination sometimes dominated his analytic sense and rendered much of his work unreliable at best and nonsensical or fraudulent at worst. Also prone to petulance, jealousy, paranoia, and self-righteousness, Rafinesque alienated his colleagues and offended most in the scientific establishment who were in positions to influence his destiny. Their overwhelming discomfort with Rafinesque, and their repeated rejections of his often brilliant but unpredictable work, diminished his status and hurt him both personally and professionally during his later years. Tragically, upon his death, Raffinesque's wealth of unpublished writings and his massive collection of plant specimens were destroyed or scattered without regard.
Leonard Warren portrays Constantine Samuel Rafinesque as a remarkably complex and ultimately tragic figure in the annals of science. Decades after his death, when the burning questions of Rafinesque's day were better understood, a small number of scientists and natural historians began to reconsider the maverick's life and work. While still finding much to dismiss, they also found much to admire. The scope of Rafinesque's intelligence and the array of his accomplishments are widely acknowledged today, and with Leonard Warren's biography, his legacy as a brilliant scientific discoverer is even more secure.
Customer Reviews:
A Voice in the Wilderness of Rafinesque Biography.......2007-09-17
Botanists will be surprised to learn from this book that "almost none" of the roughly 6,700 Latin plant names devised and published by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783-1840) "were listed in any botanical indices, including the comprehensive Index Kewensis" (p. 63). B. D. Jackson, the editor of that great compendium, did miss a few, but I occasionally take down the two folio volumes of my facsimile reprint of the 1895 Index and, as an exercise in bibliomancy, invite a skeptic to insert his finger at random between any two of its 1,299 pages. "I'll bet you money, marbles, or chalk," I challenge the doubter, "that somewhere among the six columns of tiny type on those two pages you will find a plant name attributed to Rafinesque." I have never lost the bet.
Sadly, misinformation such as this about the Index Kewensis characterizes this long-awaited biography. Next to Audubon, Rafinesque has had more written about him than any other American naturalist of his time, but a competent book-length biography has not yet been published. Issued in parts, 1893-95, the two-volume Index Kewensis was completed in England the same year that the first life of Rafinesque was assembled by Richard Ellsworth Call in Kentucky. The product of Call's effort has been considered a book because its large type, wide line spacing, broad margins, and extra thick paper puffed it up to resemble a book. The author himself modestly called it a "brochure." In 1911, T. J. Fitzpatrick prefaced a 50-page "Sketch of his life" to the Rafinesque bibliography he had lovingly compiled, and the resulting book often was called a biography by reviewers who had little interest in bibliography. Finally, for Transylvania University's 1940 centennial commemoration of Rafinesque's death, Francis W. Pennell delivered a keynote address that, two years later, was published as a 60-page article, "The Life and Work of Rafinesque." Despite some inaccuracies corrected by the subsequent research of Pennell himself and by others, his article remains the most reliable single account of the remarkable career of America's most challenging naturalist.
These three writers, as well as the author of the present book, all based their narratives on the slim autobiographical account published by their subject in 1836, A Life of Travels. Professional biographers assume all autobiography is self-serving to some extent and seek confirmation elsewhere for anything they take from it. But these biographers have been amateurs (in the non-pejorative sense of the term). Some of their resulting errors arise from a misunderstanding of the nature of Rafinesque's Life. Call considered it the equivalent of a private letter to let his family in France know what Constantine had been up to, a view that Warren unfortunately endorses (p. 183). Since 1987, however, it has been known that the little book was merely an outline prepared to whet interest at the Société de Géographie in Paris for the extensive narrative of his foreign adventures Rafinesque hoped to complete. The manuscript of that précis, sent to Bordeaux for his sister to transmit to Paris, never reached its destination. Three years later the author translated his file copy, and published it in Philadelphia at his own expense. Knowing this, and above all knowing there are 624 variants between the French and English texts, should give pause to biographers who use either version.
Confirming what is stated in A Life of Travels requires, first, some wariness, and second, considerable investigation in primary sources. For instance, Rafinesque wrote there that when he and his brother returned to Europe in 1804 after 32 months in the United States, they "sailed in the Ship Two Sisters, Capt. Evans, going to Leghorn and thence to Calcut[t]a" (A Life of Travels, p. 25). All the biographers have remarked on the departure of the Two Sisters. The Lloyds Register lists more than 50 vessels named Two Sisters in 1804, but from records of the port of Philadelphia now at Philadelphia's Maritime Museum we can learn that departing on the date Rafinesque correctly stated, under command of Captain David Evans, was the good ship Sally & Hetty. After the passage of three decades, Rafinesque's usually reliable memory had failed him. Knowing this, a biographer ought to question other recollections. Rafinesque tells us also that in 1815 he returned to the United States from Sicily on "the Union of Malta." Only by consulting the Connecticut Gazette (8 Nov. 1815) will we discover that the ship wrecked outside the harbor of New London, Connecticut, carrying most of Rafinesque's worldly possessions to the bottom of the ocean, was an English vessel out of Malta named Union--not the Union of Malta, as Warren was led to believe.
These are trivial errors, but representative of the hundreds of mistakes that mar this book. Consider the naturalist's mother, whose native language surely would have important biographical consequences for her children. Her son declared that she was "Grecian born, but of a German family from Saxony" (A Life of Travels, p. 5). Hence, we may reasonably ask, did the infant Constantine prattle at his mother's knee in demotic Greek or in Plattdeutsch? Warren is right that the woman actually "was born in Constantinople" but dead wrong about her having been "reared in Greece." From this error he infers that the naturalist "could probably speak his mother's Greek tongue" (p. 7). Actually, the woman never set foot in Greece. Since her merchant family had resided in Constantinople for several generations, it is likely that they had become Francophone, for French was the language of commerce in the Levant. Rafinesque had been disingenuous in his autobiography. He knew very well that Constantinople, his own birthplace and that of his mother, had not been a Greek city since the Ottomans made it their capital in 1453, but, as a Protestant Christian, he was determined to distance himself from all things Islamic. When he addressed the citizens of Lexington, Kentucky, to raise money for the Greek war of independence, he called himself "Constantine, of Byzantium." As an example of the ethnic prejudice he wanted to avoid, at the start of one of his many lawsuits, the opposing Philadelphia lawyer tried to rattle him by declaring that "This infidel" from a Muslim land "cannot swear on our Holy Bible. Let him swear on his own Koran!" (unpaginated, unsigned MS notes, Rafinesque's lawsuit against the estate of Zaccheus Collins, 1831; American Philosophical Society).
Other writers, observing several titles in the Rafinesque bibliography in the German language, have concluded that at least he wrote the ancestral language of his mother's family, and Warren, who gullibly accepts the errors of his predecessors, also includes German among her son's linguistic accomplishments. Yet, careful inspection shows that all these articles were translated by others from their original French. Rafinesque had a talent for languages, but German was not one of them. Replying in French to a letter he had received from the paleontologist G. A. Goldfuss, he remarked (my translation): "Your letter of 3 November 1821 has reached me, but being unfortunately written in German, I could not read it" (Lexington, Mar. 1822; Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin).
Rafinesque's Protestantism has caused additional confusion, partly because he never mentioned in print his brand of Christianity. In his so-called autobiography he never alluded to his domestic life in Sicily either, nor to the two children he fathered there. Only in his last will and testament did he remark that he "deemed" himself "lawfully married" to his children's mother, probably hoping that his honorable intention would enable his illegitimate daughter to inherit from his estate. He felt obliged, however, to explain that such a marriage was still prohibited in Sicily by the decrees of the 16th-century Council of Trent. One needs to know that those decrees forbade the marriage of Roman Catholics with Protestants. Nevertheless, Warren refers throughout to Josephine Vaccaro as the naturalist's wife, and adds that she later married a man named "Pizzalour." The naturalist's only surviving child, his daughter Emilia, was in the best position to know. She called her stepfather "Mr. Pinzarroni"; and Rafinesque thought the man's name was spelled "Pizzarrone." The puzzling "Pizzalour" is a signal to be on guard for other bungled names, which abound in Warren's book: Richard Harlan, a well-known Philadelphia zoologist, is here called "George Harlan"; Rafinesque's friend Dr. James Mease is sometimes called "John Mease"; James A. Spencer, who tried to exhume the bones of Rafinesque in 1924, is confused with his son Robert Spencer. Elsewhere, thorny proper nouns such as Heckewelder, Brongniart, and Chillicothe are misspelled. When not misspelled, Chillicothe is located in the wrong state (p. 139).
Some of these errors may be typos (which also abound, and include among them the eponymous genus of Compositae plants that honors Rafinesque); in the biography of a botanist, such errors as "cryptogram" for "cryptogam" seriously erode a reader's confidence in the book's reliability. Rafinesque's own incomplete mastery of English also has caused misconceptions. Warren took the naturalist's word for it that in Palermo he "lived in a palace," but Rafinesque was unaware that "apartment house" would be a more apt translation for palazzo than its English cognate. A more serious blunder concerns Rafinesque's much criticized Florula Ludoviciana (1817), a book based on the travel account of the amateur botanist C. C. Robin describing plants from coastal Louisiana. During the last year of his life (1840), in answer to critics who had roundly condemned him for naming plants he himself had not examined, Rafinesque wrote (The Good Book, p. 42) that "I have seen some plants of Robin," presumably subsequent to the publication of his book. Warren inflates this simple declaration into "he claimed that while in France he had seen Robin's collection of Louisiana plants" (p. 61). Impossible! After he left Marseilles in 1800, at age 17, Rafinesque never again visited France; and Robin only began his tour of Louisiana in 1802, the same year Rafinesque arrived in Philadelphia. Warren concludes from his own misconception that "Rafinesque was caught in a lie" (p. 61). Since Rafinesque's veracity has been questioned elsewhere, this gratuitous and erroneous accusation is all the more regrettable.
The index of this book is incredibly shoddy. The title of a magazine Rafinesque published in Sicily is first listed as "Mirror of Science," then again as "Specchia [sic] delle Scienze," followed immediately by "Specchio delle Science" [sic]. The naturalist's father is entered twice, once with the cedilla on his name François and once without it, as though these were two different persons. Constantine Rafinesque, who published under the name Rafinesque-Schmaltz in Sicily, gets listed also as "Schmaltz, Rafinesque." And there is no explaining why this wholly imaginary branch of the Rafinesque family tree appears at all: "Lanthois, Emily Louisa."
Nor are the book's endnotes any more reliable. They seldom reveal whether the author is quoting from a document printed by somebody else or from the manuscript itself, and when the latter they sometimes locate it in the wrong repository. In the notes there are citations to authors by last name only who are never identified in the bibliography. The abbreviation of ibidem is used with such abandon that it loses entirely the meaning of "in the same place." Additional gaffes are introduced when Warren misapprehends secondary sources. An example appears in the treatment of Rafinesque's compensation at Transylvania University. Instead of being paid a salary to teach there, he had the privilege, like the medical faculty, of selling tickets to his lectures. In the 1820s, professors were compensated that way at other American medical schools as well, since it was expected that, unlike the other teachers, they also would enjoy a lucrative medical practice. I was surprised to read here, however, that the Transylvania medical professors "were . . . on a real salary" (p. 83), and chagrined to see that the related endnote attributes this revelation to one of my own publications. Well, no! In 1824, when Kentucky's General Assembly published a Report, on the Transylvania University, and Lunatic Asylum (separate enterprises but, to the legislative mind, both custodial institutions), the university's budget showed no salary costs for any of the six medical professors, who, moreover, complained that they had to pay the rent for their own lecture hall.
I hasten to conclude this dreary recital by listing only the most egregious of the many remaining errors: on page 13, the epigraph attributed to Rafinesque is, rather, a sarcastic comment about him by an anonymous author, whose essay is further discussed (pp. 143-144), where its satiric thrust is naively overlooked; on page 60 the Annals of the New York Lyceum of Natural History is confused with Rafinesque's own Annals of Nature; an eyewitness description of Rafinesque's appearance (p. 85) seems to be attributed to W. D. Funkhouser, who was born 41 years after Rafinesque's death; Transylvania's president, Horace Holley, never "fought to permit Rafinesque to teach science" (p. 110), but instead Holley's attempt to discharge him was thwarted by the university's trustees; it was the Owenite community at Valley Forge that offered to pay the costs of Rafinesque's removal from Kentucky, not William Maclure at New Harmony, Indiana (p. 112); the portrait (facing p. 130) is not "of Rafinesque" nor is it "by Mat[t]hew Jouett"; though it is still an open question whether the Walam Olum, an alleged masterpiece of Amerindian poetry, was a hoax by Rafinesque or a hoax on him, he assuredly did not offer it "for a prize of twelve hundred francs" and he made only one attempt, not "several unsuccessful attempts to obtain a pension from King Louis Philippe" (p. 154). We are told (p. 174) that from Rafinesque's "pen came the works of poetry The Universe and the Stars," etc. However, one needs to go no farther than the title page of The Universe and the Stars (1837) to learn that this book--prosaic in both senses of the word--is a reprint of an 18th-century treatise on astronomy for which Rafinesque merely supplied explanatory notes. It does help to examine a book before pronouncing on its content.
Though this book contains more thoughtful analysis of significant events in Rafinesque's life than do the studies of earlier biographers, when the analysis is based on inadequate or inaccurate factual matter it is bound to arrive at untenable conclusions. Warren believes that "one can only conclude that as his Kentucky days drew to a close and he could not find a [new academic] position anywhere, Rafinesque suffered serious mental derangement" (p. 108). I, for one, do not conclude that, because I have read the manuscript evidence of his many extensive farewell visits to a wide circle of friends on the eve of his departure, including the recorded sentiment of a teenage girl who wrote that "Dr. Rafinesque is packing his goods & chattels for Philadelphia.... He leaves us forever. Lamentable thought!" (Margaret Leavy in Lexington writing to her father in Philadelphia, 29 March 1826; University of Kentucky Library). Hardly documentation for a nut case.
This book's chronology, patterned on A Life of Travels, is interrupted from time to time for these discussions. A really fine analysis of Rafinesque's views on classification, and the distinctions between the French-inspired "natural system" of botanical classification that he espoused in opposition to the Linnaean "sexual system" of most American botanists, occupies all but about six pages of chapter 2, a chapter treating the period 1802 to 1805. Warren identifies this dispute as one reason Rafinesque was ostracized by his colleagues. The problem is, however, that this conflict did not arise until more than a decade later, when Rafinesque made himself the principal reviewer of botanical books in America and castigated their authors for not sharing his views about classification. I suppose the subject was dragged into chapter 2 because the secondary sources Warren relied on so heavily have little to say about that earlier period. Yet, right in his own home town, at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, there is an untouched cache of Rafinesque's 1803 letters to Henry Muhlenberg that reveal a very different person from the cocksure book reviewer of 1818. In these 1803 letters, Rafinesque was respectful and deferential to the correspondent 30 years his senior. Without any qualms about it, he discussed with Muhlenberg the identification and classification of plants purely in Linnaean terms.
Surviving letters such as these are a valuable supplement to the scanty biographical information in A Life of Travels, which, among its many limitations, ends while its author had four more years to live. Sixty years ago, in his address at Transylvania's centennial symposium, Francis Pennell made good use of letters by Emilia Rafinesque to give some human dimensions to her father's story, as well as good use of the detailed letters Rafinesque wrote during his western travels to apprise Zaccheus Collins about his discoveries. Once back in Collins's Philadelphia in 1826, Rafinesque had no further need to write to him, so this source of biography dried up. Neither Pennell nor Warren took the next step beyond the Collins letters--that of fleshing out the last 14 years of the Rafinesque story through the major collection of Rafinesque-Torrey letters at the New York Botanical Garden Library. John Torrey outlived both Collins and Rafinesque. Warren does make some use of Rafinesque's letters to William Swainson (Linnean Society of London), of which there has been a microfilm at the American Philosophical Society since 1959, but he appears to be unaware of the equally large collection of Rafinesque-Candolle letters at the Conservatoire Botanique de Genève, which are not available in this country. Nor are the personal letters that remain with the Rafinesque family in France. Warren considers that an article published 60 years ago by E. M. Betts "contains all of the correspondence of Jefferson and Rafinesque" (p. 216). It does not, and moreover, errs in the identification of some of the people mentioned in those letters.
Finally, though I cannot recommend this book to anyone seeking to know the factual details of Rafinesque's life, I do find of interest its author's explanation for why we continue to be fascinated by that life, even if I am not wholly persuaded by it. Warren surmises that Rafinesque "remains memorable, and perhaps unique, not so much for his scientific contributions, which tended not to have a lasting impact, but for the fantastical person that he was" (p. 210). The book may be worth reading for the author's analysis of the nature of that personality. Warren is the first to see a connection between the subject's spiritual life and his performance as a field naturalist, and he offers the surprising explanation for Rafinesque's "creative genius" as the consequence of "a kind of insanity" (p. 210).
Perhaps it is because they see us naked that physicians, like the boy in Hans Christian Andersen's tale about the emperor, often are keen judges of character. Leonard Warren is a physician. Should we heed his conclusions about Rafinesque's character? Warren is not the first to attempt a psychiatric diagnosis of Rafinesque, whose contemporaries more bluntly declared him crazy. William Baldwin said Rafinesque was a "literary madman"; "crackbrained," sneered L. D. von Schweinitz; and Edward Barton pronounced him a "maniac." It remained for a later generation's Leon Croizat to pontificate that Rafinesque "wrote botany because he was of unsound mind," the same generation that also, in the person of the psychiatrist J. M. Woodall, decided he was a "paranoid neurotic," who had an "enlarged and hypertrophied" ego; yet for all that "was a genius" nonetheless.
Siding with the odd judgment of Louis Agassiz that Rafinesque "was a better man than he appeared," Dr. Warren wrote this diagnosis (pp. 206-207) for our generation:
"At the end of the twentieth century, Rafinesque might have been diagnosed as suffering from a bipolar, predominately manic disorder--chronic hypomania (mild mania), not violent, and therefore fully capable of functioning outside a mental institution, but becoming highly irritable and aggressive when challenged. Further, there were times when he seemed to manifest schizoid and paranoid tendencies. . . . Rafinesque's complex behavior, puzzling to all, may not only be ascribed to a manic disorder but also to a condition known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder. . . . He could operate effectively with incredible energy and persistence within a rational, scientifically accepted framework, and only occasionally did he reveal underlying psychopathology when he ignored or grossly violated the accepted values of society and the bounds of reason."
Perhaps so. However, Warren's posthumous diagnosis of Rafinesque's "bipolar disorder" is not the discovery he thinks it is, because it was anticipated nearly two decades ago by Joe D. Pratt, whose name is never mentioned in Warren's book.
Four years before his death, Rafinesque himself granted with surprisingly little rancor that "I have been . . .laughed at as a mad Botanist by scornful ignorance" (New Flora of North America, p. 11). As those who scorned him slip one by one into oblivion, his own last laugh--crazed or not--does continue to command attention. His life deserves a more reliable biography than it has so far received.
A Famous Kentucky Eccentric.......2005-08-16
This biography is of great interest to anyone interested in famous Kentuckians. Rafinesque was among the earliest scientists in the Commonwealth, and he was interested in nearly everything. Perhaps his major interest was botany, but he collected fossils, Indian artifacts, and shells. He wrote a huge number of books and articles, including a most interesting one on the fish of the Ohio River. He wrote on planting vineyards in America, and a Materia Medica of American plants. He was particularly interested in languages, and held theories linking the American tribes with other linguistic groups in Europe and Asia. He began the first botanical garden in Kentucky at Lexington, which was chartered by the state legislature. He left a memoirs of his travels and scientific work in Europe and North America.
He was a professor at Transylvania University and was influential in the professional lives of a number of its alumni, though many of them considered him an odd fish, as did Audubon when he met him. The author of this book also considered him, for all his genius and originality, to be a psychologically unstable individual. His tomb is found today in the crypt at Transylvania, though he left a curse upon the university because the president fired him after an argument.
An awesome book!.......2004-09-20
This is the best book ever. Rafinesque is cool. He is cool and named plants. I love Rafinesque. (...).
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