Showing results by author "Peter Matthiessen"

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 Z en Buddhism, was also on a spiritual quest to find the Lama of Shey at the ancient shrine on Crystal Mountain. As the climb proceeds, Matthiessen charts his inner path as well as his outer one.

Inspired by a near-mythic event on the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the 20th century, Shadow Country re-imagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that obsessed his favorite son.

When Peter Matthiessen was 17, he was told the story of Edgar J. Watson, a popular and successful planter who had been murdered by his neighbors in 1910. This novel is Matthiessen’s attempt to piece together the life of a mysterious man who became a legend, and the dangerous legend that destroyed him.

In Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean, writer, sailor, and surfer Jonathan White takes listeners across the globe to discover the science and spirit of ocean tides. In the Arctic, White shimmies under the ice with an Inuit elder to hunt for mussels in the dark cavities left behind at low tide; in China, he races the Silver Dragon, a 25-foot tidal bore that crashes 80 miles up the Qiantang River; in France, he interviews the monks that live in the tide-wrapped monastery of Mont Saint-Michel; in Chile and Scotland, he investigates the growth of tidal power generation.

On a hot June morning in 1975, a fatal shoot-out took place between FBI agents and American Indians on a remote property near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in which an Indian and two federal agents were killed. Eventually, four members of the American Indian Movement were indicted on murder charges in the deaths of the two agents. Behind this violent chain of events lie issues of great complexity and profound historical resonance, brilliantly explicated by Peter Matthiessen in this controversial book.

In a malarial outpost in the South American rain forest, two misplaced gringos converge and clash. Martin Quarrier has come to convert the fearful and 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.

The timely story of how the forces of change converge on a small tribe of Niaruna Indians living in the heart of the Amazon rain forest. In addition to being a prophetic commentary on emerging threats to the environment, and the troublesome encroachment of the modern world on traditional cultures, the novel is a suspenseful adventure story about two men striving to find meaning in a world not their own.

In this classic volume, Peter Matthiessen exquisitely combines nature and travel writing to bring East Africa to vivid life. He skillfully and magically portrays the sights, scenes, and people he observed firsthand in several trips over the course of a dozen years: the daily lives of herdsmen and hunter-gatherers; the drama of the predator kills; the hundreds of exotic animals; the breathtaking landscapes; the area's turbulent natural, political, and social histories; and more.

One of a very few National Book Award honorees to be nominated for fiction and nonfiction, Peter Matthiessen creates a curious blend of both in this tragic prequel to Killing Mister Watson and Lost Man’s River. An amazing novel in its own right, Bone by Bone caps the trilogy featuring the enigmatic E. J. Watson. During the Reconstruction Era, Edgar Watson grew up in the South at the mercy of a brutal alcoholic father and a vindictive mother. Witnessing the horrors of slavery, bilked out of his inheritance, and blamed in his youth for a murder he didn’t commit, E. J. developed a reputation for violence that preceded him everywhere he went. Finally, it brought him to a tragic and bloody end as his family watched in helpless horror. Borrowing an old local tale about a man who was killed by his neighbors, Matthiessen creates a powerful character. George Guidall’s excellent reading brings this moving tragedy home to us with a passion.

For 20,000 miles, Peter Matthiessen crisscrossed the South American wilderness, traveling from the Amazonian rain forests to Machu Picchu high in the Andes, down to the edge of the world at Tierra del Fuego and back. In the course of his journey he followed the trails of old explorers, encountered river bandits, wild tribesmen, and the evidence of ancient ruins, and discovered a fossilized snout of a giant unknown crocodilian hidden in the depths of the jungle on the wild mountain rivers of Peru.

In the winter of 1996, more than 100 women and men of diverse nationality, background, and belief gather at the site of a former concentration camp for an unprecedented purpose: a weeklong retreat during which they will offer prayer and witness at the crematoria and meditate in all weathers on the selection platform, while eating and sleeping in the quarters of the Nazi officers who, half a century before, sent more than a million Jews to their deaths.

In this dazzling sequel to Killing Mr. Watson, Peter Matthiessen presents the story of a family riddled with scandal through colorful recollections of renegades and their descendants. Veteran narrator George Guidall brings the rich oral history dramatically to life.

Author of At Play in the Fields of the Lord, national Book Award-winner Peter Matthiessen is an accomplished naturalist and one of the most acclaimed writers in the world. This book is a stirring look at the tiger, a magnificent animal that has long fueled human fascination. In critical danger of extinction, only a few thousand of these giant cats remain. Matthiessen's exquisite prose stunningly captures the tigers' dramatic fight to survive.

Would you believe that one man championed the cause of Native Americans with Leonard Peltier, helped migrant farm workers with Cesar Chavez, traveled to Nepal, hiked the Himalayas, explored Africa and founded The Paris Review? It's true, and it's the life of Peter Matthiessen. Listen to entrancing travel tales and real life anecdotes from this author of At Play in the Fields of the Lord and the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard.

"Sneleoparden" er forfatteren, naturforskeren og zenbuddhisten Peter Matthiessens mest berømte bog. Sammen med en feltbiolog tog Matthiessen i 1973 på en strabadserende vandring i Nepals bjerge for at studere blåfåret og, om muligt, få et glimt af den sjældne sneleopard. Året før var hans kone, Deborah Love, død af kræft. Rejsen blev såvel en vandring i fremmede og ukendte egne, som en spirituel rejse, hvor en ny forståelse af virkeligheden langsomt bliver til i den vandrende.