The Place Within: Portraits of the American Landscape by Twenty Contemporary Writers

By Jodi Daynard and Jodi Daynard (ed)

Book Overview

A fresh, indelible portrait of America as it appears to our most gifted contemporary writers. For more than 200 years artists and writers have sought to capture not just America's face but also her polymorphous spirit, as it is embodied in the land itself. These portraits about places in our country's diverse landscape range from the hummingbirds of Montana to the neon lights of Times Square, the brush fires of Alaska to the Grand Canyon's silent grandeur. They share a common desire: to explore both the sensual and the spiritual connections we have to places and the creativity they inspire. Harry Crews, Joy Williams, Alan Lightman, Kathleen Norris, Bradford Morrow, Phillip Lopate, Gerald Early, Diane Ackerman, Scott Russell Sanders, and many others take us to places as they appear not through the camera lens of a traveler, but to the artist's inner eye. Finally, NASA astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman lifts us up above America into space, where he looks down upon the country in all its vast and yet poignantly fragile entirety. Taken together, The Place Within is a time capsule in words, by some of our most distinguished writers.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393039994
• ISBN13: 9780393039993
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A wonderful collection of essays

This book is one of the best essay collections I've ever come across. Noted writers contributed pieces about places important to them, and the result is an engaging work.