The Outermost Houses Step back in time and into a place of refuge and renewal. Thisinsider's tour of the duneshacks of Provincetown, Massachusetts, combines photos and text to bringto life the world of these rustic structures scattered across the untamed landscapes of Cape Cod National Seashore.Nearly 100 colorphotographs explore exteriors and interiors of the 19 shacks, as well as thebreathtaking dune landscapes and ocean that batter and beautify them. Accompanyingquotations share stories of the eclectic people who stayed in and cared forthese places of solitude and creativity, including Henry David Thoreau, Ann Patchett, Tennessee Williams, Mary Oliver, Norman Mailer, Marsden Hartley, and Josephine Del Deo. This photographic journey is sure to inspire and evoke wanderlust in us all.
For a small group of intrepid adventurers, summer means living in a minimalist shack on the dunes at the tip of Cape Cod. For years these diminutive abodes have attracted artists, writers, and naturalists longing to escape the hectic hubbub of their day-to-day lives. The writer Josephine Breen Del Deo has been part of the dune shack community at Provincetown for over fifty years. In this memoir she describes not only the idyllic life, but also the struggle to maintain that life in the face of the constant impact of waves and shifting sands, as well as efforts of the government to remove the shacks and create a more "pristine" natural setting. In the process, she brings the history to life, setting it in the context of larger events and populating it with the interesting, often eccentric characters who have lived on the dunes.
Long recognized as a classic of American nature writing. This chronicle of a solitary year spent on a Cape Cod beach was written in longhand at the kitchen table, in a little room overlooking the North Atlantic and the dunes. In 1964, the Cape Cod house was officially proclaimed a National Literary Landmark. In 1978, a massive winter storm swept it off its foundation and out to sea.
“Get your head into the clouds with Aerial Geology.” —The New York Times Book Review Aerial Geology is an up-in-the-sky exploration of North America’s 100 most spectacular geological formations. Crisscrossing the continent from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska to the Great Salt Lake in Utah and to the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico, Mary Caperton Morton brings you on a fantastic tour, sharing aerial and satellite photography, explanations on how each site was formed, and details on what makes each landform noteworthy. Maps and diagrams help illustrate the geological processes and clarify scientific concepts. Fact-filled, curious, and way more fun than the geology you remember from grade school, Aerial Geology is a must-have for the insatiably curious, armchair geologists, million-mile travelers, and anyone who has stared out the window of a plane and wondered what was below.
"Finch is today’s best, most perceptive Cape Cod writer in a line extending all the way back to Henry David Thoreau." —Christian Science Monitor Weaving together Robert Finch’s collected writings from over fifty years and a thousand miles of walking along Cape Cod’s Atlantic coast, The Outer Beach is a poignant, candid chronicle of an iconic American landscape anyone with an appreciation for nature will cherish.
Winner of The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing “Grace Talusan writes eloquently about the most unsayable things: the deep gravitational pull of family, the complexity of navigating identity as an immigrant, and the ways we move forward even as we carry our traumas with us. Equal parts compassion and confession, The Body Papers is a stunning work by a powerful new writer who—like the best memoirists—transcends the personal to speak on a universal level.” —Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather’s nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family’s legal status in the country has always hung by a thread—for a time, they were “illegal.” Family, she’s told, must be put first. The abuse and trauma Talusan suffers as a child affects all her relationships, her mental health, and her relationship with her own body. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. And she discovers another devastating family thread: cancer. In her thirties, Talusan must decide whether to undergo preventive surgeries to remove her breasts and ovaries. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher. On a fellowship, Talusan and her husband return to the Philippines, where she revisits her family’s ancestral home and tries to reclaim a lost piece of herself. Not every family legacy is destructive. From her parents, Talusan has learned to tell stories in order to continue. The generosity of spirit and literary acuity of this debut memoir are a testament to her determination and resilience. In excavating such abuse and trauma, and supplementing her story with government documents, medical records, and family photos, Talusan gives voice to unspeakable experience, and shines a light of hope into the darkness.
Alarmingly independent, ravishingly beautiful, and surprisingly cosmopolitan, Provincetown already figures in dozens of guide books. But Building Provincetown, which uses architecture to tell social and cultural history, is the most comprehensive yet. More than 1,200 pictures and 650 entries cover everything from the largest national landmarks to the smallest dune shacks -- with three dozen boats in the bargain.Street by street, Building Provincetown takes you under the snug eaves of stout Cape cottages and behind elegant Greek Revival and Queen Anne-style doorways. You'll meet Portuguese fishermen and Yankee whalers, Abstract Expressionists and AIDS activists, early gay pioneers and latter-day buccaneers, drag queens, literary lions, Bohemians, Knights of Columbus, a few town criers, a lot of poets, plus shipwrights, sculptors, and an 87-year-old Avon lady.Working with town residents, David W. Dunlap, who has covered historic preservation for The New York Times since 1981, gathered images and stories that have never before been presented in one place. If you don't know Provincetown, this is an ideal introduction. If you think you already know Provincetown, you're in for a few happy surprises.
"Cunningham's short book is a haunting, beautiful piece of work. . . . A magnificent work of art." -The Washington Post "Easily read on a plane-and-ferry journey from here to the sandy, tide-washed tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Land's End is that most perfect of companions: slender, eloquent, enriching, and fun. . . . A casually lovely ode to Provincetown." -The Minneapolis Star Tribune "Cunningham rambles through Provincetown, gracefully exploring the unusual geography, contrasting seasons, long history, and rich stew of gay and straight, Yankee and Portuguese, old-timer and 'washashore' that flavors Cape Cod's outermost town. . . . Chock-full of luminous descriptions . . . . He's hip to its studied theatricality, ever-encroaching gentrification and physical fragility, and he can joke about its foibles and mourn its losses with equal aplomb." -Chicago Tribune "A homage to the 'city of sand'. . . Filled with finely crafted sentences and poetic images that capture with equal clarity the mundanities of the A&P and Provincetown's magical shadows and light . . . Highly evocative and honest. It takes you there." -The Boston Globe
