"An elegiac prose celebration . . . a classic in its genre."—Publishers Weekly In this acclaimed travel memoir, Donald Richie paints a memorable portrait of the island-studded Inland Sea. His existential ruminations on food, culture, and love and his brilliant descriptions of life and landscape are a window into an Old Japan that has now nearly vanished. Included are the twenty black and white photographs by Yoichi Midorikawa that accompanied the original 1971 edition. Donald Richie (1924-2013) was an internationally recognized expert on Japanese culture and film. Yoichi Midorikawa (1915-2001) was one of Japan's foremost nature photographers.
"Of late historians have become increasingly interested in the vast re-ordering of the environment involved in the creation of America. Nowhere was this more true than in the Sacramento Valley where re-ordering edged into folly. Battling the Inland Sea is a powerful evocation of the losses and gains involved in battling the mighty Sacramento River. But more than this, it is an exploration of the national will as it sought to rearrange nature herself with such mixed results. Here is history dealing with the most elemental forces of land, water and engineering as they are shaped by public policy. Here is the profound drama of value and symbol which occurs when Americans come into conflict with forces over which they can exercise, as Robert Kelley shows, only the most transitory and pyrrhic victories."—Kevin Starr, author of the Americans and the California Dream "Robert Kelley's research into the origins of California's first great flood control system has already helped to inform the shaping of the state's water laws. Now he opens up the benefits of that work for the average reader in a wonderfully clear and engaging story that manages, among other things, to show that water development in the United States hasn't been just a matter of engineering but a cultural and intellectual achievement as well."—William Kahrl, author of Water and Power "A vividly written narrative of one of the major transformations of the physical world we inhabit. Robert Kelley draws upon his rich store of learning and insight to set the struggles over the Sacramento Valley into a broad context. His book contains important lessons for those who would understand the American economy, environment, politics, or culture."—Daniel W. Howe, author of The Political Culture of the American Whigs
A fierce and beautiful novel about coming of age in a dying world As she faces the open wilderness of adulthood, our narrator finds that the world around her is coming undone. She works as an emergency dispatch operator, trapped in constant crisis as fires and floods rage across Australia. Her personal life is buckling under her self-destructive obsessions - she drinks heaily, sleeps with strangers, wanders the streets of Sydney at night, and pursues a disastrous affair with an ex-lover. Desperate and adrift, she yearns for change. Building to a tightly controlled bushfire of ecological and personal crisis, The Inland Sea is a fierce and beautiful novel about the search for refuge in a state of emergency. Madeleine Watts grew up in Sydney, Australia and has lived in New York since 2013. She has an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, and her fiction has been published in The White Review and The Lifted Brow. Her essays have appeared in The Believer and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her novella, Afraid of Waking It, was awarded the 2015 Griffith Review Novella Prize. The Inland Sea is her first novel.
Set in a sequestered part of Lake Champlain known as the Inland Sea, this book is about the people and families who have spent their lives there. Paul Brearley, part owner of Osprey Island, is a handsome, athletic, successful young minister with a beautiful wife and son. In 1990, he suddenly disappears, presumed drowned. Twenty-eight years later, his body, shot dead, is found nearby, propped up in a campground lean-to, as if resting from a long walk. The detective in charge, Fred Davis, is 53, divorced, and just two years from retirement. He knows the lake as well as anyone and dives in to solving Paul's murder and disappearance. What was Paul doing for 18 years? Who shot him? As the investigation develops, Fred finds himself unraveling a web of small events that lead him back in time to a single moment, a boating accident in 1972. This is where our story begins.
Excerpt from Our Inland Seas: Their Shipping Commerce for Three Centuries When the land began to show its increase and Indian trade was fostered, the lakes and rivers were the natural highways of communication with the outside world, and upon their waters were carried the rich products of the wilds. On the return trips the light, bobbling canoes brought the goods and trinkets of civilization for barter with the natives. With increasing trade there appeared larger and beamier boats, much more stable, to take the place of the Indian canoe; and in time the small sailing craft became the economic mode of conveyance. Finally the steamboat appeared and, with all its fussing and fuming and boiler explosions, was soon the popular means of travel. There was some degree of certainty in its movements, as it was less dependent upon wind and wave. When the tide of immigration set in about eighty years ago, there followed a rapid development of the material resources of the new land; and the expanse of the lakes and the connecting water highways became arteries of an extensive commerce. Shipbuilding was greatly stimulated, and the steam tonnage was of such size and the cabin accommodations for the comfort and pleasure of passen gers so well provided, that travel on the lakes was no longer regarded as a hardship to be avoided if other means were at hand. The increased size of the steam boats and the march of progress toward the West brought about demands for deeper channels, which were met by digging out the navigable streams and the canalization of narrow and shallow rivers. The principal ports on the lakes were made safe harbors of refuge, lighthouses and other beacons were established to mark dangerous reefs and narrow channels; and, in more recent years, the life-saving service and the lake survey have been added as further safeguards to life and treasure. As years passed, excursions on the lakes became popular and of daily occurrence from the larger ports durin the summer months, and tourist travel throughout the Fresh water seas was inaugurated. There has been, and is still, a mighty wave of expansion, impelled by a spirit of optimism, sweeping over the Great Lakes region; com merce continues to grow apace; and, despite the extension of railroads paralleling every marine highway, with a diversion of a portion of the lake traffic to the rail routes, the water-borne commerce has increased in volume and the vessel interests have prospered. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Christopher Pastore traces how Narragansett Bay’s ecology shaped the contours of European habitation, trade, and resource use, and how littoral settlers in turn, over two centuries, transformed a marshy fractal of water and earth into a clearly defined coastline, which proved less able to absorb the blows of human initiative and natural variation.
