Henry Bay has his own America going. If there's an offbeat interest or extreme sport that's poised to sweep the nation, chances are there's a magazine for its enthusiasts, and chances are also good that Henry has worked there. He's a modern nomad, associate-editing his way from state to state, exploring the small worlds that make up modern America from Spelunk to Ice Climbing, to Cozy, The Magazine of Tea. But those are other people's interests—Henry's still looking for his own enthusiasm. He ends up finding more than he ever imagined in this energetic, hilarious debut novel from a surprising and promising new voice.
Whether the prospective buyer is a farmer or rancher looking to expand operations, a sportsman seeking to preserve habitat for wildlife, or a nature enthusiast trying to conserve native flora and fauna, acquiring rural land can be a rollercoaster of exciting and stressful experiences. In Buying Rural Land in Texas: Taking the Right Risk, Charles E. Gilliland demonstrates that buyers can and should arm themselves with knowledge—of the land-buying process, of the potential problems involved, and of the resources available to them—to ensure a successful and satisfying outcome. In this practical guide, Gilliland outlines four phases of buying rural land: identifying what you want, in terms of both land and property rights; locating a suitable property; valuing the property; and completing the transaction. He then covers everything the potential landowner should know while progressing through these steps: how to identify and manage risk, plan an “exit strategy,” interpret present and future land prices, find the “perfect spot,” evaluate the property’s physical attributes, gauge economic trends, understand legal rights and limitations, protect natural resources, and, finally, close the deal. Incorporating real life examples from a career spent in land sales, Gilliland takes readers step-by-step through the process, also providing checklists, maps, professional tips, and information about how to tap additional sources of information and advice. With the knowledge gained from Buying Rural Land in Texas, new landowners will find themselves not at the end of a journey but at the beginning, as they learn to manage their land and to deliver it intact to future generations.
For America’s rural and suburban areas, new challenges demand new solutions. Author Randall Arendt meets them in an entirely new edition of Rural by Design. When this planning classic first appeared 20 years ago, it showed how creative, practical land-use planning can preserve open space and keep community character intact. The second edition shifts the focus toward infilling neighborhoods, strengthening town centers, and moving development closer to schools, shops, and jobs. New chapters cover form-based codes, visioning, sustainability, low-impact development, green infrastructure, and more, while 70 case studies show how these ideas play out in the real world. Readers —rural or not—will find practical advice about planning for the way we live now.
In the ’60s it was called the "back to the land" movement, and in Helen and Scott Nearings’ day, it was "living the good life." Whatever the term, North Americans have always yearned for a simpler way. But how do you accomplish that today? Blending inspiration with practical how-to’s, Rural Renaissance captures the American dream of country living for contemporary times. Journey with the authors and experience their lessons, laughter and love for the land as they trade the urban concrete maze for a five-acre organic farm and bed and breakfast in southwestern Wisconsin. Rural living today is a lot more than farming. It’s about a creative, nature-based and more self-sufficient lifestyle that combines a love of squash, solar energy, skinny-dipping and serendipity . . . The many topics explored in Rural Renaissance include: "right livelihood" and the good life organic gardening and permaculture renewable energy and energy conservation wholesome organic food, safe water and a natural home simplicity, frugality and freedom green design and recycled materials community, friends and raising a family independence and interdependence wildlife conservation and land stewardship. An authentic tale of a couple whose pioneering spirit and connection to the land reaches out to both the local and global community to make their dream come true, Rural Renaissance will appeal to a wide range of Cultural Creatives, free agents, conservation entrepreneurs and both arm-chair and real-life homesteaders regardless of where they live. Lisa Kivirist and John Ivanko are innkeepers, organic growers, copartners in a marketing consulting company, and have previously published books. John is also a photographer. Former advertising agency fast-trackers, they are nationally recognized for their contemporary approach to homesteading, conservation and more sustainable living. They share their farm with their son, two llamas, and a flock of free-range chickens. Rural Renaissance also offers a foreword by Bill McKibben.
The Enthusiast tells the story of a character type that was developed in early modern Britain to discredit radical prophets during an era that witnessed the dismantling of the Church of England's traditional means for punishing heresy. As William Cook Miller shows, the caricature of fanaticism, here called the Enthusiast began as propaganda against religious dissenters, especially working-class upstarts, but was adopted by a range of writers as a literary vehicle for exploring profound problems of spirit, soul, and body and as a persona for the ironic expression of their own prophetic illuminations. Taking shape through the public and private writings of some of the most insightful authors of seventeenth-century Britain—Henry More, John Locke, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Mary Astell, and Jonathan Swift, among others—the Enthusiast appeared in various guises and literary modes. By attending to this literary being and its animators, The Enthusiast establishes the figure of the fanatic as a bridge between the Reformation and the Enlightenment, showing how an incipient secular modernity was informed by not the rejection of religion but the transformation of the prophet into something sparkling, witty, ironic, and new.
