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Summary
Summary
Though he'd lived in Iowa all his life, the allure of the prairie had somehow eluded John Price--until, after a catastrophic flood, a brief glimpse of native wildlife suddenly brought his surroundings home to him. Not Just Any Land is a memoir of Price's rediscovery of his place in the American landscape and of his search for a new relationship to the life of the prairie--that once immense and beautiful wilderness of grass now so depleted and damaged as to test even the deepest faith.
Price's journey toward a conscious commitment to place takes him to some of America's largest remaining grasslands and brings him face to face with a troubling, but also hopeful, personal and environmental legacy. It also leads him through the region's literature and into conversations with contemporary nature writers--Linda Hasselstrom, Dan O'Brien, William Least Heat-Moon, and Mary Swander--who have devoted themselves to living in, writing about, and restoring the grasslands. Among these authors Price observes how a commitment to the land can spring from diverse sources, for instance, the generational weight of a family ranch, the rites of wildlife preservation, the "deep maps" of ancestral memory, and the imperatives of a body inflicted with environmental illness. The resulting narrative is an innovative blend of memoir, nature writing, and literary criticism that bears witness to the essential bonds between spirit, art, and earth.
Author Notes
John Price is an associate professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Reviews (3)
Booklist Review
Native Iowan Price goes on a journey to capture a sense of the American prairie, but instead of taking a predictable geographic and botanical trip, he brings readers on a literary one. His method of defining the physical, emotional, and spiritual meaning of the grasslands is to analyze the work of authors currently writing about the unique place the prairie continues to be, and to look closely at the authors themselves. Each of the four--Linda Hasselstrom, Dan O'Brien, William Least Heat-Moon, and Mary Swander--writes specifically and distinctly about this landscape, and, as Price reveals, each writer's focus and purpose, as often as not, is in contradiction to their counterparts. Price is a gifted writer, but perhaps he's most talented as an interviewer. Despite his admiration, he is able to draw from his subjects essential information that defines them and their work, and to shine a critical light on their arguments and justifications. His journey leaves him transformed, as it may well transform the reader. --Danise Hoover Copyright 2004 Booklist
Choice Review
In consecutive chapters about nature writers of the disappearing grasslands of the Great Plains, Price (Univ. of Nebraska, Omaha) seamlessly combines several literary modes--memoir, natural history, nature writing, travel writing, critical analysis, and personal interview--to examine, in depth, the land, people, and plant and animal life described in works by Dan O'Brien, Linda Hasselstrom, William Trogden (Least Heat-Moon), and Mary Swander. After assessing key works by each author, Price meets with and interviews each in the locale his or her work has attempted to preserve or restore: the Dakota grasslands (O'Brien, Hasselstrom); the Flint Hills of Chase County, Kansas (Trogden); rural eastern Iowa (Swander). Price shows a talent for asking the right questions and for listening carefully and critically to his subjects; in some cases he speaks with locals to gather their impressions of each author's book(s). Price provides especially lucid discussions of the intense personal commitment of O'Brien, Hasselstrom, and Swander to the land; the final chapter includes Price's own moving account of the reintroduction of wild bison to Walnut Creek National Wildlife Refuge. This is a book for those interested in environmental literature, natural history, and nature writing. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. M. W. Cox University of Pittsburgh
Library Journal Review
In this earnest volume, mathematician and philosopher Dembski oversees an intellectual critique of Darwinism. By that, most of the contributors are referring to what they consider a bankrupt materialistic ideology; almost all are operating from a theistic worldview, in which any account of life's origins must involve purpose and design. Naturally, two authors of popular works who espouse extremely reductive and atheistic views, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, are lightning rods for repeated criticism here. Both camps rely on opposing sets of first principles for their ontological systems, which are painfully obvious to them but not to the other side. One of the book's inadvertent strengths is its illustration of the inextricable linkage of the teleological and naturalistic worldviews in the Western tradition. One contributor, Christopher Michael Langan, begins to move abstrusely toward overcoming the logical bind that they have with one another. Otherwise, the book merely trots out many timeworn and unconvincing criticisms of evolutionary biology. Recommended only as a contemporary exemplar of several species of argument and a minor contribution to the history of ideas. Walter L. Cressler, West Chester Univ. Lib., PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. ix |
| Chapter 1 The First Miracle of the Prairie: Buffalo Gap, South Dakota | p. 1 |
| Chapter 2 Reaching Yarak: The Peregrinations of Dan O'Brien | p. 31 |
| Chapter 3 Not Just Any Land: Linda Hasselstrom at Home | p. 65 |
| Chapter 4 Native Dreams: William Least Heat-Moon and Chase County, Kansas | p. 93 |
| Chapter 5 A Healing Home: Mary Swander's Recovery among the Iowa Amish | p. 159 |
| Chapter 6 What This Prairie Will Awaken: Walnut Creek National Wildlife Refuge | p. 199 |
| Notes | p. 213 |
| Bibliography | p. 221 |
