Peter Matthiessen Books

The swiftly evolving socioeconomic life of Ladakh, whose people struggle to balance growth and technology with cultural values, offers crucial lessons in sustainable development. This gripping portrait of the western Himalayan land known as “Little Tibet” moves from the author’s first visit to idyllic, nonindustrial Ladakh in 1974 to the present, tracking profound changes as the region was opened to foreign tourists, Western goods and technologies, and pressures for economic growth. These changes in turn brought generational conflict, unemployment, inflation, environmental damage, and threats to the traditional way of life. Appalled by these negative impacts, the author helped establish the Ladakh Project (later renamed the International Society for Ecology and Culture) to seek sustainable solutions that preserve cultural integrity and environmental health, while addressing the Ladakhis’ hunger for modernization. This model undertaking effectively combines educational programs for all social levels with the design, demonstration, and promotion of appropriate technologies such as solar heating and small-scale hydro power. Examining how modernization changes the way people live and think, Norberg-Hodge challenges us to redefine our concepts of “development” and “progress.” Above all, <i>Ancient Futures</i> stresses the need to carry traditional wisdom into the future—our urgent task as a global community.

An “indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent" ( Los Angeles Times Book Review ) chronicle of a fatal gun-battle between FBI agents and American Indian Movement activists by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard and the novel In Paradise On a hot June morning in 1975, a desperate shoot-out between FBI agents and Native Americans near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, left an Indian and two federal agents dead. Four members of the American Indian Movement were indicted on murder charges, and one, Leonard Peltier, was convicted and is now serving consecutive life sentences in a federal penitentiary. Behind this violent chain of events lie issues of great complexity and profound historical resonance, brilliantly explicated by Peter Matthiessen in this controversial book. Kept off the shelves for eight years because of one of the most protracted and bitterly fought legal cases in publishing history, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse reveals the Lakota tribe’s long struggle with the U.S. government, and makes clear why the traditional Indian concept of the earth is so important at a time when increasing populations are destroying the precious resources of our world.

An account of the author's two-hundred-fifty-mile journey, on foot, from Kathmandu, Nepal, to the Crystal Mountain, in Tibet, in search of the Himalayan blue sheep, the rare snow leopard, and distances of the spirit

A reworking of the author's trilogy chronicles the legacy of E.J. Watson, a notorious desperado gunned down by his neighbors along the lawless nineteenth-century frontier of the Florida Everglades

The author chronicles his quest for spiritual roots, describes his early Zen experiences and his gradual reawakening to life through Zen.

From the daily lives of wild herdsmen and the drama of predator kills to the field biologists investigating Africa's wild creatures and the anthropologists seeking humanity's origins in the rift valley, this National Book Award finalist is a classic of journalistic observation.

With their call for "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!," for self-honesty, and for harmony with nature, the writings of Henry David Thoreau are perhaps the most influential philosophical works in all American literature. The Selections in this volume represent Thoreau at his best. Included in their entirety are Walden, his indisputable masterpiece, and his two great arguments for nonconformity, "Civil Disobedience" and "Life Without Principle." A lifetime of brilliant observation of nature–and of himself–is recorded in selections from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Cape Cod, The Maine Woods, and the Journal.

An adventure story and a deeply considered meditation upon the sea itself. "Beautiful and original...a resonant and symbolical story of nine doomed men who dream of an earthly paradise as the world winds down around them." —Newsweek

By the author of The Snow Leopard, The Tree Where Man Was Born and On the River Styx, this novel is based around the circumstances of the death of a man in Florida 1910, who had terrorized his community in the Florida Everglades. It explores whether it was murder, exorcism or sacrifice.

No more than a few thousand tigers survive in pockets of Asia, a continent they once roamed far and wide. The largest of them, the Siberian tiger, is today almost entirely confined to the little-populated Russian Far East, a region that may offer the species' best hope for survival. But the implosion of the Soviet Union intensified poaching and habitat depredation, prompting a group of Russian researchers and U.S. wildlife biologists led by Maurice Hornocker to join forces to stave off extinction.Peter Matthiessen brings to the Siberian tiger the deep knowledge of and feeling for the natural world that have made classics of his previous books. Accompanying researchers into the field, he allows the reader to participate vicariously in the battle for the tiger's future. Along the way, he tells how the species evolved and evokes its crucial, often totemic role in human cultures and mythologies. He has made of the tiger's dilemma a drama-underscored by Hornocker's one-of-a-kind photographs-that conveys powerfully what a loss to our collective imagination the disappearance of these great cats would be.

African Silences is a powerful and sobering account of the cataclysmic depredation of the African landscape and its wildlife. In this critically acclaimed work Peter Matthiessen explores new terrain on a continent he has written about in two previous books, A Tree Where Man Was Born -- nominated for the National Book Award -- and Sand Rivers.Through his eyes we see elephants, white rhinos, gorillas, and other endangered creatures of the wild. We share the drama of the journeys themselves, including a hazardous crossing of the continent in a light plane. And along the way, we learn of the human lives oppressed by bankrupt political regimes and economies, and threatened by the slow ecological catastrophe to which they have only begun to awaken.

A classic work of nature and humanity, by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard and the new novel In Paradise Peter Matthiessen crisscrossed 20,000 miles of the South American wilderness, from the Amazon rain forests to Machu Picchu, high in the Andes, down to Tierra del Fuego and back. He followed the trails of old explorers, encountered river bandits, wild tribesmen, and the evidence of ancient ruins, and discovered fossils in the depths of the Peruvian jungle. Filled with observations and descriptions of the people and the fading wildlife of this vast world to the south, The Cloud Forest is his incisive, wry report of his expedition into some of the last and most exotic wild terrains in the world.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

". . . one of the finest novels to come along since the advent of John Updike . . . brilliantly realized and written with an economy and sureness of control that are magnificent."--San Francisco Examiner.

In 1832, at the age of 36, painter George Catlin went west to preserve the traditions of the American Indians. For eight years, he traveled among various tribes, recording the customs and lifestyles of the Crow, Blackfoot, Sioux and Cheyenne.

Strhující und poetische Darstellung des Kulturkonflikts im Herzen des Amazonas-Regenwaldes, eine Erzählung über menschliche Brutalität und Reinheit. Das Werk ist voller humanem Verständnis und entfaltet sich auf den Seiten von Matthiessens Roman. Zwei protestantische Missionare möchten den Menschen im Dschungel den göttlichen Weg und die Kraft zeigen, doch diese kennen bereits Reinheit und Liebe als Teil ihrer Natur. Auch zwei Piloten, angeheuert für „schmutzige Arbeit“, treten auf, um einen Indianerstamm zu vernichten. Der Roman, erstmals 1965 veröffentlicht, gibt zudem Einblicke in das Leben der indigenen Völker Amazoniens.

Im Visier der schönsten Raubkatze der Welt: eine Reise an den Rand des Himmels und an die Grenzen unserer Wahrnehmung Im Herbst 1973 bricht Peter Matthiessen mit dem Biologen George Schaller in die höchsten ganzjährig bewohnten Bergtäler der Erde auf: ins nepalesische Dolpo. Hier trotzen Menschen und Tiere extremen Bedingungen ein Leben voller Schärfe und Kontur ab. Und seit Jahrhunderten blüht hier eine Tradition des tibetischen Buddhismus. Schaller will das Brunftverhalten hochalpiner Blauschafe dokumentieren, Matthiessen die Trauer über den Krebstod seiner Frau verarbeiten. Beide verbindet die Faszination für den geheimnisvollsten Bewohner des Dolpos: den Schneeleoparden. In diesem Meisterwerk, für das Matthiessen gleich zweimal – 1979 und 1980 in unterschiedlichen Kategorien – den National Book Award erhielt, verbinden sich naturkundliche Klarheit, spirituelle Wachsamkeit und die lyrische Kunst der Sprachverknappung zu einem lebensverändernden Leseerlebnis. Noch nie war dieses literarische Zeugnis für den unermesslichen Reichtum der Welt, der geistige wie materielle Entsagung bedeuten kann, dringlicher und zeitgemäßer als heute. Überarbeitet und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Bernhard Malkmus.

Wer einmal erlebt hat, wie sich eine Schar von Kranichen in die Lüfte erhebt, wird dieses Spektakel nie mehr vergessen. Kein Wunder, daß die Kraniche vielen Kulturen als göttliche Botschafter erschienen. Doch heute sind sie in Gefahr - und deshalb hat ihnen der große Naturschriftsteller Peter Matthiessen ein ganzes Buch gewidmet. Jahrelang war er auf der ganzen Welt unterwegs, um die wenigen verbliebenen Vögel zu beobachten, um mit Umweltschützern und Politikern zu diskutieren. Zu lesen ist nun ein großes Reisebuch, getragen von der Begeisterung für die Könige der Lüfte - und ein kämpferisches Buch gegen die Kurzsichtigkeit der Menschen, der diese herrlichen Vögel eines Tages zum Opfer fallen könnten.