Description: A landmark work hailed as an homage to landscape and language, now in a redesigned, field guide edition
Brief description: Barry Lopez was an essayist, author, and short-story writer who traveled extensively in both remote and populated parts of the world. He is the author of Arctic Dreams, which received the National Book Award; Horizon, Of Wolves and Men, Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape; and eight works of fiction, including Outside, Light Action in the Caribbean, Field Notes, and Resistance. He is the author of Syntax of the River: The Pattern Which Connects with Julia Martin. His essays are collected in two books, Crossing Open Ground and About This Life. Lopez lived in western Oregon.
Review Quotes: "Home Ground is a treasure house of a book, chocked with gems of the American vernacular. To learn these terms for features of the landscape is like putting on a new pair of glasses--the land comes more vividly into focus. But to call this a reference work is to shortchange it--the entries are written by some of our best writers, and the result is an unexpected page turner."-- Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma
"Reading hundreds of pages of alphabetized definitions of landscape terms in one sitting may sound as appealing as spending a long hot day in an Arizona malpais--a desert landscape that is, to quote Cormac McCarthy, "all cracked and reddish black like a pan of dried blood"--but it ends up being a lot of fun."-- New York Times "'Home Ground' . . . is a civilized pleasure, in the way great reference books can be."-- San Francisco Chronicle "One can almost hear mountains and hills bursting into song, and trees of the field clapping their hands."-- Christian Century "A group of writers has collected more than 800 fading landscape terms in a new book -- Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape. "-- National Public Radio