Category Books

Coming Out of the Woods: The Solitary Life of a Maverick Naturalist » (1st Edition)

Book cover image of Coming Out of the Woods: The Solitary Life of a Maverick Naturalist by Wallace Kaufman

Authors: Wallace Kaufman
ISBN-13: 9780738204888, ISBN-10: 0738204889
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Date Published: January 2001
Edition: 1st Edition

Author Biography: Wallace Kaufman

Wallace Kaufman is the author of No Turning Back: Dismantling the Fantasies of Environmental Thinking and, with Dr. Orrin Pilkey, The Beaches Are Moving. He is a former Science Writing Fellow at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory and a recipient of the New River Award for Conservation.

Book Synopsis

A beautifully written, unsentimental account that challenges our Thoreauvian romance with nature and offers the conclusion that in civilization is the preservation of the wildness that we cherish.

Reynolds Price

An absorbing, unflinching, and surprisingly comic account of how one man-a devoted father-withdrew from the world and gradually returned. It's as wise and instructive as it is compelling.

Acknowledgements	ix
part 1 Songs of Innocence
1 Visitors	3
2 Turning Point	8
3 Pieces of the Old South	15
4 Saralyn	23
5 American Dreamers	27
6 Walden Where Are You Now?	32
7 Armageddon	40
8 Whose Woods These Were	49
9 Busting the Budget	53
10 The Road to Everyone's Walden	58
11 Thoreau's Delinquent Children	67
part 2 Settling In
12 Orientation: Life	77
13 Orientation: The Land	86
14 Dynamite	97
15 The Owner-Built Home	106
16 Materials and Methods	115
17 Simple-Minded Simplicity	124
18 Survival and Luxury	132
19 Meat	144
20 Water	157
21 The Bean Patch and the Corporate Farm	165
22 Territorial Disputes and Negotiations	176
23 Housing Discrimination	185
24 Fall from Grace	197
25 Squeaky Says I'm Dirty	207
26 The Pleasures of Getting Lost	212
27 Dead Neighbors Make Good Company	218
28 Success, Failure and Their Marks	231
29 How Much Land Does a Man Need?	237
30 Sylvan	246
31 Economics	252
32 Vultures	260
part 3 Changes
33 Clear-Cut	267
34 The Complexity of the Simple Life	273
35 Cutting at Morgan Branch	281
36 Departure and Return	286
37 Boundaries	292
38 Winter	299
39 The Storm to End All Dreams	311
40 Revenge and Recovery	319
41 The Next Morgan Branch	327