List Books » Country Matters: The Pleasures and Tribulations of Moving from a Big City to an Old Country Farm House
Authors: Michael Korda, Success Research Cor, Research Cor Success
ISBN-13: 9781616811624, ISBN-10: 1616811625
Format: Paperback
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Date Published: May 2002
Edition: Bargain
Michael Korda is the New York Times bestselling author of Charmed Lives, Ike, Country Matters, Ulysses S. Grant, and Journey to a Revolution. He is Editor in Chief Emeritus of Simon & Schuster, and he lives in Dutchess County, New York.
With his inimitable sense of humor and storytelling talent, New York Times bestselling author Michael Korda brings us this charming, hilarious, self-deprecating memoir of a city couple's new life in the country.
At once entertaining, canny, and moving, Country Matters does for Dutchess County, New York, what Under the Tuscan Sun did for Tuscany. This witty memoir, replete with Korda's own line drawings, reads like a novel, as it chronicles the author's transformation from city slicker to full-time country gentleman, complete with tractors, horses, and a leaking roof.
When he decides to take up residence in an eighteenth-century farmhouse in Dutchess County, ninety miles north of New York City, Korda discovers what country life is really like:
The locals are not particularly quick to accept these outsiders, and the couple's earliest interactions with their new neighbors provide constant entertainment, particularly when the Kordas discover that hunting season is a year-round event right on their own land! From their closest neighbors, mostly dairy farmers, to their unforgettable caretaker Harold Roe whose motto regarding the local flora is "Whack it all back! " the residents of Pleasant Valley eventually come to realize that the Kordas are more than mere weekenders.
Sure to have readers in stitches, this is a book that has universal appeal for all who have ever dreamed of owning that perfect little place to escape to up in the country, or, more boldly, have done it.
The New York population growth will certainly diminish after Michael Korda's new book appears in bookstores. But despite the love/hate transplanted New Yorkers feel for the countryside, after a short time love wins out. [Country Matters] will become a much loved American classic for everyone.
The Six "Golden Rules" of Owning an Old House | xi | |
Chapter 1 | "He Don't Know Shit About Septics" | 1 |
Chapter 2 | Asleep at the Switch | 17 |
Chapter 3 | "Whack It All Back!" | 23 |
Chapter 4 | A Man's Home Is His Castle | 30 |
Chapter 5 | A Barn of One's Own | 47 |
Chapter 6 | "Them's Nice Pigs, Them Pigs" | 55 |
Chapter 7 | Lunch at Cady's | 79 |
Chapter 8 | Just Plain Folks | 93 |
Chapter 9 | Good Fences Make Good Neighbors | 111 |
Chapter 10 | Bats in the Belfry | 119 |
Chapter 11 | Where Every Prospect Pleases, and Only Man Is Vile | 131 |
Chapter 12 | One Left-handed Clevis, Please | 143 |
Chapter 13 | Nature Green of Tooth and Claw | 152 |
Chapter 14 | Manure | 164 |
Chapter 15 | The Wrong Deer | 172 |
Chapter 16 | The White Stuff | 182 |
Chapter 17 | Viva Zapata! | 194 |
Chapter 18 | The Acropolis | 202 |
Chapter 19 | "Do You Know Egg?" | 209 |
Chapter 20 | A Nice Cup of Tea | 217 |
Chapter 21 | "Make That a Dozen Barbarian Kremes" | 236 |
Chapter 22 | The Sporting Instinct | 247 |
Chapter 23 | Free Kittens! | 259 |
Chapter 24 | "Change and Decay ..." | 271 |
Chapter 25 | No Place Like Home | 286 |
Acknowledgments | 304 |