Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 25, 1993 TAG: 9307250195
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Edited by Bill Henderson. Touchstone Books. $14.
This could be the best $14 you spend all year. I've been dipping into my "Pushcart XVII" for weeks now, savoring it a little bit at a time, reading here and there, re-reading, surprising myself over and over.
Here are over 500 pages of the best writing being published today. And you won't see it anywhere else, because it's all being published in journals with circulations of 500, or 250, or even less. There's something for everyone's taste: poetry, short fiction, essay, memoir, in every writing style imaginable.
I'd thought to list my favorites as additional recommendation for the book.\ I even started the list. But it soon looked too much like the whole table of\ contents. So I repeat: This could be the best $14 you spend all year.
_ MONTY S. LEITCH
Wilderness At Dawn.
By Ted Morgan. Simon & Shuster. $27.50.
Subtitled "The Settling of the North American Continent," "Wilderness At\ Dawn" describes the multiple nations and people who explored and built North\ America. Beginning with the first settlers crossing a land bridge across the\ Bering Strait and ending with the abolition of slavery in New York State in\ 1808, historian Ted Morgan relates the history of the continent through the\ unusual view of conflicting wildernesses. Morgan's thesis is that the\ character of the land can be described by exploring how individuals and\ countries pushed back the border of their known civilizations into the\ wilderness beyond. The final character of a region was decided by the ways in\ which these individual wildernesses melded.
It is important to realize that wilderness before the 18th century was about\ 100 yards past the last cultivated field. With the diversity of countries,\ religions, patriots and scoundrels who came to populate the new world, it is\ understandable how North American culture became the exciting polyglot which\ causes such pain and joy daily.
- LARRY SHIELD
Monty S. Leitch is a columnist for the Roanoke Times & World-News.
Larry Shield trains dogs and horses in Franklin County.
by CNB