Product Description

Award-winning journalist and author Richard Louv explores with wisdom and heart the fragile network that connects people. "Re-enchants the everyday with a simple but graceful elegance".--"Body Mind Spirit".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #317527 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The importance of connecting through memory and common humanity is the overriding theme that concerns Louv, a journalist and author (Childhood's Future), in this collection of thoughtful, persuasive essays. Because the family is the first community a child knows, the author believes that family stories handed down from one generation to the next are a unique gift that helps people put their lives in context. Louv describes the power of oral history in Native American life and expresses concern that an overload of information and lack of leisure prevent many of us from preserving our family memories. Louv also describes his efforts to connect his own children to nature by teaching them to fish and to become aware of their relationship to wildlife. Although not traditionally religious, Louv advocates cultivating a spiritual awareness to stay in touch and connect with a world outside the individual or the family. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Drawn mainly from Louv's column for the San Diego Union Tribune, this collection of short essays includes journalistic snapshots of people he has interviewed, reminiscences of his childhood, and musings of his interactions with family and friends. Although his subtitle suggests a unifying theme of "values," there is actually little cohesion among the essays. Louv (Childhood's Future, LJ 11/15/90) jumps from homelessness and Mr. Rogers to Navajo spirits and $70 pet lizards. The choppy, fragmented style also detracts from the book's appeal. Not recommended.?Ilse Heidmann, Kyle Community Lib., San Marcos, Tex.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A collection of gentle reflections on important matters like family, friendship, neighborhood, community, and fishing at sunset. Louv (Childhood's Future, 1990) is a columnist for the San Diego Union Tribune and a contributor to Parents' magazine who has edited and augmented this selection of newspaper columns with additional commentary. His theme is that each individual is a strand in a web connecting and supporting not only friends and family, but the larger world. In order of increasing complexity, chapters go from the strand of family through to the strands of time and spirit. Louv draws often on lessons from Native Americans to reinforce his ideas--for instance, how family stories become tribal stories and, ultimately, ancestral myths. Preserve family stories, he urges, even if they seem bland and uninteresting; they will ripen and gain stature in time, strengthening the bonds from one generation to the next. An encounter with Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood highlights friendship, as does a tale of fishing with a friend, where mutual respect and a shared regard for trout streams bridge chasms in their values regarding guns and corporal punishment. In a section on community, he intersperses tales of neighborliness with hopes that America may yet develop a ``great, good place'' where ``people meet by chance . . . [to] sit a spell.'' The surge of coffee bars in urban centers is a hopeful note, Louv believes. Chapters are interspersed with off-beat quotations, including four lines of pseudo-Shakespeare generated by a computer, kicking off a discussion of the possibilities of virtual reality. Louv's interests are diverse, ranging from death to county fairs, Native American witches, and a chili harvest. Simple but not mundane vignettes of an ordinary life with wife, children, dog, and van, enlarged by a sweetness of spirit that turns floating on an inner tube into the essence of fathering. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Poetical and Thoughtful
I picked up this copy the same time as I picked up his "Last Child in the Woods" ~~ and I took it along on a camping trip recently. It is a neat little compilation of essays regarding making time for family, having meaningful conversations and keeping friends, keeping the communication channels open with your kids and spouses, brothers/sisters/parents, and other topics.

It is definitely a keeper in any family's library ~~ but if you have read the book, "Last Child in the Woods" ~~ you will find the same themes and same stories touched upon in this book as well. That is why I gave it a four stars because it is tedious reading to read the same thing over and over again. Yes, this book is the original since it was published in 1996 but when you have two books by the same author telling you pretty much the same thing, it makes you wonder if he needs more fresh stories to share or if he is running out of ideas. It'll be interesting to see what his next book will touch upon.

Just because re-reading the same thing is tedious for me, it doesn't have to be for other readers. If you like essays and essays about family, nature, communication and so forth, you will like this little book. It is lyrical and thoughtful. It is inspiring. It will make you look at life a little bit differently and perhaps, instead of having imaginary conversations with your spouse in your head, you will talk to him/her and rediscover the reasons why you fell in love with him/her in the first place. This book is just not about stories, it is about people reconnecting to humanity again in spite of the highly technogical age we live in today. It is about people reconnecting to nature and family and friends ~~ the little things that make our lives go round.

It is definitely a gem of a book.

9-11-07

A MUST READ -- HIGHLY MOTIVATING
"The Web of Life: Weaving the Values that Sustain Us," is an incredibly powerful work connecting the present with the past, eloquently capturing the basic values which bring strength to individuals, families, schools, and communities. Through a story-telling approach which immediately connects author with reader, Richard Louv plants the seeds of possibility in the reader's mind, offering simple and do-able approaches to integrating more of the sustaining values into our busy lives.

I used Louv's book in my thesis on Amish culture, as I immediately found threads of commonality between Louv's observations and my personal experiences among the Old Order Amish. In this work, Louv unknowingly, perhaps, touched upon sustaining human values that transcend culture and generational boundaries. In the Web of Life, Louv emphasizes what we can do individually and collectively to begin creating a world of compassion, sensitivity, fulfillment, and joy.

This is a must read for anyone wishing to set aside the temporary lures of self-gratification and integrate more practical and sustainable values into their lives.

Spiritually enlightening! A MUST read for all.
As a parent I am always looking for words of wisdom on developing a sound value system through every day living for my children. Louv's book did that and more. He brought back my childhood memories of living in a small community and how important it is to create that for our children today. People have the power to change things and Louv has put that power into action by writing this book for us.