Product Description

A Place Apart features essays and firsthand accounts of notable experiences throughout Cape Cod, including native Wampanoag creation myths; eyewitness accounts of the landing of the Pilgrims in 1620; candid stories of early life in the Old Colony; fascinating and often-harrowing accounts of the whaling and fishing industries; and so much more. The collection includes famous passages by and about such writers as Melville, Thoreau, Helen Keller, Edmund Wilson, and Kurt Vonnegut, among others.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #476622 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780881508598
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Robert Finch is the author of five collections of essays and co-editor of The Norton Book of Nature Writing. He broadcasts a weekly commentary on NPR and serves on the faculty of the MFA in Writing Program at Spalding University in Louisville, KY. He lives in Wellfleet, MA.

Customer Reviews

A delicious Cape Cod smorgasbord
Robert Finch combed the history and literature archives to compile this definitive sampler of more than 150 Cape Cod essays, poems, and book excerpts. Only a few of the selections run longer than a dozen pages, so this is a perfect volume for browsers. The writings are grouped by topic, and Finch first provides appropriate background and explanation for each section. More than mere introductions, these summaries draw on his vast knowledge of the genre and include asides that reveal his own wry wit. Skim through these pages and you'll proceed from early settlement histories and biographies, to whaling and seafaring, to Cape Cod nature and summer vacations. My favorite episodes are about the activities of the "mooncussers" and the "wreckers" who throughout the years salvaged remnants from the inevitable shipwrecks along the dangerous coastline. (Probably more than 3000 ships have been grounded and/or lost around the peninsula's circumference since 1627.) There truly is something for everyone here. Finch thoughtfully provides mini-bios of all 67 writers and always notes sources; so if a particular entry strikes your fancy, you'll be able to track down the original work for more in-depth reading. It's difficult to imagine how "A Place Apart" could be any better!

Selections are from the following authors: Conrad Aiken ~ Timothy Alden ~ Everett S. Allen ~ Gabriel Archer ~ Josef Berger ~ Henry Beston ~ John Peale Bishop ~ William Bradford ~ John Brereton/Brierton ~ Thornton W. Burgess ~ Douglas Carlson ~ Scott Corbett ~ Monica Dickens ~ Annie Dillard ~ Mark Doty ~ Alan Dugan ~ Timothy Dwight ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~ Robert Finch ~ Benjamin Franklin ~ Brendan Galvin ~ E.S. Goldman ~ Adam Gopnik ~ John Hay ~ Cynthia Huntington ~ Henry James ~ Herman A. Jennings ~ E.J. Kahn, Jr. ~ Alfred Kazin ~ Helen Keller ~ Edward Augustus Kendell ~ Henry C. Kittredge ~ Stanley Kunitz ~ James Lazell ~ Clare Leighton ~ Joseph and Emily Crosby Lincoln ~ Joseph C. Lincoln ~ William Martin ~ Herman Melville ~ Thomas Merton ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay ~ Susan Mitchell ~ G. Mourt ~ Howard Nemerov ~ Nosapocket ~ Mary Oliver ~ Amos Otis ~ Jacquelyn Holt Park ~ Charles H. Philbrick ~ Marge Piercy ~ Elizabeth Reynard ~ Shebnah Rich ~ Wyman Richardson ~ George Santayana ~ Thomas Shephard ~ Roger Skillings ~ Walter Teller ~ Lewis Thomas ~ Henry David Thoreau ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ~ Mary Heaton Vorse ~ Mary-Lou Weisman ~ Richard Wilbur ~ Alec Wilkinson ~ Edmund Wilson ~ David Wojahn ~ and Ira Wood.