Product Details
The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
By Henry Beston

List Price: $14.00
Price: $11.20 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com

69 new or used available from $2.62

Average customer review:

Product Description

The seventy-fifth anniversary edition of the classic book about Cape Cod, “written with simplicity, sympathy, and beauty” (New York Herald Tribune)A chronicle of a solitary year spent on a Cape Cod beach, The Outermost House has long been recognized as a classic of American nature writing. Henry Beston had originally planned to spend just two weeks in his seaside home, but was so possessed by the mysterious beauty of his surroundings that he found he “could not go.”Instead, he sat down to try and capture in words the wonders of the magical landscape he found himself in thrall to: the migrations of seabirds, the rhythms of the tide, the windblown dunes, and the scatter of stars in the changing summer sky. Beston argued that, “The world today is sick to its thin blood for the lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.” Seventy-five years after they were first published, Beston’s words are more true than ever.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #20902 in Books
  • Published on: 2003-07-01
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 256 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review
“A colorful and ever-changing chronicle of movement that approaches the magnificent.” —Boston Transcript“Clear and full of life.” —The Nation

Review
“A colorful and ever-changing chronicle of movement that approaches the magnificent.” —Boston Transcript

“Clear and full of life.” —The Nation

About the Author
Henry Beston (1888–1968) wrote many books, including White Pine and Blue Water, Northern Farm, and The St. Lawrence.

Customer Reviews

Bringing the Cape Home3
After another family trip to Chatham I desperately wanted to bring Cape Cod home and preserve the atmosphere that takes residence in your soul when you give yourself fully to its powerful coastal calling. As daily obligations put a layer of fog over my memories it was very cathartic to end the day reading Henry Beston's observations in an Eastham cottage in the 1920's.

Beston is an able writer with a poetic style who is able to capture the allure of Cape Cod. He effectively brings the reader onto the beaches with all the animal and plant life that breathes life into this region. However, he has a tendency to write lengthy musings about specific birds or plant life that can get very tedious. Portions of his observations seem to be nothing more than the ramblings of someone who is bored and in need of companionship other than a group of flittering birds searching for food in the dunes.

In the end, Beston was able to evoke a powerful longing that provided the soothing and comforting effect I was looking for. Recommended for anyone who wants to bring a "peace" of the Cape home, and for anyone interested in solitary observations of nature along the beaches of one of the best places on earth.

environmental treasure5
This was one of my winter reading books. I enjoyed it very much because the writing was very clear and vivid. Henry spent a year on Cape Cod writing about the nature and how the season changes the land and his surroundings. He writes about a lot of the birds that migrate in and out of the region and raises some important environmental concerns about the delicate nature of our actions on the wildlife. I appreciated the light hearted feel of the writing and it stuck to the middle of the road as far as imposing any of his personal opinions about all and any subjects, which I thought was safe and perhaps is the one of the negatives I feel for the writing. It was written with a modest sense of pleasure and feeling. It was in any sense, a very nice read and very indicative of the northeastern way of life.

A Fabulous Book - But Skip the Introduction4
The Outermost House is a marvelous book; one of my all-time absolute favorites in the whole world. It's not, by the way, about outhouses, as one of my children wondered aloud upon hearing the title. Monsieur Beston has a terrific eye and an interesting style; his affection and respect for the interrelatedness of the natural world and concern that we humans forget our connection to it is akin to Thoreau's.

This edition has a lengthy introduction by Robert Finch. Highly recommend skipping the intro until AFTER you read the book. Mr. Finch probably meant well, but he quotes extensively from the book - thereby spoiling some of the best parts - instead of giving us just enough to further pique our curiosity about the book or limiting himself to biographical information about Monsieur Beston.