Earth Works

Scott Russell Sanders, Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington, is author of 20 books of fiction and nonfiction, including A Private History of Awe, Writing from the Center (IUP, 1995), and A Conservationist Manifesto (IUP, 2009). Among his honors are the Lannan Literary Award, the John Burroughs Essay Award, and the Mark Twain Award.

[The essays in Earth Works are . . . a rich mix of beautifully crafted and progressive pieces that engage the reader in a long conversation. They are best read slowly, providing time to consider Sanders' propositions, his keen insight and lessons, his critical questioning.(Terrain.org) It's hard to think of a writer today who is better at finding and expressing the profound nature discovered in such simple gifts as a shared meal or a walk in the woods.(indianalivinggreen.com) Nature, in all of its manifestations—physical, spiritual, geographical—runs through everything that Sanders writes and supplies the materials for much of his vivid and compelling imagery, as well as his inpiration and concern.(Bloom) [T]he essays of Earth Works are full of energy, hope and life.(Englewood Review of Books) By turns somber and snap-out-of-it buoyant, these elegant artifacts of restless inquiry cover subjects as intimate as the author's sexual awakening and his father's alcoholism, as broad as the origins of the universe and the disarray of contemporary hyper-urban society.(The Indianapolis Star) In language that's patient, probing and precise, Sanders . . . has, over the past 30 years or so, built a body of work articulating what it means to live during this time on planet Earth and, particularly, that part of the planet called the American Midwest.(NUVO) Collectively, these essays invite the reader to gaze more clearly at the world outside his own window—a reminder, as Sanders puts it, that all there is to see 'can be seen from anywhere in the universe, if you know how to look . . . '(Barnes & Noble Review) Among the thirty essays it contains, Earth Works offers a thought-provoking mix of old and new. The nine new pieces included in the back of Earth Works . . . are themselves worth the sticker price.(The Fourth River)

• PrefaceThe Singular First PersonAt Play in the Paradise of BombsThe Men We Carry in Our MindsDoing Time in the Thirteenth ChairThe Inheritance of ToolsUnder the InfluenceLooking at WomenReasons of the BodyAfter the FloodHouse and HomeStaying PutWaylandLetter to a ReaderBuckeyeThe Common LifeVoyageursMountain MusicWildnessBeautySilenceThe Force of SpiritThe Uses of MuscleA Private History of AweA Road into Chaos and Old NightWords Addressed to Our Condition ExactlyHonoring the OrdinarySpeaking for the LandThe Mystique of MoneyBuffalo EddyMind in the ForestNotes and Acknowledgements