Kevin Dann – författare

To coincide with the bicentennial of Thoreau''s birth in 2017, this thrilling, meticulous biography by naturalist and historian Kevin Dann fills a gap in our understanding of one modern history''s most important spiritual visionaries by capturing the full arc of Thoreau''s life as a mystic, spiritual seeker, and explorer in transcendental realms.This sweeping, epic biography of Henry David Thoreau sees Thoreau''s world as the mystic himself saw it: filled with wonder and mystery; Native American myths and lore; wood sylphs, nature spirits, and fairies; battles between good and evil; and heroic struggles to live as a natural being in an increasingly synthetic world. Above all, Expect Great Things critically and authoritatively captures Thoreau''s simultaneously wild and intellectually keen sense of the mystical, mythical, and supernatural. Other historians have skipped past or undervalued these aspects of Thoreau''s life. In this groundbreaking work, historian and naturalist Kevin Dann restores Thoreau''s esoteric visions and explorations to their rightful place as keystones of the man himself.

The acclaimed author of Expect Great Things: The Life and Search of Henry David Thoreau traverses on foot from Manhattan to the site of Thoreau''s cabin at Walden Pond, often retracing steps walked by Thoreau himself, and unlocks the practical principles of the mystic''s life in the woods.When Henry David Thoreau launched his experiment in living at Walden Pond, he began by walking beyond the narrow limits of his neighbors, simply by putting himself at a mile remove from Concord''s bourgeois epicenter--and a thousand-mile remove from stasis, complacency, and conformity. Kevin Dann emulates and extends Thoreau''s experiment in radical self-education. Alternating between personal anecdotes from his spring 2017 walking pilgrimage and other "traveler" encounters and episodes told by Thoreau, Dann structures his book around 12 "injunctions"--distillations of seminal stories about overcoming convention and stasis.

A fantastical field guide to the hidden history of New York's magical pastManhattan has a pervasive quality of glamour—a heightened sense of personality generated by a place whose cinematic, literary, and commercial celebrity lends an aura of the fantastic to even its most commonplace locales. Enchanted New York chronicles an alternate history of this magical isle. It offers a tour along Broadway, focusing on times and places that illuminate a forgotten and sometimes hidden history of New York through site-specific stories of wizards, illuminati, fortune tellers, magicians, and more. Progressing up New York's central thoroughfare, this guidebook to magical Manhattan offers a history you won't find in your Lonely Planet or Fodor's guide, tracing the arc of American technological alchemies—from Samuel Morse and Robert Fulton to the Manhattan Project—to Mesmeric physicians, to wonder–working Madame Blavatsky, and seers Helena Roerich and Alice Bailey. Harry Houdini appears and disappears, as the world's premier stage magician's feats of prestidigitation fade away to reveal a much more mysterious—and meaningful—marquee of magic.Unlike old-world cities, New York has no ancient monuments to mark its magical adolescence. There is no local memory embedded in the landscape of celebrated witches, warlocks, gods, or goddesses—no myths of magical metamorphoses. As we follow Kevin Dann in geographical and chronological progression up Broadway from Battery Park to Inwood, each chapter provides a surprising picture of a city whose ever-changing fortunes have always been founded on magical activity.

A fantastical field guide to the hidden history of New York's magical pastManhattan has a pervasive quality of glamour—a heightened sense of personality generated by a place whose cinematic, literary, and commercial celebrity lends an aura of the fantastic to even its most commonplace locales. Enchanted New York chronicles an alternate history of this magical isle. It offers a tour along Broadway, focusing on times and places that illuminate a forgotten and sometimes hidden history of New York through site-specific stories of wizards, illuminati, fortune tellers, magicians, and more. Progressing up New York's central thoroughfare, this guidebook to magical Manhattan offers a history you won't find in your Lonely Planet or Fodor's guide, tracing the arc of American technological alchemies—from Samuel Morse and Robert Fulton to the Manhattan Project—to Mesmeric physicians, to wonder–working Madame Blavatsky, and seers Helena Roerich and Alice Bailey. Harry Houdini appears and disappears, as the world's premier stage magician's feats of prestidigitation fade away to reveal a much more mysterious—and meaningful—marquee of magic.Unlike old-world cities, New York has no ancient monuments to mark its magical adolescence. There is no local memory embedded in the landscape of celebrated witches, warlocks, gods, or goddesses—no myths of magical metamorphoses. As we follow Kevin Dann in geographical and chronological progression up Broadway from Battery Park to Inwood, each chapter provides a surprising picture of a city whose ever-changing fortunes have always been founded on magical activity.