New Releases by Peter Matthiessen

有史以來最偉大的旅行和自然書寫作品 ★知名作者彼得．馬修森穿越喜馬拉雅山的難忘精神之旅★ 「人生的荒謬可能在我們未理解之前就結束了，可是我們（對於跟別人不可分的那個自我）仍有義務盡可能勇敢、恢弘地活過一生。」──彼得．馬修森 ★榮獲1979年美國國家圖書獎「當代思想類」 ★榮獲1980年美國國家圖書獎「一般非小說類」 ★巴黎評論創辦人自然書寫經典 ★名家宋碧雲經典譯本 一部匯合旅遊經歷、自然書寫與性靈禪修體悟 持續40年的經典著作 《雪豹》 ●國內名家一致推薦● 作家 陳德政──專文推薦 作家 謝旺霖 作家 顏擇雅 ──一致推薦 「喜馬拉雅空氣清新，山顯得近在眼前，面對這壯觀的山水，淚水靜靜浮上眼眶。這幾週來不受干擾──沒有信件、電話、不必應付旁人的需求──我的腦袋很清楚，自動自發回應萬事萬物。這種感覺很驚人。……」 1973年，作者彼得‧馬修森與動物學家喬治‧夏勒深入西藏邊界尼泊爾境內的多爾泊區，目的是研究當地特有的喜馬拉雅藍羊。不過，兩個人還有另一個目的，就是希望能一窺雪山中最珍貴美麗的傳奇生物－－雪豹。 「自然以待」及「科學研究」兩種文化態度上的差異，在作者以研究者的身分進入佛學的精神發源地「藏區」時，一股隱隱約約的、一再挑戰讀者心念的對立不斷地衝擊。我們如何看待事物、如何安置自我，都在這主觀與客觀、主體與客體的對應中遊移流轉。 師從禪宗的馬修森，在水晶山的古老寺宇間的精神追尋，最終卻成為對於身體和精神之旅的非凡描繪。因為艱苦的攀登，讓馬修森對現實、苦難、無常和美麗有了更深的佛教理解。 國內外好評 「一本美麗的書，配得上他身處的群山。」——保羅．索魯，《赫丘力士之柱》作者 「最初是對受人尊敬的佛教象徵、稀有的雪豹的探索，後來發展成為對存在意義的探索。一部登山與性靈追求，別致有趣的結合」——觀察者報 「這是一個內心為平靜而博鬥的故事，將成為鼓舞人心和支撐人的荒島最佳陪伴讀物。」——艾米莉．巴爾，作家 「既是內心旅程的編年史，也是對陌生領域的博學記錄……一部永恆的記錄」——獨立報 「對一個遙遠而永恆的地方及其人民的令人回味的描述」——星期日泰晤士報

Uma extraordinária odisseia espiritual de um homem em busca de si mesmo. Em 1973, Peter Matthiessen e George Schaller viajaram até às remotas montanhas do Nepal para estudarem o Carneiro-azul e observarem o raro e mítico Leopardo-das-neves. Matthiessen estava igualmente numa jornada espiritual para encontrar o lama de Shey no Mosteiro de Cristal. Com o desenrolar da viagem, Matthiessen descreve o seu caminho interior e exterior, aprofundando a compreensão budista da realidade, do sofrimento, da impermanência e da beleza. Um relato extraordinário de uma viagem física e espiritual que se converteu numa verdadeira peregrinação pela essência da vida.

«Un hombre sale de viaje y es otro quien regresa.» Éste es el sentido del viaje de Matthiessen, y de todo auténtico viaje. En otoño de 1973 el escritor Peter Matthiessen y el zoólogo George Schaller emprendieron una expedición a la Montaña de Cristal, en la meseta del Tíbet, para estudiar los hábitos de un animal no muy conocido: el bharal o cordero azul himalayo. Pero su auténtica esperanza era poder ver al más hermoso y raro de los grandes felinos: el leopardo de las nieves. Para Matthiessen, adentrarse en la tierra de Dolpo significará mucho más que una expedición naturalista o una aventura: despojarse de las ventajas y las ataduras de la civilización, convivir con hombres y paisajes en su más elemental belleza, adentrarse en él mismo por las vías que le proporcionan el budismo o el zen. «Lo que comenzó como una búsqueda del leopardo de las nieves, ese animal raro, venerado y emblema budista, se convirtió en una búsqueda del sentido del ser. Una soberbia combinación de montañismo y misticismo». Observer «Tanto una crónica de un viaje interior como un testimonio de lo aprendido en un territorio desconocido... Una historia atemporal». The Independent

Freshwater field tests are an integral part of the process of hazard assessment of pesticides and other chemicals in the environment. This book brings together international experts on microcosms and mesocosms for a critical appraisal of theory and practice on the subject of freshwater field tests for hazard assessment. It is an authoritative and comprehensive summary of knowledge about freshwater field tests, with particular emphasis on their optimization for scientific and regulatory purposes. This valuable reference covers both lotic and lentic outdoor systems and addresses the choice of endpoints and test methodology. Instructive case histories show how to extrapolate test results to the real world.

Join famous fiction writers and up-and-coming authors for this new collection of globetrotting real-life travel tales. By turns funny, poignant and thought-provoking, you''ll be transported from Azerbaijan to Vietnam, via Iceland, India, Samoa, Scotland and beyond.

Nella primavera del 1972, Peter Matthiessen si imbatte a New York nel celebre naturalista e zoologo George Schaller, che gli avanza subito una proposta: unirsi a lui, nell’autunno dell’anno successivo, per una spedizione fino al Nepal nordoccidentale, vicino alla frontiera tibetana, dove non è raro avvistare il più bello e più affascinante dei grandi felini: il leopardo delle nevi, il mitico animale di cui tutti parlano e che nell’ultimo quarto di secolo solo due occidentali, tra cui Schaller stesso, hanno visto davvero. L’idea di visitare il Nepal, di approssimarsi passo passo alla più imponente catena montuosa del mondo, di arrivare alla Montagna di Cristallo e andare alla ricerca di una leggendaria creatura, è così allettante per Matthiessen che, il giorno di settembre del 1973 fissato per l’appuntamento con Schaller, si presenta puntualissimo, e perfettamente equipaggiato per la spedizione, all’albergo di Katmandu prescelto. Pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1978, Il leopardo delle nevi è considerato da allora non soltanto uno dei grandi libri di viaggio di sempre. Il grande racconto di un viaggio avventuroso tra le gole profonde e le montagne del Tibet, alla ricerca di un mitico animale e dell''essenza stessa della vita. «Un vero e proprio capolavoro della letteratura d’ogni tempo». John Hillaby «Un grande libro che compie un viaggio parallelo, accompagnando i passi fisici di un pellegrinaggio con i passi metafisici di una ricerca». Pico Iyer

* The only photographic book on the largest wildlife area in Africa; four years in the making, the book is full of amazing photographs of wildlife* Great variety of wildlife: from exotic birds to elephants, from crocodiles to wild dogs* Brief but informative texts on the history and ecology of the Selous and the problems/opportunities it faces* Beautiful gatefolds and high quality printing make this book the perfect gift for all nature loversThe Selous was my very first Africa experience, and it remains my favorite. Robert J. Ross''s extraordinary photographs take us into a natural world unlike any other on earth. A world of elephants. Of wild dogs. Of nature as it should be, can be, might be - if we keep these breathtaking images firmly in mind. A triumph! Bryan Christy, Director, Special Investigations Unit, National GeographicThe Selous Game Reserve in southern Tanzania is Africa''s oldest and largest protected area. Proclaimed in 1896, and bigger than Switzerland, the Selous is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Selous remains one of Africa''s largest and greatest undisturbed ecosystems, teeming with life including one of the two largest elephant populations remaining on the African continent, probably half of all of the wild dogs in Africa, vast herds of buffalo as well as more lions than any other protected area on the continent as reported by National Geographic in August 2013. The game reserve is becoming more important by the day as the pressure on elephants and other species grows - problems that are addressed here in this book.New-York born photographer Rob Ross has spent much of the past four years photographing in this vast and difficult to access reserve. He has compiled more than 100,000 images showing all aspects of the reserves varied landscapes, seasons, flora and large and small fauna. The spectacular large-format photography book features a selection of the very best images including landscapes, wildlife portraits and behavior, night photography, impressionist style work and breath-taking aerials.Of related interest: The Centre Cannot Hold ISBN 9780983270287 - $75.00

L’ultimo romanzo dell’autore de Il leopardo delle nevi, vincitore di tre National Book Award. In Paradiso è un romanzo che nasce dall’esperienza dell’autore che ha partecipato tre volte a dei ritiri spirituali zen ad Auschwitz. Nel romanzo il protagonista è Clements Olin, docente universitario e poeta di origini polacche, che decide di partecipare a un ritiro spirituale che si tiene a cinquant’anni dai mostruosi eventi che hanno inciso il nome del campo nella storia. Olin tornerà in quella Polonia che gli diede i natali portando con sé amare riflessioni sul proprio presente, vaghi dubbi sul futuro e un vergognoso segreto. Ma nulla di quanto ha dentro è sufficiente a prepararlo al turbinio di anime nel quale si troverà costretto ad aggirarsi. Le anime dei morti e quelle di quanti come lui hanno prendono parte a questo evento commemorativo: parenti delle vittime o dei colpevoli, ebrei, tedeschi, polacchi, francesi, americani, preti, monache, rabbini e monaci zen motivati dai sentimenti più vari: senso di colpa, rabbia, perdono, espiazione, volontà di capire le origini del male, puro e semplice voyeurismo, ragioni personali e familiari. In Paradiso è un libro importante perché ci mostra che è ancora possibile nonché dovuto riflettere su una tragica e fondamentale lezione che la storia ci ha dato e che noi, in quanto specie, ostinatamente ci rifiutiamo di imparare. E importante è anche la scrittura di Peter Matthiessen, una prosa densa e ricca, un cammino letterario intenso e potente che aiuta e quasi obbliga il lettore a sentire il peso di ciascuno dei passi che i prigionieri del Lager dovettero muovere su quella maledetta banchina dove si compiva il loro destino e per tanti versi anche nostro.

The bestselling final novel by a writer of incomparable range, power, and achievement, a three-time winner of the National Book Award. Peter Matthiessen was a literary legend, the author of more than thirty acclaimed books. In this, his final novel, he confronts the legacy of evil, and our unquenchable desire to wrest good from it. One week in late autumn of 1996, a group gathers at the site of a former death camp. They offer prayer at the crematoria and meditate in all weathers on the selection platform. They eat and sleep in the sparse quarters of the Nazi officers who, half a century before, sent more than a million Jews in this camp to their deaths. Clements Olin has joined them, in order to complete his research on the strange suicide of a survivor. As the days pass, tensions both political and personal surface among the participants, stripping away any easy pretense to resolution or healing. Caught in the grip of emotions and impulses of bewildering intensity, Olin is forced to abandon his observer’s role and to bear witness, not only to his family’s ambiguous history but to his own. Profoundly thought-provoking, In Paradise is a fitting coda to the luminous career of a writer who was “for all readers. He was for the world” (National Geographic).

Enables researchers to assess the effects of endocrine disrupters as well as comply with new environmental regulations Endocrine disrupters are chemicals both man-made and natural that interfere with the body''s endocrine system, potentially resulting in adverse developmental, reproductive, neurological, and immune effects. In recent years, a number of regulatory authorities around the world have drafted or enacted legislation that requires the detection and assessment of the effects of endocrine disrupters on both humans and wildlife. In response, this book provides comprehensive, up-to-date information on the latest tested and proven methods used to detect and assess the environmental hazards posed by endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Endocrine Disrupters is divided into chapters covering each major taxon as well as chapters dedicated to hazard assessment and regulation. The book covers testing methods for all the vertebrate groups and several invertebrate phyla, including: Crustaceans and mollusks Insects Fish Amphibians and reptiles Birds and mammals Moreover, the book emphasizes practical, ethical testing methods that combine sensitivity, efficiency, statistical power, and reasonable cost. Each chapter is written by one or more international experts in ecotoxicology, offering readers step-by-step guidance for implementing each method based on the latest research and the authors'' firsthand laboratory experience. Furthermore, all the chapters have been subjected to a rigorous peer review and edited in light of the reviewers'' comments. References at the end of each chapter guide readers to the literature in the field. Endocrine Disrupters is recommended for scientists who need to test chemicals for possible endocrine-disrupting properties. It is also recommended for regulatory authorities who need to decide whether particular chemicals can be safely marketed.

Drawn from fragments of historical fact, Matthiessen''s masterpiece brilliantly depicts the fortunes and misfortunes of Edgar J. Watson, a real-life entrepreneur and outlaw who appeared in the lawless Florida Everglades around the turn of the century.

When his novel Killing Mister Watson was published in 1990, the reviews were extraordinary. It was heralded as "a marvel of invention . . . a virtuoso performance" (The New York Times Book Review) and a "novel [that] stands with the best that our nation has produced as literature" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now Peter Matthiessen brings us the second novel in his Watson trilogy, a project that has been nearly twenty years in the writing. A story of epic scope and ambition, Lost Man''s River confronts the primal relationship between a dangerous father and his desperate sons and the ways in which his death has shaped their lives. Lucius Watson is obsessed with learning the truth about his father. Who was E. J. Watson? Was he a devoted family man, an inspired farmer, a man of progress and vision? Or was he a cold-blooded murderer and amoral opportunist? Were his neighbors driven to kill him out of fear? Or was it envy? And if Watson was a killer, should the neighbors fear the obsessed Lucius when he returns to live among them and ask questions? The characters in this tale are men and women molded by the harsh elements of the Florida Everglades--an isolated breed, descendants of renegades and pioneers, who have only their grit, instinct, and tradition to wield against the obliterating forces of twentieth-century progress: Speck Daniels, moonshiner and alligator poacher turned gunrunner; Sally Brown, who struggles to escape the racism and shame of her local family; R. B. Collins, known as Chicken, crippled by drink and rage, who is the custodian of Watson secrets; Watson Dyer, the unacknowledged namesake with designs on the remote Watson homestead hidden in the wild rivers; and Henry Short, a black man and unwilling member of the group of armed island men who awaited E. J. Watson in the silent twilight. Only a storyteller of Peter Matthiessen''s dazzling artistry could capture the beauty and strangeness of life on this lawless frontier while probing deeply into its underlying tragedy: the brutal destruction of the land in the name of progress, and the racism that infects the heart of New World history.

In the Baliem Valley in central New Guinea lived a Stone Age tribe which survived into the twentieth century - the Kurelu. Matthiessen joined the Harvard-Peabody Expedition of 1961which set out to study the tribe as unobtrusively as possible, living among the Kurelu for two seasons. The result was this classic account, not of the expedition but of a lost culture; the Kurelu''s timeless rhythms of work and play, of warriorship, feasting and funerals. In Under the Mountain Wall Matthiessen illuminates the lives of the Kurelu''s with respect and sympathy, capturing a culture untouched by civilisation and vanishing along with the wilderness lying beneath the dramatic peaks of the Snow Mountains.

Since the 1950s Peter Matthiessen has written fiction and nonfiction of elemental power and moral vision, including the acclaimed novels At Play in the Fields of the Lord and Far Tortuga and works of naturalism and exploration like the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard. This stunning collection of short stories, available for the first time in paperback, spans more than three decades of writing by one of the most acclaimed literary voices of our time.

In a malarial outpost in the South American rain forest, two misplaced gringos converge and clash in this novel from the National Book Award-winning author. Martin Quarrier has come to convert the elusive Niaruna Indians to his brand of Christianity. Lewis Moon, a stateless mercenary who is himself part Indian, has come to kill them on the behalf of the local comandante. Out of this struggle Peter Matthiessen creates an electrifying moral thriller—adapted into a movie starring John Lithgow, Kathy Bates, and Tom Waits. A novel of Conradian richness, At Play in the Fields of the Lord explores both the varieties of spiritual experience and the politics of cultural genocide.

An eloquent portrayal of a disappearing way of life of the Long Island fishermen whose voices--humorous, bitter and bewildered--are as clear as the threatened beauty of their once quiet shore.

The journey of Buddhism over centuries, from India to China and then to Japan, is the stuff of mythology. But now, in our own time, we have witnessed and documented its historic crossing of the Pacific and its subsequent evolution in the Americas and Europe. In 1982, writer Peter Muryo Matthiessen, the first dharma successor of Roshi Bernie Glassman, traveled with Glassman to pay respects to the teachers in their lineage, some of the great living Zen masters of twentieth–century Japan. What took place was an important meeting of minds representing the past, present, and future of Zen practice, an intimate connection between ancestors and descendants marking a critical point in the Zen journey from the East to the West. This historic event was captured in the moment by the selective lens of Peter Cunningham. Matthiessen''s exquisite poetic accounts of this pilgrimage, which formed a part of his book Nine–Headed Dragon River, accompany the photos.

From the daily lives of wild herdsmen and the drama of predator kills to the field biologists investigating Africa''s wild creatures and the anthropologists seeking humanity''s origins in the rift valley, this National Book Award finalist is a classic of journalistic observation.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • “Altogether gripping, shocking, and brilliantly told, not just a tour de force in its stylistic range, but a great American novel, as powerful a reading experience as nearly any in our literature.”—Michael Dirda, The New York Review of Books Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone by Bone—Peter Matthiessen’s great American epic about Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson on the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century—were originally conceived as one vast, mysterious novel. Now, in this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has marvelously distilled a monumental work while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with brilliant rewriting throughout. Praise for Shadow Country “Magnificent . . . breathtaking . . . Finally now we have [this three-part saga] welded like a bell, and with Watson’s song the last sound, all the elements fuse and resonate.”—Los Angeles Times “Peter Matthiessen has done great things with the Watson trilogy. It’s the story of our continent, both land and people, and his writing does every justice to the blood fury of his themes.”—Don DeLillo “The fiction of Peter Mau00adu00adtthiessen is the reason a lot of people in my generation decided to be writers. No doubt about it. Shadow Country lives up to anyone’s highest expectations for great writing.” —Richard Ford “Shadow Country, Matthiessen’s distillation of the earlier Watson saga, represents his original vision. It is the quintessence of his lifelong concerns, and a great legacy.”—W. S. Merwin “[An] epic masterpiece . . . a great American novel.”—The Miami Herald

"Matthiessen chronicles two voyages into the frozen seas that surround a landmass larger than the continental United States, most of it buried under eternal snow and ice as much as three miles deep. Ninety percent of the world''s fresh water is locked in this immense ice cap, a remote region profoundly important to our environment. The author addresses the subject with authority and passion, discussing everything from global warming and the ozone layer to the vital role of krill, the teeming crustacean that is the cornerstone of the marine food chain." "Nature lovers - birders especially - will be fascinated by descriptions of more than half of the penguin species and an astonishing array of seabirds, from tiny storm-petrels to magnificent albatrosses, which may soar for years without alighting on land; here too are close encounters with whales, leopard seals, and elephant seals, and elusive creatures such as the oceanic orca. There are also remarkable descriptions of the seldom seen polar rookeries where thousands of emperor penguins stand motionless for months at a time, brooding their giant eggs through the long, cold darkness of Antarctic winter."--BOOK JACKET.

Photographic documentation of the necessity to preserve this precious area.

In addition, the enormous spans of cranes'' migrations have encouraged international conservation efforts.".

The story of the threatened Siberian tiger as it struggles to exist in the little-populated Russian Far East.