New Releases by Peter Matthiessen

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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.

Part of the Penguin Orange Collection, a limited-run series of twelve influential and beloved American classics in a bold series design offering a modern take on the iconic Penguin paperback Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books | 50 Covers competition For the seventieth anniversary of Penguin Classics, the Penguin Orange Collection celebrates the heritage of Penguin’s iconic book design with twelve influential American literary classics representing the breadth and diversity of the Penguin Classics library. These collectible editions are dressed in the iconic orange and white tri-band cover design, first created in 1935, while french flaps, high-quality paper, and striking cover illustrations provide the cutting-edge design treatment that is the signature of Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions today. The Snow Leopard In 1973, Peter Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller traveled high into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. Matthiessen, a student of Zen Buddhism, was also on a spiritual quest to find the Lama of Shey at the ancient shrine on Crystal Mountain. The result is a remarkable account of a journey both physical and spiritual, as the arduous climb yields to Matthiessen a deepening Buddhist understanding of reality, suffering, impermanence, and beauty.

* 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

In this magnificent novel, which is the conclusion to the celebrated Watson trilogy, E.J. Watson tells his own story, through his turbulent life, to his death at the hands of vigilantes. From his destitute childhood in South Carolina, and the terrible events which haunt him for the rest of his days, the narrative shifts to the wilds of the Florida Everglades. Here, Watson establishes himself as a successful sugar-cane farmer, trying in vain to escape his past, and the uncontrollable, vicious side of his nature which is ultimately his downfall. Intelligent, a devoted husband and a lover, a stern father and a man capable of cruelty and cold-blooded murder, Watson is a character staggeringly real in his complexity. Bone by Bone confronts not only the racism, brutality and entrepreneurial greed of the American South at the turn of the century but also the paradox at the heart of human nature: our capacity for fierce love, compassion and unspeakable violence.

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).

In the summer of 1968 Peter Matthiessen met Cesar Chavez for the first time. They were the same age: forty-one. Matthiessen lived in New York City, while Chavez lived in the Central Valley farm town of Delano, where the grape strike was unfolding. This book is Matthiessen’s panoramic yet finely detailed account of the three years he spent working and traveling with Chavez, including to Sal Si Puedes, the San Jose barrio where Chavez began his organizing. Matthiessen provides a candid look into the many sides of this enigmatic and charismatic leader who lived by the laws of nonviolence. Sal Si Puedes is less reportage than living history. In its pages a whole era comes alive: the Chicano, Black Power, and antiwar movements; the browning of the labor movement; Chavez’s fasts; the nationwide boycott of California grapes. When Chavez died in 1993, tens of thousands gathered at his funeral. It was a clear sign of how beloved he was and how important his life had been. A new foreword by Marc Grossman considers the significance of Chavez’s legacy for our time. As well as serving as an indispensable guide to the 1960s, this book rejuvenates the extraordinary vitality of Chavez’s life and spirit, giving his message a renewed and much-needed urgency.

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.

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.

African Silences is a powerful and sobering account of the cataclysmic depredation of the African landscape and its wildlife. In this critically acclaimed work Peter Matthiessen explores new terrain on a continent he has written about in two previous books, A Tree Where Man Was Born -- nominated for the National Book Award -- and Sand Rivers. Through his eyes we see elephants, white rhinos, gorillas, and other endangered creatures of the wild. We share the drama of the journeys themselves, including a hazardous crossing of the continent in a light plane. And along the way, we learn of the human lives oppressed by bankrupt political regimes and economies, and threatened by the slow ecological catastrophe to which they have only begun to awaken.

A timeless and majestic portrait of Africa by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard and the new novel In Paradise A finalist for the National Book Award when it was released in 1972, this vivid portrait of East Africa remains as fresh and revelatory now as on the day it was first published. Peter Matthiessen exquisitely combines nature and travel writing to portray the sights, scenes, and people he observed firsthand in several trips over the course of a dozen years. From the daily lives of wild herdsmen and the drama of predator kills to the field biologists investigating wild creatures and the anthropologists seeking humanity''s origins in the rift valley, The Tree Where Man Was Born is a classic of journalistic observation. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by groundbreaking British primatologist Jane Goodall. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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.

"Our greatest modern nature writer in the lyrical tradition." --The New York Times Book Review "Matthiessen is a great travel companion. . . . His knowledge of plants, animals and people is breathtaking." --The Boston Globe Perhaps no writer has better articulated our relationship to the environment than Peter Matthiessen. From Wildlife in America to Men''s Lives, his work has captured the wonder of the natural world--and the horrors of resource exploitation, with its violent effects on traditional peoples and the poor. In The Peter Matthiessen Reader, editor McKay Jenkins presents a single-volume collection of this distinguished author''s nonfiction. Here are essays and excerpts that highlight the spiritual, literary, and political daring so crucial to Matthiessen''s vision. Matthiessen chronicles his 250-mile trek across the Himalaya to the Tibetan Plateau in a selection from the National Book Award winner The Snow Leopard. Wild peoples, wilderness, and wildlife--common themes throughout Matthiessen''s oeuvre--are examined with grace and power in The Tree Where Man Was Born. Here too are excerpts from Indian Country and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Matthiessen''s stunning exposé of the Leonard Peltier case and the ongoing conflict between the U.S. government and the American Indian Movement. Comprehensive and engrossing, The Peter Matthiessen Reader celebrates an American voice unequaled in its commitment to literature''s noblest aspiration: to challenge us to perceive our world--as well as ourselves--truthfully and clearly.

A travers ce livre, Peter Matthiessen, auteur et naturaliste américain, dénonce la situation critique du tigre de Sibérie. Retraçant le déroulement d''une expédition scientifique à laquelle il a participé, il évoque les origines et l''évolution de cet animal impressionnant, sans oublier son rôle crucial, parfois totémique, au sein des cultures et des mythologies. Le destin du tigre de Sibérie devient ainsi le territoire d''une histoire magnifique qui entraîne le lecteur au cœur de la bataille engagée par les chercheurs pour sa défense. Les photographies de l''animal dans son élément naturel ont été réalisées par Maurice Hornocker.

In August 1968, naturalist-explorer Peter Matthiessen returned from Africa to his home in Sagaponack, Long Island, to find three Zen masters in his driveway—guests of his wife, a new student of Zen. Thirteen years later, Matthiessen was ordained a Buddhist monk. Written in the same format as his best-selling The Snow Leopard, Nine-Headed Dragon River reveals Matthiessen''s most daring adventure of all: the quest for his spiritual roots.

A classic work of nature and humanity, by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard and the new novel In Paradise National Book Award-winning author Peter Matthiessen takes readers on an expedition to find the most dangerous predator on Earth—the legendary great white shark. On a trek that lasts 17 months and takes him from the Caribbean to the whaling grounds off South Africa, and across the Indian Ocean to the South Australian coast, Matthiessen describes the awesome experience of swimming in open water among hundreds of sharks; the beauties of strange seas and landscapes; and the camaraderie, tension, humor, and frustrations that develop when people continually risking their lives dwell in close proximity day after day. Filled with acute observations of natural history in exotic areas around the world, Blue Meridian records a harrowing account of one of the great adventures of our time. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The 1990 journey of Matthiessen, Paul Winter and a group of Russian environmentalists who traveled around Siberia''s Lake Baikal, the world''s oldest and deepest lake, containing one-fifth of the planet''s fresh water, is chronicled in diary form. Norton''s 50 color photos enhance the text. A portion of the royalties go to Baikal Watch. Map.