New Releases by Peter Matthiessen

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.

In its heyday (1400-1600), The Kingdom of Lo dominated the Kali Gandaki River trade between India and Tibet. By the 18th century Lo had lost control over this trade and had been incorporated into the modern Kingdom of Nepal. Isolated deep in the Himalaya, Lo''s heriditary rajas retained most of their feudal powers and the area remained closed to the outside world until 1991. In the spring of 1992, author Peter Matthiessen and correspondent-photographer Thomas Laird traveled deep in the secret valley of Sao Kohla, tucked high in the northernmost reaches of the Himalaya. They were the first Westerners to venture there in thirty years. Matthiessen''s expansive narrative and Laird''s poignant photographs reveal a place where mountains five miles high cast their shadows over the deepest canyon in the world; where 150-million-year-old fossils rise to the light of day at 13,000 feet; and where mountain nomads spend their lives herding their flocks across desolate slopes and through desert valleys, "utterly lost in the eternal earth and air".

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.

An “indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) chronicle of a fatal gun-battle between FBI agents and American Indian Movement activists by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard and the novel In Paradise On a hot June morning in 1975, a desperate shoot-out between FBI agents and Native Americans near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, left an Indian and two federal agents dead. Four members of the American Indian Movement were indicted on murder charges, and one, Leonard Peltier, was convicted and is now serving consecutive life sentences in a federal penitentiary. Behind this violent chain of events lie issues of great complexity and profound historical resonance, brilliantly explicated by Peter Matthiessen in this controversial book. Kept off the shelves for eight years because of one of the most protracted and bitterly fought legal cases in publishing history, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse reveals the Lakota tribe’s long struggle with the U.S. government, and makes clear why the traditional Indian concept of the earth is so important at a time when increasing populations are destroying the precious resources of our world.

After winning an eight year legal battle, here is the controversial book that powerfully sheds new light on the plight of Native Americans. Matthiessen''s urgent accounts and absorbing journalistic details make it impossible to ignore the message they so eloquently proclaim.

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.

En septembre 1973, Peter Matthiessen part pour le Dolpo, une région du Népal située à la frontière du Tibet, avec le zoologiste George Schaller qui veut observer des léopards des neiges. Dans ce journal de route, il apparaît très vite que Matthiessen vit cette expédition comme une aventure plus spirituelle que véritablement scientifique. Pour lui, adepte du bouddhisme zen, ce sera surtout un pèlerinage à l''ancien monastère de Shey Gompa et, enfin, un voyage hors de la "civilisation" du XXe siècle.

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.

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 Peter Matthiessen crisscrossed 20,000 miles of the South American wilderness, from the Amazon rain forests to Machu Picchu, high in the Andes, down to Tierra del Fuego and back. He followed the trails of old explorers, encountered river bandits, wild tribesmen, and the evidence of ancient ruins, and discovered fossils in the depths of the Peruvian jungle. Filled with observations and descriptions of the people and the fading wildlife of this vast world to the south, The Cloud Forest is his incisive, wry report of his expedition into some of the last and most exotic wild terrains in the world. 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.

A history of the North American wilderness and its creatures, with lists and drawings of rare, threatened, and extinct species.

Recounts his safari to the Selous Game Reserve in southern Tanzania.

Expedition to Nunivak in 1964 led by John Teal to capture Ovibos moschatus calves to form the nucleus of a permanent domestic herd. A shorter version first appeared in the ''New Yorker'' magazine.

An American journalist pursues an old Communist leader, disgraced and sought by his own party, through back streets of Paris.