Torrey House Press
Quiet Desperation, Savage delight
Sheltering with Thoreau in the Age of Crisis
Overview:
“A powerful and timely book from one of the most provocative and engaging voices in contemporary environmental writing.”
– MICHAEL P. BRANCH, author of How to Cuss in Western
When the pandemic struck, nature writer David Gessner turned to Henry David Thoreau, the original social distancer, for lessons on how to live. Those lessons—of learning our own backyard, re-wilding, loving nature, self-reliance, and civil disobedience—hold a secret that could help save us as we face the greater crisis of climate.
Book Reviews For Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight
“Contrary to the prevalent image of Thoreau the unsocialized, intolerant loner, the figure emerging from Mr. Gessner’s book is, like Mr. Gessner himself, complexly alive, passionately in love with being on this planet.” — The Wall Street Journal
“I ended up spending more time in the company of Gessner’s latest work than I have with any book I’ve ever read, save one: Walden. That is the highest compliment I could pay any book or its writer.” — Washington Independent Review of Books
“The havoc caused by the pandemic is only a mild foretaste of what climate disruption will bring, not merely for a year or two but for the foreseeable future. To imagine how we might preserve our humanity as the world unravels, you could start by reading this lively, captivating book by David Gessner. Drawn in part from his journal of what he calls ‘this endless night of a year,’ it weaves together memoir, natural history, travelogue, and literary homage to reveal a mind fully awake to our dire situation, yet able to relish birds and books, family and friends, and the living Earth.” — Scott Russell Sanders
“Gessner vividly recounts his rich daily experiences of wildness, including walking, biking, kayaking, and bird-watching in North Carolina, his adopted home for the past 17 years…He also admits to wondering if it is too late to save the planet and to raise consciousness about the perils of materialism and anthropocentrism. Yet despite evidence that sometimes overwhelms him, Gessner, like Thoreau, finds hope in every new morning and joy in the world that Thoreau so eloquently extolled.” — Kirkus Reviews
