Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape [Hardcover]

Barry Lopez (Editor), Debra Gwartney (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2006

Barry Lopez asked 45 poets and writers to define terms that describe America’s land and water forms — phrases like flatiron, bayou, monadnock, kiss tank, meander bar, and everglade. The result is a major enterprise comprising over 850 descriptions, 100 line drawings, and 70 quotations from works by Willa Cather, Truman Capote, John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, and others. Carefully researched and exquisitely written by talents such as Barbara Kingsolver, Lan Samantha Chang, Robert Hass, Terry Tempest Williams, Jon Krakauer, Gretel Ehrlich, Luis Alberto Urrea, Antonya Nelson, Charles Frazier, Linda Hogan, and Bill McKibben, Home Ground is a striking composite portrait of the landscape. At the heart of this expansive work is a community of writers in service to their country, emphasizing a language that suggests the vastness and mystery that lie beyond our everyday words.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. How to define an arroyo, badlands, eddy, a muskeg? What is a desire path, a kiss tank, a nubble? These words, many forgotten today, refer to various aspects of a landscape to which many of us have lost our connection. Drawing on the polyglot richness of American English, National Book Award–winning author Lopez (Arctic Dreams) assembles 45 writers, known for their intimate connection to particular places, to collectively create a unique American dictionary. Barbara Kingsolver, William Kittredge, Arturo Longoria, Jon Krakauer, Bill McKibben, Antonya Nelson, Luis Alberto Urrea and Joy Williams, among others, vividly describe land and water forms. What is a cofferdam? "Imagine a decorative wishing well, then imagine that well writ large," notes Antonya Nelson. And Patricia Hampl tells us that the Dutch word vly (marshy headwaters of a stream) "may have occasioned the name of New York's rowdy Fly Market" in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Many entries quote American explorers and writers such as Herman Melville, Willa Cather, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy, as they uncover layers of etymology and American regional difference. Line drawings enhance geographic understanding; marginal quotations further evoke period and place. This marvelous book enlivens readers to the rich diversity of Americans' complex relationship to the land. (Oct. 4)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Edited by National Book Award winner Lopez and Gwartney and offering contributions by 45 writers, this unique addition to the literature of ecology and the environment presents a series of definitions, arranged alphabetically, of "landscape terms and terms for the forms that water takes." These definitions average a dozen lines apiece, with some entries longer and others shorter. But every definition is at once comprehensive and to the point. To learn what a graded shoreline is and how creek is actually defined and to never have to guess again the meaning of revetment are the distinct pleasures afforded by this large-format but comfortable-to-handle book. It can be used for reference, but its practicality and applicability extend much further. Anyone with an interest in nature, even on a casual basis (one doesn't have to go camping and hiking every weekend to qualify as "interested"), will experience many edifying hours opening a page here or a page there and slowly appreciating the expertise expressed and the knowledge offered. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Trinity University Press; 1 edition (September 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595340246
• ISBN-13: 978-1595340245
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #638,916 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book you want to keep near you, October 21, 2006

By 

Anna Mills (Menlo Park, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape (Hardcover)

I took Home Ground home and set it on the dining room table two weeks ago. I open it over breakfast and feel a visceral pleasure--the robin's egg blue sky on the cover, the ample space on each page, the quotes lining the margins, the sketches of landforms. But the sensual reality of the book wouldn't do much for me if the definitions were boring. They're exquisite. This is more than a dictionary--no one else has tried such a project, so it's hard to describe. I tell people about it, but I don't know if I convey how much fun it is to read the definitions, and how lyrical and evocative and often playful they are. I can read them just for pleasure, but I am also learning those words I've always glossed over, the words I vaguely knew but which I thought belonged to the experts, words like "playa," "swale," "gooseneck," and "glade." The more technical phrases are explained in lucid, simple terms. And then there are the ones that are pure fun, like "thank you ma'am," "looking-glass prairie," "hoodoo," "painted desert," "milk gap," and "chickenhead."

The definitions make me want to get out and notice the country. They make me believe in the beauty and specificity and continuing power of the American landscape. I feel a sense of loss for all the local folk knowledge that is now obscure. But it's also heartening to think that Americans have not only been looters; we've known the ins and outs of the land, paid attention, made it come to life in our words. And we can still reach for those words and for that clear-eyed, delighted way of seeing the land around us.

This is a book to give and a book to keep in the family. I may not take it off my dining room table for a while. It's a good companion.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than a reference, a Literary Anthology of our American Homeland, October 20, 2006

By 

Amy L. Jenkins "AmyLouJenkins Dot Com" (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape (Hardcover)

When I first got my hands on this beautiful book, I'd barely read a page before I started to cry. Barry Lopez, Debra Gwartney, and more of the best writers of our day have saved what I didn't even realize I was losing. I've often felt, when near an exotic Asian or spicy islander that being an American, especially a Midwesterner, meant I had no culture. The United States was developed under the influence of a vast wild land, a land to conquer. We tore down and built up, paying little attention to what we destroyed. I wonder if that accounts for empty Americans trying to fill themselves up with stuff? But the U. S. isn't only about development and acquisition. Home Ground preserves the culture and language of our landscape.

"we will conserve only what we love
we will love only what we understand
we will understand only what we're taught"
Baba Dioum, Senegal

The marginalia literature quotations and the descriptive entries bind place to culture. Because I do feel a connection to the landscapes I have known, this book reminds me that I am a part of a culture that has a language. A language we might have lost.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Language for an American Landscape by Barry Lopez, January 10, 2007

By 

G. Furmark "travel agent" (greenwich, ct, usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape (Hardcover)

This is a very interesting book and should be in every bookcase along with an encyclopedia, dictionary and atlas.

The brilliant idea of having great writers briefly define geological and geographic terms works beautifully.