Preservation [Hardcover]

Peter Svenson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1994

The author lives on and farms a field that was the site of an American Civil War battle. He starts this book with the idea of preserving a battlefield and other Civil War monuments, questioning what is being memorialized both physically and morally. He then moves onto the idea of saving the farmland surrounding his own land that, without intervention, will probably be sold for development. Interspersed is a memoir in which Svenson evokes and thereby preserves his best self at a variety of ages and contemplates how these selves are incorporated into the middle-aged man he is today. Graceful, impassioned and highly personal, this book is a call to appreciate what needs to be preserved in the world and in the self.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Svenson follows Battlefield: Farming a Civil War Battlefield with a general reflection on why societies and individuals choose to memorialize certain things and sacrifice others. The author integrates this with a memoir of his rootless childhood and an adult life described as "anchorless" until he discovered his battlefield farm in Virginia and fought to save it from 20th-century challenges--especially highways. Paving, Svenson asserts, is killing. Farming is life. Chapters on Svenson's school days, college experience and hitch in the Navy are conventional in comparison with his lyrical descriptions of making hay and debating the pros and cons of herbicides. A refreshing story of a person who has established personal equilibrium in a society that persists in making whirl its king.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Svenson's (Battlefield: Farming a Civil War Battleground, Faber & Farber, 1992) graceful meditation on personal history alternates autobiographical chapters with a description of his farming equipment and methods. His Virginia hay farm is on the site of a Civil War battle, and he believes that "the best way to preserve a battleground that was farmed in the 1860s is to keep farming it." While considering Civil War monuments and his farm's history, he concludes that "it is the person within me that needs preserving." To that end he provides an engaging memoir of his childhood and youth, ending as a young man in his mid-twenties, which he regards as his best self. Svenson reminds us with this compelling perspective on historical preservation that history is life, a continuum of past and present. A worthwhile purchase for public libraries.
Wendy Knickerbocker, Rhode Island Coll. Lib., Providence
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 190 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber (June 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571198406
• ISBN-13: 978-0571198405
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,567,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars a simple life, January 13, 2004

By 

Michael G. Jackson "Dog Soldier" (Olympia, Washington USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Preservation (Hardcover)

This book, for whatever reason, failed to get much notice but is a great read. If you enjoy reading about the history of the American Civil War or if you have ever wondered what it would be like to own your own farm and live in the country you will love this book. Funny in places, gripping in others and always interesting you will not be able to put it down. It is one of those books where you count the pages to the end and wish it were longer.