H. Lark Hall presents the first comprehensive biography of Vernon Louis Parrington (1871-1929). The recipient of the 1928 Pulitzer Prize in history for the first two volumes of his Main Currents in American Thought (3 vols., 1927, 1930), Parrington remains one of the most influential literary and historical scholars of the early 20th century. Parrington was a man in search of a personal myth. He found his self-image successively mirrored in Victorian novels, painting, poetry, Populism, religion, the arts and crafts movement, American literature, and American history. These changes also were reflected in his teaching as a professor of English at the College of Emporia, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Washington. Published late in his career, Main Currents represented the culmination of his search. Drawing upon previously inaccessible personal papers-including correspondence, diaries, Harvard student course work, Main Currents chapter drafts, and other unpublished writings–Hall traces Parrington’s intellectual development from his midwestern childhood through a midlife engagement with English poet and artist William Morris, then from the radical impact of “the new history” to the tempered postwar reflection of his late career at the University of Washington.

“Something spiritual, as well as actual, is broken in the world Joe Bonomo offers us, in this his first sustained collection. His response to what he is left with is to remake what he can in figures of comprehension and compassion. The size of his world is local and familiar, but that hardly prevents him from reaching into the silence or achieving, in finely-tuned language, his epiphanies. This is honest and lovely writing.”—Stanley Plumly

Village landmark churches are a unique legacy of the settlement of Ohio’s Western Reserve. The forty 19th century churches in Village Landmark Churches—still found today, although some now serve as solitary sentinels in disappearing villages and communities—were selected because they have significance in one or more of the following dimensions: architecture, history, or their dominant position in their setting.

“There are poems which carry us clean away, transporting us into worlds as specific as the pink purse the author of Visible Heavens helps a little boy buy for his teacher, Miss Stone. Melancholy and loss, the missing of a gone mother, passion and solitude—stirringly well mixed in one potent brew of a book. Readers will feel at home here, but they’ll also feel ignited with new presences, keenly visible and invisible perceptions—‘It is a gift, this light we carry in our lungs.…’ Cheers to Joanna Solfrian for a fine first book, the stunning deep breath of her voice.” —Naomi Shihab Nye, judge

For thousands of years humans have grappled with the idea of Nature. This enduring question has left its poignant mark on a multiplicity of images, stories, works of art, and philosophical and religious systems. In A Vision of Nature, Michael Tobias seeks to unravel the aesthetic, psychological, and philosophical impact that the Earth has had on humanity. It is a dramatic and invigorating overview of the new field of ecological aesthetics. Comprised of 10 autobiographical essays, A Vision of Nature is lavishly illustrated with art and images never before brought together in an ecological context. The author examines the mystical links between Vivaldi, Giorgione, and Dosso Dossi and draws important parallels between the Age of Exploration and the rise of the “interior landscape” in the works of van Eyck and Vermeer. Tobias examines the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean, the ascetics of Sinai and Tibet, and the Pure Land Buddhists. He introduces the reader to the Jains of India, whose lifestyle is one of the most ecologically balanced in all of human history. In profiling various artists of 19th century Europe and America, Tobias discovers incisive continuities among such luminaries as British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Austrian impressionist Emilie Mediz-Pelikan, and American intimist painters Ralph Blakelock and George Inness. Tobias finds a common, transcendent instinct that affirms rebirth over destruction in the lives of explorer Francis Kingdon Ward, storyteller Hugh Lofting, philosopher Nikos Kazantzakis, and film character King Kong. He concludes his lyrical investigations in the Antarctic, where he ponders the future of humanity and its role as caretaker of the Earth. Ultimately, the survival of humankind and of all other species hinges upon our willingness to uphold and celebrate the truth, beauty, and very sanctity of Nature.