Place Within: Portraits of the American Landscape by Contemporary Writers

Each of the writers in this collection of nearly all original pieces evokes a different place in our country's landscape -- a place he or she lived in, visited, or was intimately influenced or shaped by. These writers, in voices ranging from the lyrical to the meditative, awaken or allow us to discover anew a feeling for America in all its many faces. You'll find the American spirit in Phillip Lopate's gridlocked "Manhattan," in Richard Rodriguez's gay San Francisco, & in Gerald Early s uneasily "integrated" St. Louis. Kathleen Norris reflects on the way objects change our experience of space. Gretel Ehrlich s essay on Wyoming is also about a cure for human grief.