The Rediscovery of North America by Barry Lopez

The Rediscovery of North America by Barry Lopez

The Spanish incursion into the New World, with its brutal destruction of indigenous peoples and their cultures and its material exploitation of much of two continents, reverberates in our history down to the present century. So contends prize-winning writer Barry Lopez in this beautifully written book. The quest for personal possessions, he observes, was to be, from the outset, a series of raids, irresponsible and criminal, a spree, in which an end to it was never visible. in which an end to it had no meaning. In this luminous essay, written five hundred years after the Spanish conquest, Lopez reexamines the attitudes that informed that event and that have underlain the entire European settlement of America. The assumption of an imperial right conferred by God, sanctioned by the state, and enforced by the militia, the assumption that one is due wealth in North America, he writes, is apparent in the journals of people on the Oregon Trail, in the pronouncements of nineteenth-century industrialists, and in the political rhetoric of our own day. But, for Lopez, coming to grips with this terrible legacy opens new possibilities. This violent corruption needn't define us. We can take the measure of the horror and assert that we will not be bound by it. We can rediscover our continent -- not as a source of income but as a home, a place in which we are to find our strength and character, and in which certain moral courtesies and obligations obtain. We can develop a philosophy of place will enable us, finally, to take up a true residence in our homeland. Here is a voice for our time.

Barry Lopez is the author of three collections of essays, including Horizon; several story collections; Arctic Dreams, for which he received the National Book Award; Of Wolves and Men, a National Book Award finalist; and Crow and Weasel, a novella-length fable. He contributed regularly to both American and foreign journals and traveled to more than seventy countries to conduct research. He was the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Lannan, and National Science Foundations and was honored by a number of institutions for his literary, humanitarian, and environmental work. He died in 2020.

www.barrylopez.com

SKU	Non disponible
ISBN 13	9780679740995
ISBN 10	0679740996
Titre	The Rediscovery of North America
Auteur	Barry Lopez
État	Non disponible
Type de reliure	Paperback
Éditeur	Random House USA Inc
Année de publication	1992-09-01
Nombre de pages	64
Note de couverture	La photo du livre est présentée à titre d'illustration uniquement. La reliure, la couverture ou l'édition réelle peuvent varier.
Note	Non disponible