The Night Country - by Loren Eiseley (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Toward the end of his life, Loren Eiseley reflected on the mystery of life, throwing light on those dark places traversed by himself and centuries of humankind. The Night Country is a gift of wisdom and beauty from the famed anthropologist. It describes his needy childhood in Nebraska, reveals his increasing sensitivity to the odd and ordinary in nature, and focuses on a career that turns him inward as he reaches outward for answers in old bones.

Review Quotes

"[Eiseley] is the raconteur par excellence. His tales . . . all make fascinating reading."--Library Journal

"A sort of Odyssey by a man in dialogue with nature and evolution; Eiseley remains one of our foremost humanists--and prose stylists."--Christian Century

"Eiseley has met strange creatures in the night country, and he tells marvelous stories about them . . . For Eiseley, storytelling is never pure entertainment. The autobiographical tales keep illustrating the theses that wind through all his writing--the fallibility of science, the mystery of evolution, the surprise of life."--Time

"The autobiographical details that [Eiseley] uses in most of the essays have power over the reader's imagination precisely because they have been filtered through a heightened sensibility. Most of us see; Eiseley challenges us to be aware."--America

"There can be no question that Loren Eiseley maintains a place of eminence among nature writers. His extended explorations of human life and mind, set against the backdrop of our own and other universes are like those to be found in every book of nature writing currently available. . . .We now routinely expect our nature writers to leap across the chasm between science, natural history, and poetry with grace and ease. Eiseley made the leap at a time when science was science, and literature was, well, literature. . . .His writing delivered science to nonscientists in the lyrical language of earthly metaphor, irony, simile, and narrative, all paced like a good mystery."--The Bloomsbury Review

About the Author

Gale E. Christianson, author of Fox at the Wood's Edge: A Biography of Loren Eiseley, is a professor of history at Indiana State University, Terre Haute.