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The Forest
Bollingen Series (Related to this series)
- Author
- Alexander Nemerov
- Narrator
- Clarke Peters
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Publish Date
- 7 March 2023
- Run Time
- 9 hours 31 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Historical fiction, Essays
What to expect
This audiobook narrated by Clarke Peters shares a vivid historical imagining of the lives of individuals—from painters, poets, and politicians to enslaved people, artisans, and travelers—in the early United States
Set amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States,
The Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, featuring both real and invented characters, the book follows painters, poets, enslaved people, farmers, and artisans living and working in a world still made largely of wood. Some of the historical characters—such as Thomas Cole, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanny Kemble, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nat Turner—are well-known, while others are not. But all are creators of private and grand designs.
The Forest unfolds in brief stories. Each episode reveals an intricate lost world. Characters cross paths or go their own ways, each striving for something different but together forming a pattern of life. For Alexander Nemerov, the forest is a description of American society, the dense and discontinuous woods of nation, the foliating thoughts of different people, each with their separate shade and sun. Through vivid descriptions of the people, sights, smells, and sounds of Jacksonian America,
The Forest brings American history to life on a human scale.
Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Critics Review
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"I really wish I'd written this book. The Forest is what one might dubiously call 'a nonfiction novel,' taking as it does the lives, both real and imagined, of multiple early inhabitants of America's great forests—artists, tradesmen, farmers, poets, enslaved people—and turning them into fictionalized episodes. . . . This is history imagined as ecology."—Jonny Diamon, Literary Hub
Literary Hub
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A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year
Literary Hub
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"For each scene, [Alexander Nemerov] seems to have asked himself not merely how things would have looked in the 1830s but also how they would have sounded, felt, tasted and smelled. The Forest is easily one of the most pungent books I've read, an encyclopedia of vintage odors. . . . After you've read this book, most other cultural histories will seem as stale as the straw on the floor."—Jackson Arn, Wall Street Journal
Wall Street Journal
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Details
- Author
- Alexander Nemerov
- Narrator
- Clarke Peters
- Duration
- 9 hours 31 minutes
- Release Date
- 7 March 2023
- ISBN
- 9780691251059
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Genre
- Historical fiction, Essays
Synopsis
This audiobook narrated by Clarke Peters shares a vivid historical imagining of the lives of individuals—from painters, poets, and politicians to enslaved people, artisans, and travelers—in the early United States Set amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States, The Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, featuring both real and invented characters, the book follows painters, poets, enslaved people, farmers, and artisans living and working in a world still made largely of wood. Some of the historical characters—such as Thomas Cole, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanny Kemble, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nat Turner—are well-known, while others are not. But all are creators of private and grand designs. The Forest unfolds in brief stories. Each episode reveals an intricate lost world. Characters cross paths or go their own ways, each striving for something different but together forming a pattern of life. For Alexander Nemerov, the forest is a description of American society, the dense and discontinuous woods of nation, the foliating thoughts of different people, each with their separate shade and sun. Through vivid descriptions of the people, sights, smells, and sounds of Jacksonian America, The Forest brings American history to life on a human scale. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
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