Books published by publisher COUNTERPOINT

A lovingly illustrated collection of poems for you young readers highlighting the timeless themes of one of America’s leading literary lights.   Tom Pohrt spent years gathering poems by Wendell Berry that he thought children might read and appreciate, making sketches to accompany his thoughtful selection. Terrapin is the result, a volume of twenty-one poems with dozens of sketches, drawings, and watercolors. In full color, we have not only a volume of staggering beauty but a consummate example of the collaborative effort that is fine bookmaking; the perfect gift for children, grandchildren, or anyone who remains a lover of the book as physical object.   “Mr. Berry is a sophisticated, philosophical poet in the line descending from Emerson and Thoreau.” —The Baltimore Sun   “[Berry’s poems] shine with the gentle wisdom of a craftsman who has thought deeply about the paradoxical strangeness and wonder of life.” —The Christian Science Monitor   “Wendell Berry is one of those rare individuals who speaks to us always of responsibility, of the individual cultivation of an active and aware participation in the arts of life.” —The Bloomsbury Review   “[Berry’s] poems, novels and essays . . . are probably the most sustained contemporary articulation of America’s agrarian, Jeffersonian ideal.” —Publishers Weekly

Ursula K. Le Guin selected Crazy Weather for her contribution to Pharos Editions citing Charles McNichols “offhanded skill, the ease with which (he) takes us deep into a complex society and the complex minds and hearts of its people.” In four days of "glory-hunting" with an Indian comrade, South Boy, who is white, realizes he must choose between two cultures. Le Guin explains how she finds Crazy Weather to be “about a soul not at home and not at peace: South Boy, who on the verge of manhood is living in and between two worlds, without a clear way to go in either.” Crazy Weather is a unique tale of American identity that serves as “an important document in our cultural history.”

It's 1873. Modern climbing gear and Gore-Tex shells are a century away, but the high mountains still demand your attention. Imagine the stone in your hands and thousands of feet of open air below you, with only a wool jacket to weather a storm and no rope to catch a fall.Daniel Arnold did more than imagine—he spent four years retracing the precarious steps of his climbing forefathers and lived to tell their tales here. From 1864 to 1931, the Sierra Nevada witnessed some of the most audacious climbing of all time. In the spirit of his predecessors, Arnold carried only rudimentary equipment—no ropes, no harness, no specialized climbing shoes.In an artful blend of history, biography, nature, and adventure writing, Arnold brings to life both the journeys and the stunning terrain. In the process he uncovers the motivations that drove an extraordinary group of individuals to risk so much for the summits of our most fabled landscapes.

In Spiritual American Trash, Greg Bottoms goes beyond the examination of eight “outsider artists” and inhabits the spirit of their work and stories in engaging vignettes. From the janitor who created a holy throne room out of scraps in a garage, to the lonely wartime mother who filled her home with driftwood replicas of Bible scenes, Bottoms illustrates the peculiar grace in madness.Using facts as scaffolding he constructs intimate narratives around each artist, painting their poor and difficult circumstances on the outskirts of American society and demonstrating struggle’s influence on their largely undiscovered art. Both mournful and celebratory, these profiles embrace these compulsive creators with empathy and visceral sensory details.Each sentence reads with the cadence of a preacher who engages the art of the spirit and passion that often strays into obsession. Raised in the working-class South as a devout Christian with a deeply troubled brother, Bottoms understands how these eight outsiders “made art for a higher power and for themselves.”

Whitefoot is a field mouse, a small creature with “elegant whiskers” and a “reddish brindly tan” coat. She lives within a cozy enclave of family at the edge of the woods, where she knows, without a doubt, that she exists at the center of her world. What she doesn’t know is that not far from her safe haven there is a house, and a river, a world of such size and magnitude that she cannot even imagine it, small as she is.One day, rain floods Whitefoot’s home, lifts her in its currents, and carries her far away, leading Whitefoot on a great adventure—one in which she must encounter new experiences and frightening challenges to her survival. The discovery of the universe around her, and of her own ability to survive within it, is a lesson sure to resonate with children and adults alike.

"Neil Shister's book skillfully traces the evolution of Burning Man and provides rare insights into how this cultural phenomenon is changing the world." ―Michael Mikel, founding board member of the Burning Man Project Written from Neil Shister’s perspective as a journalist, student of American culture, and six-time participant in Burning Man, Radical Ritual presents the event as vitally, historically important. Shister contends that Burning Man is a significant player in the avant-garde, forging new social paradigms as liberal democracy unravels. Burning Man’s contribution to this new order is postmodern, a fusion of sixties humanism with state-of-the-art Silicon Valley wizardry. Shister is not alone in his opinion. In 2018, the Smithsonian dedicated its entire Renwick Gallery, located next door to the White House, to an exhibition of Burning Man art and culture. The festival intertwines conservative and progressive ideas. On one hand it is a celebration of self-reliance, personal accountability, and individual freedom; on the other hand it is based on strong values of inclusion, consensual decision making, and centered, collaborative endeavor. In a wonderful mix of narrative storytelling and reportage, Radical Ritual discusses how Burning Man has impacted the art world, disaster relief, urban renewal, the utilization of renewable energy, and even the corporate governance of Google. The story concludes with the sudden death in April 2018 of Larry Harvey, now renowned as the philosophical epicenter of the movement.

David Hinton's compelling new translation of Chuang Tzu's Inner Chapters makes these ancient texts from the Golden Age of Chinese philosophy accessible to contemporary readers. Standing alongside the Tao Te Ching as a founding text in the Taoist tradition, Chuang Tzu is believed to be the work of a Chinese sage by the same name. Many contemporary thinkers trace Zen back to these Taoist roots, roots at least as deep as those provided by Buddhism.160 pp.

Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic is the world’s largest uninhabited island, a place the size of West Virginia nine hundred miles from the North Pole. In its center is the world’s only impact crater in a polar desert, a hole twelve miles across and almost a thousand feet deep formed by an asteroidal comet hitting the Earth 38 million years ago. Every July, two dozen scientists set up camp on the rim of the Haughton Crater, a setting which duplicates as close as any place on Earth the barren Martian landscape. It’s one of a handful of analog environments for Mars — places where the harsh climate, severe geology, and unfamiliar terrain mimic conditions of the planet. Its environment is so hostile that no one has ever colonized more than small areas of its coastline for brief periods, and it's where the NASA practices people on Mars.Driving to Mars recounts William L. Fox's three trips to Devon, working with the NASA Haughton-Mars Project. This book tells why we explore, how we see the world, and how we see ourselves in it. The flip sides of a single issue will ultimately determine whether or not we can stay alive on Earth.