Virtual Event! In Conversation with David Gessner

The uber-prolific David Gessner is at it again, this time with his excellent new book Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight: Sheltering with Thoreau in the Age of Crisis, which will be released to the masses on June 1, 2021.

I had the pleasure of reading an advanced copy and, in my humble opinion, it’s the perfect book for making sense of this nutty moment in history. If like me, you often gaze backward into history to help understand the modern-day world, then you’ll love this book– it’s David’s timely exploration of how we can apply Thoreau’s evergreen wisdom to help comprehend the pandemic, political upheaval, looming environmental catastrophes, and the ups and downs of everyday life.

I’ll be joining David on June 7, 2021, at 5 PM MDT for a free virtual conversation about the new book and much more. As many of you know, David is an annual fixture on the podcast, and it’s always impossible to predict which irreverent and hilarious direction the conversation will go. But for this event, odds are favorable that we’ll discuss at least a few of the following topics: Thoreau, TR, Montaigne, Ultimate Frisbee, Abbey, Stegner, the death and rebirth of The Shack, the writing life, the strenuous life, cartooning, and environmental activism.

This conversation is being facilitated by the good folks at Denver’s Tattered Cover Bookstore, so you can register through their website by pressing the button below:

I’ll look forward to seeing you there!

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Praise for “Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight“

In a dynamic and illuminating exploration of the strange wilderness that has been a year of pandemic-induced seclusion, David Gessner succeeds brilliantly in using Henry Thoreau to make sense of the quarantine, and vice versa. While the signature Gessnerian humor, irreverence, and lyricism are all here, Gessner also offers a profound meditation on how we might live, write, and parent in a bewildering age of global catastrophe. Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight is a powerful and timely book from one of the most provocative and engaging voices in contemporary environmental writing.   —Michael P. Branch, author of Rants from the Hill and How to Cuss in Western 

Gessner vividly recounts his rich daily experiences of wildness, including walking, biking, kayaking, and bird-watching in North Carolina, his adopted home for the past 17 years…He also admits to wondering if it is too late to save the planet and to raise consciousness about the perils of materialism and anthropocentrism. Yet despite evidence that sometimes overwhelms him, Gessner, like Thoreau, finds hope in every new morning and joy in the world that Thoreau so eloquently extolled.  —Kirkus Reviews 

The havoc caused by the pandemic is only a mild foretaste of what climate disruption will bring, not merely for a year or two but for the foreseeable future. To imagine how we might preserve our humanity as the world unravels, you could start by reading this lively, captivating book by David Gessner. Drawn in part from his journal of what he calls ‘this endless night of a year,’ it weaves together memoir, natural history, travelogue, and literary homage to reveal a mindfully awake to our dire situation, yet able to relish birds and books, family and friends, and the living Earth.  —Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination