RaveThe York Times Book Review...this superb new book could not have come at a better time ... Laura Dassow Walls’s exuberant biography leaves the reader in no doubt how Thoreau might react to the current administration in Washington, filled as it is with people who deny the established physical science of global warming ... One of the many pleasures of Walls’s book is how it transports us back to America in the first half of the 19th century.
Robert Finch
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewFinch is an amiable, if somewhat garrulous, companion...He is a keen and passionate observer, and he knows his natural history ... The author or co-author of 10 previous books on Cape Cod, Finch is so focused on the nature of the place — as is his intention — that people are often pushed to the side. That’s a shame, because the book contains some touching moments of human interaction ... As he leads readers up the Cape, Finch devotes a chapter to each major locale, with his writings arranged in chronological order from 1962 to 2016. This makes for a good deal of repetition ... In the end, Finch artfully conveys what is, at heart, so stirring about the beach: how its beauty and magisterial power cause us to ponder the larger things in life and drive home our place in the universe.
