The Boatman: Henry David Thoreau’s River Years, and The Guide to Walden Pond.
He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his latest book, The Walden Experiments: The Science of Henry David Thoreau, and shared the following:
Page 99 begins with "...of antibiotics, corporate monopolies, and farms the size of townships." The first part of the sentence on page 98 critiqued the "horror show" of the U.S. farm economy. It continues on to embrace the work of the late Wendell Berry, a devotee of Thoreau who "may be the most well-known of those seeing a saner course" for agriculture, in this case regenerative agriculture. Page 99 ends midway through a quote from Walden that illustrates Thoreau's precedent as an activist against what was called scientific farming in his age, but which is now much of its "soul-shattering" economy. This quote is within Chapter 7 - The Bean Field, which describes Thoreau's successful experiment in regenerative agriculture.Visit Robert Thorson's website.
Yes, you can get a good sense of the book on page 99, it being a critique of a modern problem followed by Walden's prophetic words about that problem that still apply today, justifying Bill McKibben's blurb quote: "Thoreau was not just ahead of his time but of our time too." Though page 99 is about regenerative agriculture, other pages do the same for extinction, AI, climate change, pollution, evolution, war, and other problems facing the world today.
The book is a logical successor to a series of my three previous books, because it highlights Thoreau's relevance to modern society. With respect to the environmental and sustainability movements, it offers a benchmark or anchor in time for the ideas we need to live sustainably on planet earth. The book also includes many small personal anecdotes of my own life --some of which are funny-- to keep the relationship between author and reader human and personal.
--Marshal Zeringue
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