William Bartram

In a near future United States where the subliminal power of television has been boosted to irresistible levels, Dodd Corely is a man increasingly at odds with the world. His live-in girlfriend, Sheila, is addicted to the popular Travels television station, which features 24-hour-a-day viewing of a hypnotically seductive sphere bouncing on an endless, surreal journey through a variety of unspoiled natural environments. His friend and fellow veteran of the South American War, Danny Marauder, has joined the Anarchists, a disreputable group dedicated to the overthrow of the established order. His best friend, Toby, is so busy watching the Travels station's #1 rival, Jesus TV--which has just announced the greatest live special in television history: the Second Coming of Jesus Christ--that he fails to notice his own daughter is pregnant . . . a crime punishable by sterilization in this overpopulated society.

Artist, writer, botanist, gardener, naturalist, intrepid wilderness explorer, and self-styled "philosophical pilgrim," William Bartram (1739-1823) was an extraordinary figure in eighteenth-century American life. The first American to devote his entire life to what we would now call the environment, Bartram was the most significant American nature writer before Thoreau and a nature artist who rivals Audubon. He was also a pioneering ethnographer whose works are a crucial source for the study of the Indian cultures of southeastern America. Here is the first collection of his writings and the largest gathering of his remarkable drawings ever published. . Long recognized as an American classic, Bartram's Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida (1791) recounts his journeys through the wilderness from 1773 to 1776 in prose famous for its celebratory intensity and lyrical profusion. In the forests, rivers, swamps, and savannahs of the South, Bartram collected botanical specimens and made wildlife drawings, observing the natural abundance around him with a vision shaped by both science and Quaker spirituality. Also included is the sparer and more factual original report of Bartram's southern travels that he sent to his English patron, John Fothergill, as well as a comprehensive collection of his scientific and ethnographic papers. Some of the most beautiful are reproduced in full color. Extensive notes, a glossary of botanical terms, a newly researched chronology of Bartram's life, a map tracing the route of his travels, and an index help guide the reader.

Contains primary source material.

Reader includes: [Glass Menagerie]( by Tennesse Williams