Flight Maps: Adventures With Nature In Modern America

Basic Books, 1999. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Near Fine. Association copy, inscribed to the influential Yale historian John Demos in the year of publication: "To John -- for my great good fortune to be your student -- & to future adventures in history & writing -- Deep thanks always -- Jenny, Venice, CA, April 23, 1999." Demos's book Entertaining Satan, about New England witchcraft (one of his ancestors was a participant in the Salem witch trials), won the Bancroft Prize for history writing. Demos is thanked by Price in the first paragraph of the acknowledgments in this book (the inscription is an echo of it): "John Demos taught me to think creatively about history and writing, and helped usher the project into its life as a book." Demos also blurbs the book on the rear jacket: "A stunning debut performance by a writer who will surely make her mark in years to come. Flight Maps is a deep--and deeply disturbing--meditation on the significance of Nature in modern times. Ingenious and enormously clever, it qualifies as literature too. And it makes history important as few such books ever do." He wasn't wrong: Flight Maps is an important book in the evolution of environmental writing, pushing the boundaries into more critical and unusual spaces. Price's interrogation of the Nature Company store, collected here, was anthologized in the highly-influential anthology The Trouble with Nature, edited by William Cronon, another one of her teachers/mentors. Fine book in a very near fine jacket, with just a touch of wear. A great association.