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Crisp as the desert air
Joseph Wood Krutch was a literary critique and a Thoreau scholar, so there is no surprise that his writing in this book had more than a touch of the "Thoreau flavor". There are many quotable sentences -- in the opening chapter he gave us 'A "tour" is like a cocktail party. One "meets" everybody and knows no one', and the book ends with 'Wherever one goes one has one's self fro company'. Krutch wrote with clarity, this book is probably the most "Thoreau like" book I've ever read (since Thoreau, of course). It consists of the description of the desert and its flora and fauna and the author's philosophical musing. I only wish he had done a bit more of the former and less of the latter. In some part of the book, such as "The Metaphor of the Grasslands", the philosophical contemplations feel a bit too long and dry. And overall, after reading the book, I had the feeling that there was probably still a lot more that could have been written about the desert. If the book had 50% more of observations, which would also put the philosophical contemplations to their proper proportions, it would have been more satisfying. Nonetheless, this is probably one of the best nature books as an introduction to the Desert Southwest.

A Connecticut Yankee in Arizona
Written over 50 years ago, this classic book of nature writing captures the near timelessness of the southern Arizona desert in a series of essays describing the author's fifteen-month sojourn there. While Krutch harks back to Thoreau, his perspective, turns of thought, and style of expression are similar to the reflective essays of E. B. White. They begin with observations of plant and animal life and evolve into ruminations on the nature of human life.

Krutch writes of birds, the night sky, bats, saguaro cactus, ocotillo, and desert flowers. Considering them, he rediscovers the truth in ideas he has so long held as true that they've become near platitudes. Where there is plentitude in some things, for instance, there is no need for it in others. Nature cares for the species but not individuals, while human values tend toward the opposite. While every rose has its thorn, the blooming cactus shows us that the reverse is also true. A visit to the vastness and forbidding desert monuments of Cathedral Valley in south central Utah reminds him of the precariousness of human life.

The desert leads Krutch to contemplation of its paradoxes, as well. For instance, the struggle for life here where conditions for survival are more restrictive actually create an uncrowded and more serene ecosystem by comparison with the tropics. The varieties of bird life are vastly greater here than in more temperate climates. A species of toads can live unseen and unheard for 363 days of the year, emerging after a rain fall to sing and reproduce, then disappear and survive somehow in the waterless months between. Finally, there's one question he's never able to answer: why bats fly clockwise from Carlsbad cave.

You can't really know a place, he believes, until you have seen it both as novel and as familiar. A landscape is no more than a picture postcard until you have spent time there and discover yourself in the midst of it. "The Desert Year" is a wonderful account of that process and a celebration of the joy that can be found in settling down for a while in a place that gradually comes to feel like home.

romantic to the core
Here is a converted desert romantic with an interest in not only nature but man.Krutch writes and hits the mark like Thoreau and Eiseley and you won't want to miss him or this book if you're looking for a little sanity in a world gone mad.

The most extraordinary insight into the magic of Tucson.
If you have an interest in the desert and why we live here with JOY you must read this book. Krutch was an extraordinary man and he lived an extraordinary life his first year here. This book is the story of why hestayed instead of returning to New York. It is perhaps the most admiredbook about Tucson that has ever been written. ... Read more

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most meaningful
To have a sense of all that is in nature and the sense of balance, for a full and intelligent appreciation of the natural world, in a single readable volume - this is the book. A great book. I have read this twice in 20 years and expect to read it again, for perspective, and to still learn. ... Read more

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"The author deftly weaves the materials of natural and human history into a radiant, tightly woven fabric. . . . This classic is a book for all seasons—to be reread and savored over the years."—Latin America in Books

"His superb writing style and the timelessness of his subject (the natural world and the interaction of human beings with it) make this every bit as enjoyable today as it was in the 1960's."—Books of the Southwest

"Well-written and fascinating."—Journal of Arid Environments ... Read more

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Good book about the Baja of years past
I loved reading this book about the Baja of years past and relating it to the places I was now seeing -- but the changes over the years were tremendous!Don't expect this to reflect the Baja of today.

Almost forgotten
I first read Joseph Wood Krutch in an introduction he wrote to "Walden and other writings". Undoubtedly Thoreau influenced Krutch's world view and philosophy (so much so you would say that he evolved from a drama critic to a naturalist, although no doubt both of these interests occupied him concurrently at least for some portion of his life).

The Forgotten Peninsula is a fine book by a naturalist. Krutch described the desert plants and marine animals as well as the human and natural history of Baja California based on several trips he made (some the "hard way" by 4-wheel vehicles, some the "easy way" by plane). The descriptions are crisp and vivid, if somewhat detached. I deduct one star because sometimes I wish he was a little more emotional, more personal and more passionate in his writing -- maybe this is why another reviewer thinks it is a "dry listing" (actually it is much better than that). Perhaps he was too content with being (and indeed he may have intended to be) merely an observer.

The last two chapters posed some profound questions about the place of the human race in nature and the virtue of progress. This is a book written almost 50 years ago, reading these questions in the context of what the world has become now gives one much to ponder. No doubt a lot of things described in this book may have long disappeared, but ironically Baja is forgotten no more (ever heard of or seen on ESPN Baja 500?). Yet reading the book still makes one want to go to Baja California (a place I have not yet been to) to see what little still remains there.

An outdated travelogue with no literary merit
You would think that with a subtitle like "A naturalist in Baja", you could expect this to be a nature guide to the area. You would be mistaken. Instead, this seems to be some sort of discourse on the human development of Baja California by a naturalist who has decided to play amateur sociologist. Most of the comments on the natural history of the region amount to a dry listing of the local plant life. The final chapter is prescient in its questioning of the sustainability of economic development, but the prose throughout the book suffers from awkward syntax and seems stilted even by 1961 standards. The description of the roads and towns is now so outdated as to be only of historical interest
I was looking for a nature guide written in narrative style to take along on my first trip to the region, and this is definitely not what I had in mind. Aside from the grey whale and sea lion, this work does not even mention some of the marine animals for which the area is so famous - such as the whale shark and manta ray. If you're looking for a literate exposition on the Baja experience, consider instead John Steinbeck's classic Log form the Sea of Cortez. Although written even earlier, it remains timeless.

Great field book!
This is the book we use on NOLS expeditions, and we have to literally carry these books. It is worth carrying.

a lovely piece of writing about an amazing place
This is one of the books that first drew me to Baja california years ago.Unfortunately much of what Krutch saw has inevitably been swept away by the rising tide of tourism & development, but enough remains that Krutch's lyrical prose is more than a eulogy, one can still find some of teh magic that he describes so well here. I would strongly reccomend this book to anyone planning on visiting Baja California and/or anyone who is interested in the intersection betweennatural history and literature -one gets both here. ... Read more

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The sea of faith was once at thefull
Krutch defines the modern temper in terms of the loss of a sense of the meaningfulness of life, and centrality of Man. The Darwinian revolution , the Copernician revolution the Freudian Revolution have made Mankind see itself as no longer the Center of all, with clear knowledge of Good and Evil, Right and Wrong. This picture of the modern Temper has its forbears, one might even say one can say it in the Bible itself, in Koheleth's 'vanity of vanities all is vanity'. Though Krutch defines the Modern Era in distinction to the Victorian Age that sense of certainties lost and gone is also present in it, as Arnold's great poem , "Dover Beach" indicates.
Clearly the First World War was also a great historical watershed which for many broke the sense of Mankind's inevitable progress, and ultimate Goodness.
Today we still struggle with the dilemnas and paradoxes Krutch ably outlines in this work.
One caveat. In his last chapter he speaks about the force of a new primitive collective which will come and take over from the old , apparently, worn- out , too lost- in- thought great power the United States. He hints strongly that that will be Russia.
We are well more than half a century from the time Krutch wrote this still in many ways relevant work. The Soviet Union has disintegrated. The United States, for all its problems and difficulties, remains the most vibrant large society in the world.
On another level many of the dilemnas Krutch saw arising from the triumph of materialism and science have intensified with Man's increasing inventiveness and capacity for creation. We now have powers of creation undreamed sixty or seventy years ago. And they too raise questions about our ultimate meaning and understanding.
This is a truly thought- provoking , elegantly and clearly written work. I recommend it highly.
One more point. I do not think that Krutch foresaw the way precisely the dilemnas he indicated would lead to a new varied quest for 'spirtituality' and religion at all levels.
This again is a sure indication of how human beings are far better at diagnosis than at prognosis.

A WINNING DEFEATIST:
Perhaps the most problematic thinkers of the past for us to assess are those who accurately diagnosed the diseases of modernity but succumbed to them anyway. In his 1956 Preface to this 1929 collection of interconnected essays that apparently appeared mostly in The Atlantic Monthly, the critic Joseph Wood Krutch sums up the crisis of the age of materialism and sciencism as follows:

The universe revealed by science, especially the sciences of biology and psychology, is one in which the human spirit cannot find a comfortable home. That spirit breathes freely only in a universe where what philosophers call Value Judgments are of supreme importance. It needs to believe, for instance, that right and wrong are real, that Love is more than a biological function, that the human mind is capable of reason rather than merely of rationalization, and that it has the power to will and to choose instead of being compelled merely to react in the fashion predetermined by its conditioning. Since science has proved that none of these beliefs is more than a delusion, mankind will be compelled either to surrender what we call humanity by adjusting to the real world or to live some kind of tragic existence in a universe alien to the deepest needs of its nature.

While you could hardly ask for a description of the psychotic effects of belief in Science, the flaw in Krutch's conclusion is obvious: the third option is simply to choose to believe in humanity instead of in biology and psychology. That such a humanism is predicated on faith in God rather than in science can hardly be a bar, since we know, and have known, that Reason itself is ultimately nothing but a faith. What Krutch and others who despaired of the human condition in an Age of Reason had essentially done was just to choose a "tragic existence in a universe alien to the deepest needs of its nature," when they could instead have chosen, as their ancestors always had, and as most Americans still do, a universe where the human spirit breathes free.

The Modern Temper is a fascinating read and necessary to an understanding of the kind of spiritual nihilism that enabled Darwinism, Communism, Fascism, Existentialism, etc., but it is a a defeatist text. Mr. Krutch served a most lucid warning about the tenor of his times, but then ran up the white flag, which leaves the work fatally flawed.

Modernism vs retro-Victorian 'useful fiction'
In his book The Modern Temper, Joseph W. Krutch defined the title concept to mean the angst-ridden state of mind exhibited by people in the 1910's and 1920's who wanted to return to the simpler ways of Victorian certainties and principles, such as the concept of man radicaly differentiated from animals, the existence of universal moral truths, and the certain existence of God.Unfortunately for them, Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution hit the Victorian fan, thus beginning the gradual unravelling of God, absolutes, and other Victorian principles.William James himself added fuel to the fire by espousing pragmatism as a method to actively find out a belief system that fits in with people's experiences.

The situation of people exhibiting that modern temper was akin to an adult nostalgically looking back to at his simple childhood,a world of poetry, mythology, and religion that was upset by the world of science.The ideal world was replaced by the world of Nature.The anthropomorphic God and human needs and feelings were ousted by Nature.Yet, there was a need to crawl back into the womb, as "the myth, having once been established, persists long after the assumptions upon which it was made have been destroyed, because, being born of desire, it is far more satisfactory than any fact".

The failure of the laboratory and hence of science underlined this dilemma.The scientific method came to be applied in fields such as history, philosophy, and anthropology, so why not lay out the human soul on the dissection table and start hacking away? However, science was used to seek out a light, such as ultraviolet or infrared, that man, limited in sight by the visible spectrum, was unable to see.Mankind thus lost its faith in its findings to discover that sought-for moral world.

The implications for love were likewise devastating. Formerly the thing that brought man closest to the divine state or the highest level possible, depending on how man saw himself, the value of love became a hormonal thing.Sex replaced love by demystifying and desanctifying it, increasing its accessibility.

The long-term implications of the modern temper and the yearning of returning to the pre-Darwinian womb hints at the collapse of the American Empire.Krutch mentioned how philosophical debates sapped the vitality of Greece to the point that it was conquered by the Romans, who after building an empire yielding enormous riches and comforts, suffered the same fate under philosophically innocent barbarians.

Metaphysics, which operated outside the realm of observable and objective reality, established certitudes such as ethics, whose realization caused a blooming of the human spirit.Yet science and applied Darwinism knocked down those certitudes like nine-pins, causing that human spirit to wilt as man realized the dissonance between the idealized world of his childhood and the harsh unrelenting world of Nature.The solution was to create the beneficent "fiction," transforming life to an art.All one has to do is to assume the existence of some moral order "and ... construct in his imagination a world where they actually do." And if the foundations of that fiction can be destroyed by science or the physical world, so what?One protects his world by erecting a Great Wall between it and the physical world.The trouble is twofold.One is the lack of ultimate conviction belied by any self-created world.The other is the believer's self-deceptive slide away from reality.

The advent of postmodernists and their struggles against premodernists and modernists in America seems to be that same debate that will make us soft and while we are busy arguing, the underbelly of our empire will be slit open by another country in the vitality stage.The question is who?A very thought-provoking book on the conflict between modernism and absolutism.

A prophetic work
Written in the pivotal year 1929, Krutch captured in this series of essays the sense of foreboding that led into the nightmare decade and a half spanning the Depression '30s and the conclusion of World War II. Hisessential theme is that "the modern temper," one of questioningand skepticism, had led Man to a frightening crossroads where the old mythsof the past -- religion, dramatic tragedy, devotion to family -- no longerworked, yet the technology and psychological insights that hadremorselessly torn these values apart offered no consolation other than thepromise of more objective knowledge.

Man was left instead, Krutch felt,with what is best described as the existential dilemma, although of coursehe didn't use this term. He saw Man as struggling to come to terms with theparadox of expanding knowledge. That is to say, the more we understand, themore it becomes clear that the universe of which we are only a tiny partspins according to its own laws, with no regard for Man's deep and abidingneed for spiritual sustenance. Yet once Man has released the genie oftechnology and of skepticism, it is difficult to return to the old myths,in which Man was always placed at the center of the moral and spiritualuniverse.

This is a bleak book, yet it does much to explain the blindadherence to ideology that characterized the disastrous fascist,totalitarian movements of the 1930s. In this regard, a good companion read(and one that reaches a very different set of conclusions) is ViktorFrankl's "Man's Search for Meaning." ... Read more

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Wise Words from a Pioneer of the Green Revolution
Joseph Wood Krutch was a popular naturalist/humanist whose writings throughout the early and mid-1900's helped give Americans a moral compass as they faced wildlife and wilderness areas increasingly under threat of eradication. He wrote at a time society was standing at a crossroads - with blithe destruction of the environment going off in one direction - and increasing awareness of the interconnectedness of the environment reaching off in the other direction. Krutch helped steer us down the road of saving grace. However, much remains to be done, and Krutch deserves to be re-discovered and widely read again.

The essays in this book, largely from the 1950's and 1960's, do contain a few archaisms that would either be considered politically incorrect now, or that we have a refined understanding of now. For example, Krutch does occasionally refer to tribal people as "primitives." Then he rather haphazardly refers to Europeans as having "inherited" this land from "the red man." The abrasive, old shoot-`em-up movie designation of "red man" aside - Krutch was writing too quickly here to catch the obvious solecism of the word "inherited." Native Americans hardly made a peaceful bequest of the land to Europeans.

Finally, although Krutch certainly would not endorse any Intelligent Design philosophy, he harbors a somewhat outdated, pantheistic animosity against Darwin's Theory as being too mechanical and too insistent upon survival of the fittest through combat "red in tooth and claw." Many naturalists, foremost among them Stephen Jay Gould, have spent pages correcting our impressions on this point. Darwinian survival is now understood to only rarely entail bloody combat. More often, survival is just a matter of the creature with the slight adaptive advantage leaving more offspring. The advantaged creature wins by making love, not war.

However, the archaisms here are minor compared to the overall, urgent wisdom of Krutch's observations. Some of his opinions seem to come right out of today's headlines. In an essay written in 1961, he deplores how our economic system has come to be based on our having to consume more and more resources in order to fuel growth and maintain material prosperity. He writes, "If, for example, people are urged to go into worrisome debt to buy a new automobile, not because they have a need for it, but because automobile workers will be out of a job and lead the way to economic collapse if the unneeded automobiles are not bought - does that not suggest that we've reached a point where men exist for the sake of the industry rather than industry for the sake of man?"

Krutch furthermore points out how our economy's dependence on growth has caused us to help promote an often particularly destructive form of consumerism around the world. He tellingly points out that whereas missionaries used to invade other countries, labeling the natives "pagans" in need of the Bible - now industrialists invade other countries, labeling the natives "undeveloped" and in need of more consumer goods.

His essays contain many other telling analogies and turns of speech. He coins the word "mechanomorphism" to take to task those who are at the other end of the spectrum of "anthropomorphism." Whereas the latter perhaps commit the error of attributing too many human characteristics to animals - the "mechanomorphists" make the more serious error of assigning all creatures only a capacity for mechanical, automatic, instinctually invariant response.

In addition to such stunningly apt insights, Krutch has included many quiet personal appreciations of wildlife among these essays. He talks about the amazing synchronicity he observed between the arrival of the Pronuba moth and the blossoming of the yucca. He tells about the intelligence he witnessed firsthand among the society of mice who found their way into his desert home. (I only wish he had made this essay longer and continued the chronicle of his mouse family.) He makes the reader see some of the beauties of the Grand Canyon anew, and he gives some interesting geologic detail about how that natural wonder was created more through a "rising" of the land than through a cutting down of it.

Krutch is a definitely a man for all seasons whose essential wisdoms have stood the test of time and make for good reading, anywhere - anytime.

toward a commitment to conservation
Krutch was an amateur naturalist and a great speaker for the cause of conservation. This is quite simply one of the most important books I have ever read. I had been reading Krutch's nature books one at a time over many years. This representative and highly readable collection brings it all together! Great book. ... Read more

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The Measure of Man
In the 1960s B. F. Skinner and the science of behaviorism were popular with some and controversial for others. Like Watson, Skinner plainly said that we are not free, that we have always been controlled by our environment. But the contingencies of reinforcement that originate in our environment are haphazard and produced uneven results that threaten the survival of mankind. Our increasing technical sophistication which produced nuclear weapons now threatens our survival because there has been no corresponding advance in the science of man. He openly advocated that we abandon all belief in the freedom and dignity of man in exchange for the scientific application of the techniques of control by experts in the technology of human behavior. Only then could there be revolutionary change in man.
The Measure of Man systematically destroys Skinner's principal arguments. Psychologists clearly understand a great deal about behavior. But behaviorism is becoming increasingly popular and dangerous as the problems of life are viewed as problems of mental illness, ignorance or inequalty. The Measure of Man deserves a place in the great books of the twentieth century as a most cogent refutation of the proposition that we are not free, and are not capable of original, creative design and action. Our lives are not determined by the conditions of our environment. A truly great book.
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OK, but not the best Thoreau biography
I had read and enjoyed other essays by Joseph Wood Krutch before I ventured on to this biography of Henry David Thoreau, and I must admit that I was surprised and disappointed.The writing is fine, the essence of Thoreau appears, the major life details are all there, and Krutch is obviously familiar with his subject matter.But whenever he quotes the naturalist, he never includes specific citations locating those words.How frustrating for any reader who is enticed here by a turn of phrase or an idea and wants to pick up _Walden_ or Thoreau's _Journal_ to find them for himself / herself!If other sources or friends like Ralph Waldo Emerson or Ellery Channing are quoted, no further information on origin is provided.We have no clue where Krutch found those communications.He wasn't in Concord in the mid-1800s, so he must be repeating words written in other documents or published works.For the casual reader, maybe this major omission is not a problem.If you just want the basics of Thoreau's life and philosophies and writings, then maybe this volume is enough for you.But with no citation notes and no credits and no bibliography, I found it wasn't enough for me.

If you are sincerely interested in the man who is most often identified with Walden Pond and with the concept of civil disobedience, then pick up one of the classic biographies of him -- either _The Days of Henry Thoreau_ by Walter Harding or _Thoreau_ by Henry Seidel Canby.Those two volumes are a little longer and more extensive than Krutch's (especially Canby's), but they will serve you better.I believe they serve Thoreau better as well.

Knowing Thoreau: A Rich Assessment of His Mind and Character
Joseph Wood Krutch, professor and conservationist, paints a word portrait of one of the great minds of American literature.Using source material from Henry David Thoreau's better known works, including Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, as well as depth materials from Thoreau's Journals, Krutch lets us inside Thoreau's thoughts and character."Rich and full bodied", "an ornament of contemporary American criticism", and "brilliant" characterize the reviews from Dell Publishing, Saturday Review, and Commonweal. Rich and full bodied because Krutch carefully weaves a deepening apprehension of the dimension of the man through carefully selected examples of the way Thoreau's mind and thought process worked.An ornament because few critics capture the spirit let loose here.And brilliant because the book is packed with new information and insights.For any fan of Thoreau, and of good contemporary criticism, this is must reading. ... Read more

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General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1955Original Publisher: National AcademiesOriginal Identifier: NAP:74166Notes: This is an OCR reprint of the original rare book. There may be typos or missing text and there are no illustrations.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more