In light of the terrible AIDS tragedy unfolding in southern Africa, onegets an enormous sense of sadness and loss when reading The HambukushuRainmakers of the Okavango. Tom J. Larson was one of the lastanthropologists to experience and record their ancient culture before itwas so radically impacted by modernization and the ravages of the AIDSepidemic. Over the course of many years, he earned the trust of theHambukushu and was allowed the kind of access needed to painstakinglyrecord the minutiae of every aspect of their daily lives. What emergedis a portrait of a complex, distinctive African culture defined by theabundance of their homeland, the vast and wild Okavango River delta, andby the powerful Rainmaker chiefs who controlled the very fabric of theirexistence. To read Larson's extraordinary book is to understand how thebelief systems that worked so well for them for centuries wreak suchhavoc on them today.

The Hambukushu Rainmakers of the Okavango

Politics & Social Sciences

Larson, Thomas

Social Sciences

iUniverse

"For years, I'd heard spark-eyed stories of Bliksem-my father's rapturous, fantastic tales of this wild, legendary, noble little savage of a dog. the truth is that dogs are the unfettered manifestations of the joyous, free-romping, utterly present state that we all long so mightily to be in. For my dad, Bliksem was this manifestation. Constrained and burdened from an early age by the religious piety of his well-meaning parents, Dad decided early on to reject the cold darkness of that worried world, and to step out into the clear, golden light of an adventurous life-to Africa, to Europe, and the great beyond.

Bliksem: Travels with a South African Dog

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Pets & Animal Care

He survived Pearl Harbor. He survived Tulagi. He survived the wilds of Africa and the steaming jungles of Central America. This is just one chapter from the extraordinary life of Thomas J. Larson.Ensign "Swede" Larson arrived at Pearl Harbor on December 5th, 1941. He was Executive Officer on YP 109 (Yacht Patrol) through a great storm from Long Beach, California. He was transferred to CinCPac staff, and on December 7th, 1941, was delivering messages to Admiral Kimmel and his staff when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He served with Admiral Chester Nimitz until July 1942, then was assigned to Admiral Ghormley's ComSoPac staff in New Caledonia. On November 30th, he was flown to Guadalcanal, and then next day went to Tulagi as a communicator. He ended the war on the USS Lexington aircraft carrier going into Tokyo Bay in late August of 1945. His peace time career was as an explorer, and professor of Anthropology with many years of field research in Africa. He has degrees from UC Berkeley, MA American U, MLitt Oxford, PhD University of Virginia.

Hell's Kitchen Tulagi 1942-1943

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

iUniverse, Inc.

The Great AdventureIn 1947, after four years with the Navy in the South Pacific, Tom Larson returned to the University of California at Berkeley just in time to become a member of the University's Africa Expedition. He was to collect mammal and reptile specimens for The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology of the University.With Professor Charles Camp, the paleontologist leader of the expedition, they explored Doris Crater in the remote Kaokoveld of Nambia. Then Tom joined Professor Edwin Loeb in Ovamboland where he filmed 115 Kung Bushmen. From there he traveled alone, hunting for specimens at Finkenstein Farm and Omataka Flats in Nambia. He then joined the Camps and Dr. Frank Peabody at the Transvaal caves at Gladysvale, and Bolt Farm. Then it was off to Northern Transvaal, and into Mozambique to collect more specimens. With Dr. Peabody they made excavations for early man at Wunderwek cave in Bechuanaland.Everyday was a great adventure for the 30 year-old Tom Larson. He is the only survivor of the expedition who wrote a journal.

The Great Adventure: The University of California Southern Africa Expedition of 1947?1948

Professionals & Academics

The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative

The memoir is the most popular and expressive literary form of our time. Writers embrace the memoir and readers devour it, propelling many memoirs by relative unknowns to the top of the best-seller list. Writing programs challenge authors to disclose themselves in personal narrative. Memoir and personal narrative urge writers to face the intimacies of the self and ask what is true.In The Memoir and the Memoirist, critic and memoirist Thomas Larson explores the craft and purpose of writing this new form. Larson guides the reader from the autobiography and the personal essay to the memoir—a genre focused on a particularly emotional relationship in the author’s past, an intimate story concerned more with who is remembering, and why, than with what is remembered.The Memoir and the Memoirist touches on the nuances of memory, of finding and telling the truth, and of disclosing one’s deepest self. It explores the craft and purpose of personal narrative by looking in detail at more than a dozen examples by writers such as Mary Karr, Frank McCourt, Dave Eggers, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Mark Doty, Nuala O’Faolain, Rick Bragg, and Joseph Lelyveld to show what they reveal about themselves. Larson also opens up his own writing and that of his students to demonstrate the hidden mechanics of the writing process.For both the interested reader of memoir and the writer wrestling with the craft, The Memoir and the Memoirist provides guidance and insight into the many facets of this provocative and popular art form.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

SWALLOW PRESS+

The memoir is the most popular and expressive literary form of our time. Writers embrace the memoir and readers devour it, propelling many memoirs by relative unknowns to the top of the best-seller list. Writing programs challenge authors to disclose themselves in personal narrative. Memoir and personal narrative urge writers to face the intimacies of the self and ask what is true. In The Memoir and the Memoirist, critic and memoirist Thomas Larson explores the craft and purpose of writing this new form. Larson guides the reader from the autobiography and the personal essay to the memoir--a genre focused on a particularly emotional relationship in the author's past, an intimate story concerned more with who is remembering, and why, than with what is remembered. The Memoir and the Memoirist touches on the nuances of memory, of finding and telling the truth, and of disclosing one's deepest self. It explores the craft and purpose of personal narrative by looking in detail at more than a dozen examples by writers such as Mary Karr, Frank McCourt, Dave Eggers, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Mark Doty, Nuala O'Faolain, Rick Bragg, and Joseph Lelyveld to show what they reveal about themselves. Larson also opens up his own writing and that of his students to demonstrate the hidden mechanics of the writing process. For both the interested reader of memoir and the writer wrestling with the craft, The Memoir and the Memoirist provides guidance and insight into the many facets of this provocative and popular art form.

Today, the surprisingly elastic form of the memoir embraces subjects that include dying, illness, loss, relationships, and self-awareness. Writing to reveal the inner self—the pilgrimage into one’s spiritual and/or religious nature—is a primary calling. Contemporary memoirists are exploring this field with innovative storytelling, rigorous craft, and new styles of confessional authorship. Now, Thomas Larson brings his expertise as a critic, reader, and teacher to the boldly evolving and improvisatory world of spiritual literature.
In his book-length essay Spirituality and the Writer, Larson surveys the literary insights of authors old and new who have shaped religious autobiography and spiritual memoir—from Augustine to Thomas Merton, from Peter Matthiessen to Cheryl Strayed. He holds them to an exacting standard: they must render transcendent experience in the writing itself. Only when the writer’s craft prevails can the fleeting and profound personal truths of the spirit be captured. Like its predecessor, Larson’s The Memoir and the Memoirist,Spirituality and the Writer will find a home in writing classrooms and book groups, and be a resource for students, teachers, and writers who seek guidance with exploring their spiritual lives.

Spirituality and the Writer: A Personal Inquiry

Religion & Spirituality

We all know someone who has suffered a heart attack. But how often do we learn the intimate, potentially life-saving details that accompany coronary disease? In The Sanctuary of Illness, Thomas Larson The Memoir and the Memoirist; The Saddest Music Ever Written gives a powerful and personal inside tour of what happens when our arteries fail. He chronicles the three heart attacks in five years that he survived, and the emergency surgeries that saved his life each time. Slowly waking up to the genetic legacy and dangerous diet that pushed him to the brink, he reveals a path to healing that he and his partner, Suzanna, discovered together. Told with urgency and sensitivity, The Sanctuary of Illness is a subtle reminder that heart disease seldom affects just one heart.

The Sanctuary of Illness: A Memoir of Heart Disease

Hudson Whitman/ Excelsior College Press

The Gospel According to Matthew, Margo, and Lance is the second book in The Event Trilogy about the survival of a small group of people who huddled together after a cosmic plague-infected the planet and turned the masses into blood craving zombies. It is the journals of some of those survivors and what they experienced. It is about them coming to grips with the loss of much of the simple first world things that we take for granted in our society and moving to a simple time, yet a more complicated time. They have moved from going to the local supermarket to learning to grow, hunt and preserve food. Finding ways to use what has been left behind to get through the winter, and begin the process of rebuilding a piece of humanity.

The Event - The Gospel According to Matthew, Margo and Lance: Book 2 of The Event Trilogy

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

An exploration of the cultural impact of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, the Pietá of music, and its enigmatic composer--in celebration of the centenary of his birth. "Whenever the American dream suffers a catastrophic setback, Barber's Adagio plays on the radio."--Alex Ross, author of The Rest is Noise In the first book ever to explore Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, music and literary critic Thomas Larson tells the story of the prodigal composer and his seminal masterpiece: from its composition in 1936, when Barber was just twenty-six, to its orchestral premiere two years later, led by the great Arturo Toscanini, and its fascinating history as America's secular hymn for grieving our dead. Older Americans know Adagio from the funerals and memorials for Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy, Albert Einstein, and Grace Kelly. Younger Americans recall the work as the antiwar theme of the movie Platoon. Still others treasure the piece in its choral version under the name Agnus Dei. More recently, mourners heard Adagio played as a memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. Barber's Adagio is truly the saddest music ever written, enrapturing listeners with its lyric beauty as few laments have. The Adagio's sonorous intensity also speaks of the turbulent inner life of its composer, Samuel Barber (1910-1981), a melancholic who, in later years, descended into alcoholism and severe depression. Part biography, part cultural history, part memoir, The Saddest Music Ever Written captures the deep emotion Barber's great elegy has stirred throughout the world during its seventy-five-year history, becoming an icon of our national soul.

The Saddest Music Ever Written

Arts & Photography

Music

Pegasus Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Larson, Thomas. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Larson, Thomas

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Larson, Thomas. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Hambukushu Rainmakers of the Okavango

Bliksem: Travels with a South African Dog

Hell's Kitchen Tulagi 1942-1943

The Great Adventure: The University of California Southern Africa Expedition of 1947?1948

The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative

The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative

Spirituality and the Writer: A Personal Inquiry

The Sanctuary of Illness: A Memoir of Heart Disease

The Event - The Gospel According to Matthew, Margo and Lance: Book 2 of The Event Trilogy

The Saddest Music Ever Written