For Erik Reece, life, at last, was good: he was newly married, gainfully employed, living in a creekside cabin in his beloved Kentucky woods. It sounded, as he describes it, "like a country song with a happy ending." And yet he was still haunted by a sense that the world--or, more specifically, his country--could be better. He couldn't ignore his conviction that, in fact, the good ol' USA was in the midst of great social, environmental, and political crises--that for the first time in our history, we were being swept into a future that had no future. Where did we--here, in the land of Jeffersonian optimism and better tomorrows--go wrong? 
Rather than despair, Reece turned to those who had dared to imagine radically different futures for America. What followed was a giant road trip and research adventure through the sites of America's utopian communities, both historical and contemporary, known and unknown, successful and catastrophic. What he uncovered was not just a series of lost histories and broken visionaries but also a continuing and vital but hidden idealistic tradition in American intellectual history. Utopia Drive is an important and definitive reconstruction of that tradition. It is also, perhaps, a new framework to help us find a genuinely sustainable way forward.
" … an engaging exploration -- and example -- of the fruitful tunnel-visions of dreamers turned doers." - Publishers Weekly

Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea

History

Reece, Erik

Americas

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Robinson Forest in eastern Kentucky is one of our most important natural landscapes―and one of the most threatened. Covering fourteen thousand acres of some of the most diverse forest region in temperate North America, it is a haven of biological richness within an ever-expanding desert created by mountaintop removal mining. Written by two people with deep knowledge of Robinson Forest, The Embattled Wilderness engagingly portrays this singular place as it persuasively appeals for its protection.
The land comprising Robinson Forest was given to the University of Kentucky in 1923 after it had been clear-cut of old-growth timber. Over decades, the forest has regrown, and its remarkable ecosystem has supported both teaching and research. But in the recent past, as tuition has risen and state support has faltered, the university has considered selling logging and mining rights to parcels of the forest, leading to a student-led protest movement and a variety of other responses.
In The Embattled Wilderness Erik Reece, an environmental writer, and James J. Krupa, a naturalist and evolutionary biologist, alternate chapters on the cultural and natural history of the place. While Reece outlines the threats to the forest and leads us to new ways of thinking about its value, Krupa assembles an engaging record of the woodrats and darters, lichens and maples, centipedes and salamanders that make up the forest’s ecosystem. It is a readable yet rigorous, passionate yet reasoned summation of what can be found, or lost, in Robinson Forest and other irreplaceable places.

The Embattled Wilderness: The Natural and Human History of Robinson Forest and the Fight for Its Future

Krupa, James J.

University of Georgia Press

Robinson Forest in eastern Kentucky is one of our most important natural landscapes―and one of the most threatened. Covering fourteen thousand acres of some of the most diverse forest region in temperate North America, it is a haven of biological richness within an ever-expanding desert created by mountaintop removal mining. Written by two people with deep knowledge of Robinson Forest, The Embattled Wilderness engagingly portrays this singular place as it persuasively appeals for its protection. The land comprising Robinson Forest was given to the University of Kentucky in 1923 after it had been clear-cut of old-growth timber. Over decades, the forest has regrown, and its remarkable ecosystem has supported both teaching and research. But in the recent past, as tuition has risen and state support has faltered, the university has considered selling logging and mining rights to parcels of the forest, leading to a student-led protest movement and a variety of other responses. In The Embattled Wilderness Erik Reece, an environmental writer, and James J. Krupa, a naturalist and evolutionary biologist, alternate chapters on the cultural and natural history of the place. While Reece outlines the threats to the forest and leads us to new ways of thinking about its value, Krupa assembles an engaging record of the woodrats and darters, lichens and maples, centipedes and salamanders that make up the forest’s ecosystem. It is a readable yet rigorous, passionate yet reasoned summation of what can be found, or lost, in Robinson Forest and other irreplaceable places.

Science & Math

Nature & Ecology

For Erik Reece, life, at last, was good: he was newly married, gainfully employed, living in a creekside cabin in his beloved Kentucky woods. It sounded, as he describes it, "like a country song with a happy ending." And yet he was still haunted by a sense that the world-or, more specifically, his country-could be better. He couldn't ignore his conviction that, in fact, the good ol' USA was in the midst of great social, environmental, and political crises. Where did we-here, in the land of Jeffersonian optimism and better tomorrows-go wrong?Rather than despair, Reece turned to those who had dared to imagine radically different futures for America. What followed was a giant road trip and research adventure through the sites of America's utopian communities, both historical and contemporary, known and unknown, successful and catastrophic. What he uncovered was not just a series of lost histories and broken visionaries but also a continuing and vital but hidden idealistic tradition in American intellectual history. Utopia Drive is an important and definitive reconstruction of that tradition. It is also, perhaps, a new framework to help us find a genuinely sustainable way forward.

Tantor Audio

For Erik Reece, life, at last, was good: he was newly married, gainfully employed, living in a creekside cabin in his beloved Kentucky woods. It sounded, as he describes it, "like a country song with a happy ending." And yet he was still haunted by a sense that the world-or, more specifically, his country-could be better. He couldn't ignore his conviction that, in fact, the good ol' USA was in the midst of great social, environmental, and political crises. Where did we-here, in the land of Jeffersonian optimism and better tomorrows-go wrong? Rather than despair, Reece turned to those who had dared to imagine radically different futures for America. What followed was a giant road trip and research adventure through the sites of America's utopian communities, both historical and contemporary, known and unknown, successful and catastrophic. What he uncovered was not just a series of lost histories and broken visionaries but also a continuing and vital but hidden idealistic tradition in American intellectual history. Utopia Drive is an important and definitive reconstruction of that tradition. It is also, perhaps, a new framework to help us find a genuinely sustainable way forward.

Tantor Media, Inc.

A new form of strip mining has caused a state of emergency for the Appalachian wilderness and the communities that depend on it-a crisis compounded by issues of government neglect, corporate hubris, and class conflict. In this powerful call to arms, Erik Reece chronicles the year he spent witnessing the systematic decimation of a single mountain and offers a landmark defense of a national treasure threatened with extinction.

Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia

Business & Money

Economics

Penguin Publishing Group

From the award-winning author of Lost Mountain, a stirring work of memoir, spiritual journey, and historical inquiry. At the age of thirty-three, Erik Reece's father, a Baptist minister, took his own life, leaving Erik in the care of his grandmother and his grandfather-also a fundamentalist Baptist preacher, and a pillar of his rural Virginia community. While Erik grew up with a conflicted relationship with Christianity, he unexpectedly found comfort in the Jefferson Bible. Inspired by the text, he undertook what would become a spiritual and literary quest to identify an "American gospel" coursing through the work of both great and forgotten American geniuses, from William Byrd to Walt Whitman to William James to Lynn Margulis. The result of Reece's journey is a deeply intimate, stirring book about personal, political, and historical demons-and the geniuses we must call upon to combat them.

An American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Riverhead Books

Traces the author's conflicted relationship with Christianity, describing how his childhood was marked by a fire-and-brimstone, pleasure-eschewing Baptist minister grandfather and a minister father who violently committed suicide, in a personal account that also relates the author's spiritual renewal through readings of the Jefferson Bible.

AN American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God

Riverhead Hardcover

A student of Wendell Berry and Guy Davenport, Erik Reece is a strong and eloquent voice for a new generation of dedicated activists fighting on behalf of the embattled wilderness and the future of our planet. A master of the personal essay, his work has also deeply explored the role of religion in the American family. In Reece’s new collection of essays, Practice Resurrection, ideas are the main characters. Written over ten years, and revealing Reece’s continued obsession with religion, family and the natural world, in many ways these essays represent a sequel to his stirring memoir, An American Gospel: On Family, History and the Kingdom of God. In that book, Reece intimately describes his conflicted relationship with Christianity in the context of the death of his father, a Baptist minister from rural Virginia who committed suicide at age thirty-three, and Reece’s own journey since then to find meaning and balance in the material and spiritual worlds. Approaching variably through the lenses of travel, economics, and environmental stewardship, and with the ideas of great American thinkers (Thoreau, Berry, Davenport, Emerson) echoing in the background, Practice Resurrection provide readers refreshing new ways to value human spirituality and the natural environment.

Practice Resurrection: And Other Essays

Literature & Fiction

United States

Counterpoint

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Books by Reece, Erik

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

Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea

Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea

The Embattled Wilderness: The Natural and Human History of Robinson Forest and the Fight for Its Future

The Embattled Wilderness: The Natural and Human History of Robinson Forest and the Fight for Its Future

Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea

Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea

Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia

An American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God

AN American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God

Practice Resurrection: And Other Essays