The Man Who Created Paradise

by Logsdon, Gene

• ISBN13: 9780821414071
• ISBN10: 0821414070
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-12-01
• Publisher: Ohio Univ Pr

Summary

Gene Logsdon's The Man Who Created Paradise is a message of hope at a time when the sustainability of the earth appears to many to be hopeless. The fable, inspired by a true story, tells how young Wally Spero looked at one of the bleakest places in Americathe strip-mined spoil banks of southeastern Ohioand saw in it his escape from the drudgery of his factory job. He bought an old bulldozer and used the machine to carve patiently, acre by acre, a beautiful little farm out of a seemingly worthless wasteland. This charming story is the purest distillation yet of what Gene Logsdon has been writing as a journalist and author through the course of some twenty books of nonfiction and hundreds of magazine articles. Environmental restoration is the task of our time. The work of healing our land begins in our own backyards and farms, in our neighborhoods and our regions. Humans can turn the earth into a veritable paradiseif they really want to. Noted photographer Gregory Spaid retraced the trail that Logsdon traveled when he was inspired to write The Man Who Created Paradise. His photographs evoke the same soulful yearning for wholeness, for ties to land and community, that infuses the fable's hopeful, poetic prose. Seldom have words and images complemented each other so well.

Author Biography

Gene Logsdon, an independent writer and farmer in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, is the author of more than twenty books on farming and rural life. In 2000 Logsdon was awarded the prestigious Ohionana Library Association Career Award for his achievements as an author. Gregory Spaid is a nationally recognized documentary photographer. In 2000 he published his first book of photographs, Grace: Photographs of Rural America. Spaid teaches photography at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.