Description
Book SynopsisThe Man Who Created Paradise, a fable inspired by a true story, tells how young Wally Spero looked at one of the bleakest places in America—the strip-mined spoil banks of southeastern Ohio—and saw in it his escape from the drudgery of his factory job.
Trade Review“If you’re feeling despairing, this book is the tonic. This slim volume should be read aloud at kitchen tables and over the radio until it becomes a national legend—a legend we might then try to live up to.”
“This big-hearted parable about a land and people restored is sure to lift the spirits of anyone who cares about the blooming earth.”
“This book is a work of social, ecological, and moral imagination—a reminder that we do not live in the only or the best possible world.”
“This, then, is a book of two visions: one of disease, one of health. Or to put it another way, Gene Logsdon has had the generosity and the courage to allow a vision of Hell to call forth in himself its natural opposite.”
“The Man Who Created Paradise is an art object of a book, a perfect birthday gift, a fable to read over and over because it identifies the rural psyche gone awry and made right again. Much like Wes Jackson's Altars of Unhewn Stone, it cries out for greater circulation…”
“Utopian dreaming? Maybe, but Logsdon shows that the technology exists to make Spero's vision a reality.”
“A metal grinder at a foundry possessing the pre-requisites for an agrarian mind becomes an artist on an exploited landscape and brings it back to become a working farm. Well, there is hope.”
