The Last Walk

In a book that draws on both personal stories and research presents an in-depth exploration of the practical, medical and moral issues that trouble pet owners confronted with the decline and death of their companion animals.

The Last Walk Francesca Cernia Slovin Jean-Jacques Rousseau?s last book, Reveries of a Solitary Walker, was to have had ten walks. The tenth he wrote only three pages before his death. Francesca Cernia Slovin?s The Last Walk essays its completion. Another inveterate walker, Nietzsche, once remarked that ?only ideas had while walking, only ideas that have been digested and expelled, have value.? As he and Rousseau both knew, this idea and practice is perennial: from the pre-Socratics who in effect walked from the peripheries of mainland Greece to plant the roots of fundamental questioning there, through the peripatetic philosophers, until any current moment. Since at least Montaigne, traveling has remained the privileged metaphor of the reflective essay, the critical assaying of one?s contemporary culture from a perspective simultaneously within and outside it. In Maurice Blanchot?s words in L?attente, l?oubli: ?Time and time again, walking and always marking time, another country, other cities, other roads, the same country.? Voltaire remarks that ?Rousseau wrote with fire in his pen.? Echoing eighteenth-century style, The Last Walk is captivating literary and philosophical invention, intertwining the discourses of his critics with those of a quintessential hero walking from the Enlightenment through the immediate pre-Revolutionary period to Romanticism with beguiling ambiguity. Like a flame, Rousseau wavers between memory and delirium, embodying at once the fragility of belief and the power of illusion. Rousseau?s relationship to his milieu and its major global protagonists, from Europe to England and back, is envisioned here as ?paranoid? in the double sense not only of clinical pathology but also its etymology, para-nous?the reasoning madness that is parallel and irreducible to whatever commonly passes as Reason. This luminous historical fiction is based on extensive historical, archival, and geographical research. With keen and critical awareness of the vast secondary literature, vividly recreated?though interior monologue, dialogue, and objectivity?are Rousseau?s emotional and thought processes just prior to death: his relationship to nature, everyday life, intimate friends and lovers, and the leading intellectuals of his day, his enemies imagined and real. Nearly consumed by this complex persecution, Rousseau returns at age sixty-six to Ermenonville, country estate of Marquis de Girardin, a long walk from Jean-Jacques Paris. The Marquis, his sincere admirer, is an incurable Enlightenment opportunist; the Marquise is a severe but sensitive judge and the embodiment of nascent woman?s liberation. Our fourth main protagonist is Th?r?se, Jean-Jacques?s illiterate former housekeeper, washerwoman, lifelong companion, and now wife. As she and the Marquise exchange reflections on Jean Jacques and on contemporary life, The Last Walk, ?in a single language, makes the double speech heard? (Blanchot). Lucidly melancholic, the tireless walker begins the last walk of the Enlightenment, the first walk of Revolution and Romanticism, and now still continuing today. Unlike Odysseus, Rousseau will be dead in two days. Anxious that his illustrious guest has eluded him, the Marquis rides out to fetch Rousseau back to him, also to the Marquise. At their estate, Th?r?se exchanges memories and reflections with her mistress. The Last Walk weaves back and forth between multiply interlocked memories: Th?r?se with the Marquise, the Marquis with himself as he rides alone, and, ultimately, Rousseau?s last reverie, now our own. The slaughter bench of history?the Revolution and the Terror?awaits.

In 1909, Edward Payson Weston walked from New York to San Francisco, covering around 40 miles a day and greeted by wildly cheering audiences in every city. The New York Times called it the "first bona-fide walk ... across the American continent," and eagerly chronicled a journey in which Weston was beset by fatigue, mosquitos, vicious headwinds, and brutal heat. He was 70 years old. In The Last Great Walk, journalist Wayne Curtis uses the framework of Weston's fascinating and surprising story, and investigates exactly what we lost when we turned away from foot travel, and what we could potentially regain with America's new embrace of pedestrianism. From how our brains and legs evolved to accommodate our ancient traveling needs to the way that American cities have been designed to cater to cars and discourage pedestrians, Curtis guides readers through an engaging, intelligent exploration of how something as simple as the way we get from one place to another continues to shape our health, our environment, and even our national identity. Not walking, he argues, may be one of the most radical things humans have ever done.

_______________ '[An] acutely observed collection of occasional pieces that pick at absurdist life and reveal him to be a quiz, a cultural critic gifted with precise comic timing' - The Times 'The author's prose is always a delight ... a book that manages the high-wire act of being genuinely funny while dispensing genuine wisdom' - Times Literary Supplement 'Jacobson is one of the great sentence-builders of our time. I feel I have to raise my game, even just to praise ... In short, he is one of the great guardians of language and culture - all of it. Long may he flourish' - Nicholas Lezard, Guardian _______________ Week after week, for eighteen years, the Booker Prize-winning novelist Howard Jacobson wrote a weekly column for the Independent, reflecting in inimitable style on the sacred and the profane in turn, the frivolous and the serious, the deeply personal and the most universal. The shame and humiliation inherent in death is explored with frank astuteness. Matisse, darts and the power of love are celebrated; while cyclists are very much censured. And meanwhile, a beloved old Labrador walks his last walk as life elsewhere hurtles on and away... The Dog's Last Walk is a collection of wisdom and iconoclasm for our uncertain times, and one that reveals one of our greatest writers in all his humanity. _______________ 'Sharp and playful, surreal and thoughtful, and occasionally ... rather moving' - New Statesman 'Yes, Jacobson is an entertainer ... And he does indeed entertain, but in a way that stimulates rather than simply amuses' - Sunday Telegraph 'His columns were always one of the best things in [the Independent] – funny, argumentative, contrary and stuffed with ideas as well as a big, sympathetic personality' - Philip Hensher, Spectator

This memoir of Jewish family history is also a documentation of atrocities inflicted by the fascist militia during the German occupation of Eastern Europe. It is a personal account of the legacy of the Holocaust.

After my parents passed away just a few days apart several years back, I remember the stories they told about growing up in North Central Pennsylvania. There were wonderful stories about times they spent with their brothers and sisters. Attending dances at township fire halls, working on a farm and attending school together. I know its been said many times, I wished I had written down they stories they told but I didn't and no one else did either. I didn't want my children and their children to sit and wonder what was my life was like growing up as child; what the family was like, who were my friends and what were the good things and the not so good things I did. I hope this book will answer many of their questions. It is my wish that you read this book and hopefully it will spark your childhood memories and inspire you to jot down the things you did and life you lived growing up where you live and why it was special to you. Even if you don't publish you words, keep them for others to read and enjoy.

Inspiration meets adventure in Barry's book that chronicles the tragicdeath of his teenage son, Kevin, due to alcohol poisoning, and his epic, 1,400-mile journey, from Arizona to Montana, with Kevin's ashes in his backpack. With a sense of humor that is rare among parents who have lost achild, Barry's book is a combination of faith, inspiration and adventure. Yup, his book will make you laugh, cry, and when you finish his book, you will simply smile. Everyparent that reads Barry's story will hug their precious children a littletighter. Barry wrote this book with audiences of all ages in mind. In movieterms it is rated "G."