BiblioVault - Books about Living -

Above the Clearwater

Living on Stolen Land

Bette Lynch Husted

Oregon State University Press, 2004

Like her father before her, Bette Husted grew up on stolen land. The bench land above the Clearwater River in north-central Idaho had been a home for the Nez Perce Indians until the Dawes Act opened their reservation to settlement in 1895. As a child on the family homestead, Husted felt the presence of the Nez Perce: "But they were always just out of sight, like a smoky shadow behind me that I couldn't quite turn around quickly enough to catch."

Above the Clearwater chronicles her family's history on the land, revealing their joys and sorrows, their triumphs and tragedies. In a series of graceful and moving essays, Husted traces this intimate history, from her Cold War childhood to her struggles as a parent and finally to her life as a woman and teacher in the rural West. Her family's stories echo those of countless other families in the American West: the conflicts with guns, the struggles over land ownership and water rights, the isolation of women, the separations by race and class, the family secrets of mental illness and suicide.

With a powerful, poetic voice, Husted illuminates the tangled relationship between the history of a particular place and the history of the families who inhabit that place over time. As Above the Clearwater explores one family's search for a home on land taken from its original inhabitants, it quietly asks all readers to examine their own homes in the same light.

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Animate Planet

Making Visceral Sense of Living in a High-Tech Ecologically Damaged World

Kath Weston

Duke University Press, 2017

In Animate Planet Kath Weston shows how new intimacies between humans, animals, and their surroundings are emerging as people attempt to understand how the high-tech ecologically damaged world they have made is remaking them, one synthetic chemical, radioactive isotope, and megastorm at a time. Visceral sensations, she finds, are vital to this process, which yields a new animism in which humans and "the environment" become thoroughly entangled. In case studies on food, water, energy, and climate from the United States, India, and Japan, Weston approaches the new animism as both a symptom of our times and an analytic with the potential to open paths to new and forgotten ways of living.

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The Art of Growing Older

Writers on Living and Aging

Edited by Wayne C. Booth

University of Chicago Press, 1996

Wayne Booth has selected, and has been inspired by, the works by some of our greatest writers on the art of growing older. In this widely praised anthology he shows that the very making of art is in itself a victory over time.

Culled chiefly from great literary works, this unusual compendium of prose and poetry . . . highlights the physical and emotional aspects of aging. . . . The thoughtful commentary with which Booth connects the selections reminds readers that physical decay and fear of death are conditions common to us all. . . . Provocative."—Publishers Weekly

"His blending of literature, humor, and crotchetiness will capture the interest of readers of all ages."—Booklist

"Funny . . . profound. . . . It is hard to resist the closing chapters, which celebrate the freedom from constraint and ambition, the permission to be crotchety, the joy of memory and perspective that come with age."—William March, Tampa Tribune

"Booth puts a new spin on the worries many of us have about what's catching up with us. . . . Booth's book . . . [is] for both the younger readers and those of us who are nervously counting birthdays."—Sacramento Bee

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The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris

Ethics and Self-Making in Dada, Simultanism, and Surrealism

Rachel Silveri

University of Chicago Press, 2026

How artists of interwar Paris created an “art of living,” treating their daily lives as an aesthetic, ethical, and creative practice.

With The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris, Rachel Silveri takes a fresh look at the desire to unify art and life, an ambition long regarded as foundational to the European historical avant-gardes. She reveals how many early twentieth-century artists saw their own everyday lives—their bodies, identities, and relationships—as a type of creative material and a central component to their avant-garde practice. These artists abandoned traditional forms of artmaking and venues of art viewing, instead aspiring to integrate art with everyday life, creating an “art of living.”

Considering Tristan Tzara’s performances of Dadaist identity, Sonia Delaunay’s simultaneous fashions and self-branding, and the collective endeavor to open and operate the Surrealist Research Bureau, Silveri offers a new narrative about how the artists of interwar Paris developed experiential life practices that resisted dominant forms of “lifestyle” and normative discourses surrounding gender, ethnicity, and office work. This book argues that ethical questions of “How should I live?” and “How should I relate to others?” were as important to the avant-garde as politics, and that aspirations to change the world played out in daily practices of self-making.

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Artists as Writers

Living and Sustaining a Creative Life

Edited by Seph Rodney and Steven G. Fullwood

Intellect Books, 2025

A masterclass on living as a writer and developing your writing craft.

Part of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series, Artists as Writers joins the tradition of books designed or intended to inspire would-be writers to write. Yet, it distinguishes itself by offering succinct first-person narratives by writers of varied genres about the day-to-day life of writing for a living.

Artists as Writers offers accounts of the journeys that thirty-two writers have taken, including what decisions were made; which paths were taken, rejected, and charted; and why. It answers the question: What magic keeps a writer writing?
Writers from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Nigeria, Palestine, Poland, and Sweden, as well as several American artists, contribute their stories. They each provide vividly detailed accounts of the circuitous roads that each individual took to earn the title “writer.” These are richly descriptive stories from writers who write consistently, relating how they came to the writing life, who helped them get there, and what sustains them as writers.

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