Here is a father who takes his son's world seriously. We can learn by his tales the power of passing wisdom along kindly and eloquently, while at the same time listening with attentiveness to the concerns of the future. Because the author is willing to learn from a younger generation, we as readers may learn along with him. He also has lessons of his own, and these are presented respectfully. This book is honest, funny, entertaining, and inspiring without being heavy-handed; a wonderful dose of urgent optimism and a communication between present and future, father and son, writer and reader.

In Scott Russell Sanders' new book, the search is for hope...for his grown children, and for us all. Sanders feels that crying need among our young and gives back his own discoveries in his mid-fifties. In particular his relationship with his college age son are poignant and real. The book seems an antidote of sorts for the lost relationships found in Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild book of Chris McMannes. This is Henry David Thoreau writing here...with a wife and childen...facing the life we all know. He reaches and finds some lasting truths that connect us all.

While the philosophy underlying this work is reminiscent of Thoreau, Sanders writing is much more graceful and his personality more warm and human than the Walden Pond horned frog ever hoped to be. Sanders has a keen eye for the insightful moment and treats himself and his subjects to piercing, yet sympathetic, examinations.

As the daughter of a former U.S. Marine, I wasn't sure I'd like this book. I am pleased to say I not only like it, I fell in love with it. Scott Russell Sanders has more than a way with words, he has a love affair with words. In reading this book, I found a decent man, a thoughtful man of lively intellect. It is a pleasure to be in Mr. Sanders's company even if its only through the medium of the printed word.

I admit that this book was assigned to me in a college writing class. However, once I drunk in the words of these essays, I was challenged by Sanders to create essays of my own. The essays move outward, moving from himself and the family that is part of his life to the world that is a part of. Not only does it challenge any writer to reach the honesty that Sanders does, but this book also draws the every day Jane or Jon Doe to think about their own life and to be honest about it. A definate keeper!

This story shares a tale of many living through hard winters in log cabins packed with mud. It shares the values of life and death, protection, and espically a mothers love. My children ask to read it over and over.

Fifty tiny tales, each exquisitely told, chronicle the settling of the Ohio River Valley. Scott Russell Sanders is a fabulous storyteller who collects the curiosities that would have travelled far by word of mouth in an earlier time. Sanders calls these "tales, stories provoked by germs of fact, rather than history." The characters are mostly forgotten--Indians, surveyors and drunks, flustered judges, animals fierce and tame, gravepickers, newborns, clergy and lovers. Taken together, the stories function like a fine illustration in a history book, artfully fleshing out the facts so that our understanding is deepened. This is a perfect book for a history lover, a bedtime reader or a lover of the quirky. I was glad to find it still in print.

"Although grounded in the personal, all my essays push toward the impersonal; I reflect on my own experience in hopes of illuminating the experience of others," confides the author, and yet, it is the personal sense of Scott Russell Sanders--fair minded fellow traveller--which is the chief blessing of his works. Sanders' character--vulnerable yet open, sensitive yet insistent, boldly direct yet fine minded--sets the ultimate human value of his work. Reading Sanders is like walking with him down a Midwestern street, out of town, along a path through a wilderness that brings you back home safe and more sane, and that is why his books of essays A PARADISE OF BOMBS (1987), SECRETS OF THE UNIVRESE (1991), STAYING PUT (1993) have won so many awards and gathered such a large and attentive audience. A recent winner of the Lannan Literary Award, Sanders joins such company as Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez, Edward Hoagland, and Noam Chomsky--those bioregionalist writers who deal so earnestly with living sanely in our time and place. Always deeply rooted in the Midwest--Ohio and Indiana country--Sanders nevertheless takes on large questions and universal themes, many of them dealing with what it means to write from a strong sense of place. WRITING FROM THE CENTER is perhaps his most diverse and demanding collection as he deals with questions of landscape and values, work and family, love and regret. For this reader, the family portraits ring strikingly true as they attempt to deal with the issues of living today. Sanders has always been most excellent at scoping out a subject, in leading us into the territory, and bringing us close to those truths nearest to home

because you'll want to toss it in the fireplace when you're finished. If you're not quite sure what an elitist academician is, read "Staying Put" and you'll never again have any doubt. Sanders clearly occupies the lower ranks of this group, but he fits the mold perfectly of a pompous professor who believes no thought that pops into his head, no matter how tiny, must go unexpressed. Of course, I may be wrong. This book may be a shrewd satire of such a blowhard personality, but I doubt it. In any case, it is a waste of time and money.

Maybe it's because I moved back to Indiana not long after discovering this book, but I am constantly moved by this...particularly the title essay.

If you love Barbara Kingsolver, Kathleen Norris or Anne Lamott, give Mr. Sanders a try.

As with all of his books, Sanders brilliantly explores his feelings, thoughts, and beliefs in a well-researched (despite his claims to the contrary) book. As a fellow resident of Bloomington, Indiana (the home he's making in a restless world), I appreciate the way he describes life here in this quiet part of a quiet state in a quiet region of the country.

This is a NOT a book about building or making terrrariums. It is a work of FICTION. A story set in the future. I bought this book along with others on terrariums becuase I wanted to make a terrarium for my lizards. I wasn't going to since there was a total lack of description of the book, but I saw it was in the list of recommendations and bought it anyway. The book was not at all what I needed. I wonder how many others have been mislead into buying it?

Scott Russell Sanders has created a dystopian classic that fans of Orwell can admire. His setting is the near future in which the Earth has turned hostile, and man has enclosed himself in gargantuan cities, a human terrarium closed from any chaos.

When one thinks of a terrarium, one might think of a beautiful display of life enclosed in a glass bubble. In the human Enclosures, however, things are not beautiful. People are living a fantasy, out of touch with nature--and often reality.

Sanders has a good story telling style, and the book is an easy read. Everyone should read this book; tech junkies, to politicians, to parents. It helps us to see the world around us in a different light. Perhaps we can leave our children some of the beauty of nature that we take for granted.

Michigan Technological University celebrated Earth Week 1997 by giving out over 1000 copies of "Terrarium" in classes across campus. Author Scott Russell Sanders visited MTU on April 21st. He spoke about writing the book and shared his Earth Week thoughts. Students greatly enjoyed both book and author. They have summarized classroom discussions about the book's themes; these are posted at: http://chmac2.chem.mtu.edu/earth/default.ssi.

This disgusting book condones a bizarre sexual practice and as such should be banned. I find it very hard to believe anyone would be interested in this book. Sick.