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Interviews | October 6, 2009

Jill Owens: IMG The Powells.com Interview with Margaret Atwood



margaretatwoodIn her 2003 novel Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood describes a future after humanity had been almost entirely wiped out by a plague. Jimmy, aka Snowman, lives... Continue »
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    The Year of the Flood

    Margaret Atwood

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Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case for a More Joyful Christmas

by Bill Mckibben

Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case for a More Joyful Christmas Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Too many people have come to dread the approach of the holidays, a season that should — and can — be the most relaxed, intimate, joyful, and spiritual time of the year. In this book, Bill McKibben offers some suggestions on how to rethink Christmastime, so that our current obsession with present-buying becomes less important than the dozens of other possible traditions and celebrations.

Working through their local churches, McKibben and his colleagues found that people were hungry for a more joyful Christmas season. For many, trying to limit the amount of money they spent at Christmas to about a hundred dollars per family, was a real spur to their creativity — and a real anchor against the relentless onslaught of commercials and catalogs that try to say Christmas is only Christmas if it comes from a store.

McKibben shows how the store-bought Christmas developed and how out of tune it is with our current lives, when we're really eager for family fellowship for community involvement, for contact with the natural world, and also for the blessed silence and peace that the season should offer. McKibben shows us how to return to a simpler and more enjoyable holiday.

Christmas is too wonderful a celebration to give up on, too precious a time simply to repeat the same empty gestures from year to year. This book will serve as a road map to a Christmas far more joyful than the ones you've known in the past.

Synopsis:

From America's most esteemed environmental author comes a timely and provocative book that addresses an issue of concern to all: the evolution of Christmas from a spiritual, religious, and renewing celebration to an often crass, highly materialistic orgy of shopping and having. 2-color throughout.

About the Author

Bill McKibben is the bestselling author of The End of Nature, The Age of Missing Information, and The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job, and the Scale of Creation. A former staff writer for The New Yorker, he lives in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.

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earthfirst, December 16, 2008 (view all comments by earthfirst)
Bill McKibben, one of the great voices on environmental writing, nature and the northeast wilderness shows what the true meaning of Christmas is, without having to spend hundreds of dollars on gifts from the local mall. In these days of over consumerism, his is a voice of reason on what Christmas truely is.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780684855950
Subtitle:
The Case for a More Joyful Christmas
Author:
McKibben, Bill
Author:
McKibben, Bill
Publisher:
Simon & Schuster
Location:
New York :
Subject:
General
Subject:
Holidays - Christmas
Subject:
Social life and customs
Subject:
Christianity
Subject:
Christmas
Subject:
United states
Subject:
Simplicity
Subject:
United States Religious life and customs.
Subject:
General Literary Criticism & Collections
Subject:
Holidays - Christmas & Advent
Subject:
United States Social life and customs.
Publication Date:
December 1998
Binding:
Hardcover
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
96
Dimensions:
776x434x56 34

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