It was an honor to read at the venerable Lower East Side indie Bluestockings Bookstore, Fair Trade Cafe, and Activist Center last week. The event got an unexpected shoutout in the New York Times, suggesting literary events that single hipsters might enjoy. (Don’t be fooled by the large picture of Salman Rushdie!) I wouldn’t want to bet on the singleness of any of the very hip Eden-seekers in the audience, but they did seem to enjoy themselves. Video below!
Posted on November 29, 2011 by Brook – 
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Paradise Lust, Videos | Tagged Bluestockings, New York City, reading
Posted on November 28, 2011 by Brook – Comments closed
Paradise Lust, Videos | Tagged New York City, Paradise Lust, reading, Wesleyan University
Blogger Lance Mannion first contacted me on Twitter @modmyth months ago, and I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to know there are reader/writers out there who are reading and considering my work so thoughtfully. Lance’s review is now out on his blog, check it out! And I can’t resist quoting this piece:
Paradise Lust is a kind of group biography that could be titled Eminent Cranks and Crackpots, but Wilensky-Lanford has a lot more on her plate. In the course of these essays, she writes with verve, humor, and persuasive confidence about many subjects, moving from theology to geology to cartography, archeology and anthropology, literary theory, cultural history, botany, hydro-engineering, and boat building. There were times when I felt I was reading Stephen Jay Gould, other times when I felt more like it was John McPhee. Still, the personalities dominate, and I was mostly reminded, again and again, of Virginia Woolf’s biographical essays, which, by the way, I think rank among Woolf’s best stuff. Wilensky-Lanford brings all these people to colorful life, writing always with sympathy, affection, objectivity, respect, and an understanding of how they fit in their time and place.
Posted on November 14, 2011 by Brook – Comments closed
It’s hard to describe what an honor it is for Paradise Lust to be mentioned in a sermon. Pastor Roland P. Perdue, III of the University Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas–that’s right, a preacher in cowboy boots–saw fit to title his sermon last week “Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden.” Here’s a tantalizing excerpt. And if you’d like to hear the audio version, it’s here:
As soon as the man and the woman were kicked out of Eden, the rest of us started looking for it. As soon as Eden became Paradise Lost many of us developed an insatiable hunger, a lust really, for Paradise Found. Our tireless search is chronicled in a new book by Ms. Brook Wilensky-Lanford, the title of which is the title of this sermon.
She tells us little armies of Eden chasers believe they have found Eden and in the strangest of places. Would you believe the North Pole; Serpent Mound State Memorial, Peebles, Ohio; Santa Clara, California; Independence, Missouri; a valley in Venezuela; Berlin, Germany; China, and, of course, Iraq, Ethiopia, Syria, and Jerusalem among other places?
I have not found it in any of those places. But I continue looking. Don’t you? Oh, I think you do, for we are here this morning because something about the Garden pulls us on and draws us in. …..
Amen, Austin!
Posted on November 13, 2011 by Brook – Comments closed
Okay it’s not every book reviewer that wanted to know the names of both my boyfriend and my cats, but that’s what makes the Jewish News of Greater Tucson special…
Posted on October 28, 2011 by Brook – Comments closed
Last week I contributed my first post to Wonders & Marvels, a fascinating forum for history writers and readers that I discovered via the work of Ellen F. Brown. The site, run by Vanderbilt University historian Holly Tucker, bills itself as “A Community for Curious Minds who love History, its Odd Stories, and Good Reads” which pretty much says it all! I look forward to writing for them on a monthly basis, and getting my fix of juicy history-writing shop talk by learning from all the wonderful authors on the site.
Posted on October 17, 2011 by Brook – Comments closed
So I got to travel all the way to my upstairs office for this interview with the Huffington Post travel section. It is not my best hair day, as a commenter was kind enough to point out, but travel editor Andrew Burmon had a unique take on my search for the Garden of Eden. A taste:
Paradise Lust is, in part at least, about the way humans relate to the physical world and our fundamental unwillingness to accept its flaws. Each explorer acts like an immature lover, believing in his beloved’s capacity for perfection. The failure of each expedition or theory provides more and more support to the hypothesis that we will all feel like travelers forever.
And he also put together an entertaining slideshow of potential Eden locations…enjoy!
Posted on October 13, 2011 by Brook – Comments closed
My friends at the environmental innovation site MYOO have designed a gorgeous infographic displaying the various locations of Eden explored by seekers in my book. Here’s a tiny preview:
They’re also the lovely people behind my mini-profile of Eden-seeker Thor Heyerdahl.
Posted on October 11, 2011 by Brook – Comments closed
Richard Sassaman, Paradise Lust fan, Maine historian, and tour guide extraordinaire, wrote me the other day with some soothing words:
“Just for the record, I went over to Eden the other day — the center of town (which, by the way, isn’t there any more) — and took a few shots for you. So you’ll know where the place really is.”
He’s talking about Eden, Maine, a former village in the now-town of Bar Harbor, which is where I grew up, more or less. So just so you can see where my obsession with Eden came from, I wanted to share Richard’s lovely photos.
Posted on October 10, 2011 by Brook – Comments closed
This weekend my review of Julia Scheeres’ A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception and Survival at Jonestown was published in The San Francisco Chronicle‘s book section. So far I’m reviewing books broadly related to religion, and specifically about those beliefs that most of us consider extreme and are therefore easy to sensationalize–Scientology and Jonestown. Fortunately both Inside Scientology and A Thousand Lives work hard not to exoticize their subjects, taking the much more difficult stance of individualizing their characters and approaching them with sympathy. Both books highly recommended!
Posted on October 10, 2011 by Brook – Comments closed
