Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: Essays by Barry Lopez |
The Boston Globe
Barry Lopez won the National Book Award in 1986 for his monumental nonfiction work Arctic Dreams. His 2019 book Horizon found its way onto numerous best-of-the-year lists. When he died in December 2020, laudatory obituaries compared him to Thoreau and referred to his writing as “landmark.”
Despite these accolades, Lopez has not received the critical reception he truly deserves. To begin with, most of the obits focused on his nature writing, which, while understandable, excludes his fiction (of which he published eleven volumes), but most significantly, the artistry of his essays. His final collection of essays, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World, should remind readers just how wide-ranging, artful, and deeply personal his writing could be. Continue reading…
Jonathan Russell Clark 