A Matter of Life and Death: Hunting in Contemporary Vermont
An important contribution to the understanding of rural life in the United States that will be of interest to students and professionals in human/nature relationships in a variety of disciplines.(Gerald W. Creed, coeditor of Knowing Your Place: Rural Identity and Cultural Hierarchy)A Matter of Life and Death goes well beyond the subject of hunting to document the persistence of rural traditions in the midst of a gentrifying countryside. I think the book will be used in environmental studies courses, courses in wildlife management, as well as in courses that more and more schools are offering in what is coming to be called 'rural studies.'(Jan E. Dizard, author of Going Wild: Hunting, Animal Rights, and the Contested Meaning of Nature)You do not have to be a hunter or an anthropologist to find a great deal of value in this remarkable book. A Matter of Life and Death is challenging, nuanced, and entertaining; from the preface forward, author Marc Boglioli takes his readers into a world that many of them will never encounter--and that some of them might simply write off as vulgar or, even, immoral.... A Matter of Life and Death is book written by an intellectual who understands clearly both his subject (rural hunters) and his anticipated audience (other intellectuals, and largely urban intellectuals at that).... It is hard not to see A Matter of Life and Death as a model of fair-minded scholarship, a study whose essential lessons can be applied to any number of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.(New England Quarterly)In A Matter of Life and Death, Marc Boglioli engages the tensions and contradictions surrounding hunting in the modern age. He does so in well-researched, clear, readable prose that brings to life the Vermont hunters, camps, and forests that are his bailiwick. Boglioli does for the northeast United States what Stuart Marks (1991) did for the South in Southern Hunting in Black and White.... The Human Dimensions of Wildlife tradition needs more works of this kind; studies that are richly detailed and the product of long engagement by committed researchers to places and subjects they know well.(Human Dimensions of Wildlife1900-01-00)Boglioli engages the tensions and contradictions surrounding hunting in the modern age. He does so in well-researched, clear, readable prose that brings to life the Vermont hunters, camps, and forests that are his bailiwick.(Human Dimensions of Wildlife)