Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019
LOREM IPSUM BOOK TITLE
“[A] clever bit of counterprogramming. Coming upon [Silence] was like finding the Advil bottle in the medicine cabinet after stumbling about with a headache for a long time . . . [Brox’s] two settings, scrutinized intensely, present silence as many textured . . . Brox writes beautifully . . .”
—Gal Beckerman, New York Times Book Review
In this remarkable history, critically acclaimed and award-winning author Jane Brox examines the institution of silence from monastic communion with God to the punitive isolation of inmates. With precision and grace, SILENCE explores the use of silence as both a threat and a tool over time, and our often-fraught relationship with communication and solitude as it has evolved in our digital lives.
Brox starts in 12th century Provence when Cistercian monks took vows of silence to achieve stillness and profound meditation. The story continues as this monastic tradition, along with European concepts of prison reform and the American Enlightenment, gave 19th century social reformers high hopes for the capacity of silence to redeem and rehabilitate at Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary. Through moments of subtle, heart-stopping tension, Brox reveals how this heritage has led us into an age in which peaceful, transformative quiet is increasingly difficult to come by.
BUY THE BOOK
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Indiebound
North Point Press/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004
LOREM IPSUM BOOK TITLE
“Her precise, eloquent prose, wedded to a sensibility that manages to be at once elegiac and hard-minded, strikes unerringly through sentiment and convention to the heart of the matter...”
—Carlo Rotella, Chicago Tribune
*A Best Book of the Year: The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution*
Jane Brox twines two narratives, personal and historic, to explore the place of the family farm as it has evolved from the Pilgrims’ brutal progress at Plymouth to the modern world, where much of our food is produced by industrial agriculture while the family farm is both marginalized and romanticized. In considering the place of the farm Brox traces the transformation of the idea of wilderness – and its intricate connection to cultivation – which changed as our ties to the land loosened. Exploring these strands with neither judgment or sentimentality, Brox arrives at something beyond a biography of the farm: a vivid depiction of the half-life it carries on in our collective imagination.
BUY THE BOOK
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Indiebound