In 2006 the Guardian's country diary column is 100 years old, and to commemorate the anniversary Martin Wainwright has compiled a collection of the best of a century's writing.

For more than 35 years, James Welling has explored the material and conceptual possibilities of photography. Diary/Landscape - the first mature body of work by this important contemporary artist - set the framework for his subsequent investigations of abstraction and his fascination with nineteenth- and twentieth-century New England. In July 1977, Welling began photographing a two-volume travel diary kept by his great-grandmother Elizabeth C. Dixon, as well as landscapes in southern Connecticut. A beautiful and moving meditation on family, history, memory, and place, the work reintroduced history and private emotion as subjects in high art, while also helping to usher in the centrality of photography and theoretical questions about originality that mark the epochal Pictures Generation.

Carrying the story of the rural landscape into our frantic era, he describes the bow wavewhere city life meets rural agriculture and plots the effect of recreation and its structures on the look of the land.

Publisher Description

In 1989 Dr. Robert Vande Kappelle cycled solo cross-country. The 3,400-mile trip was the seed project for the Washington County (Pennsylvania) chapter of Habitat for Humanity. For forty-two days he went "Homeless for Habitat," placing himself and his personal needs in the hands of strangers he met along the way. At the beginning he cycled across some of the most mountainous--and spectacular--terrain in America. After he crossed the Rockies, a nagging headwind arose, which only intensified with time. That, coupled with a deteriorating bicycle--along one of the most desolate stretches of the journey--produced spiritual testing of epic proportions. He was tempted to compromise the integrity of the trek, then to quit the trek, and finally to curse his circumstances. He sensed he was climbing an invisible mountain, whose top could not be reached. After venting his anger and frustration, he discerned that tailwinds and flat terrain rarely evoke wisdom. Insight flows freely, however, from the watershed atop life's invisible mountains. The Invisible Mountain narrates the account of that trek. The story examines the trek as adventure, spiritual odyssey, and as metaphor for the journey of life. In the words of Millard Fuller, co-founder of Habitat for Humanity International and The Fuller Center for Housing: "Ride with [Bob Vande Kappelle] as you read. You will enjoy the trip and you will gain all sorts of insights . . . and perhaps most importantly, you will learn about yourself and grow spiritually as you experience vicariously the wonderful adventure of this 'journey of faith.'"

"With this book, you feel you can stop time and savor the rituals of life." --Maira Kalman An immersive journey through the culture and cuisine of one Japanese town, its forest, and its watershed--where ducks are hunted by net, saké is brewed from the purest mountain water, and charcoal is fired in stone kilns--by an American writer and food stylist who spent years working alongside artisans One night, Brooklyn-based artist and food writer Hannah Kirshner received a life-changing invitation to apprentice with a "saké evangelist" in a misty Japanese mountain village called Yamanaka. In a rapidly modernizing Japan, the region--a stronghold of the country's old-fashioned ways--was quickly becoming a destination for chefs and artisans looking to learn about the traditions that have long shaped Japanese culture. Kirshner put on a vest and tie and took her place behind the saké bar. Before long, she met a community of craftspeople, farmers, and foragers--master woodturners, hunters, a paper artist, and a man making charcoal in his nearly abandoned village on the outskirts of town. Kirshner found each craftsperson not only exhibited an extraordinary dedication to their work but their distinct expertise contributed to the fabric of the local culture. Inspired by these masters, she devoted herself to learning how they work and live. Taking readers deep into evergreen forests, terraced rice fields, and smoke-filled workshops, Kirshner captures the centuries-old traditions still alive in Yamanaka. Water, Wood, and Wild Things invites readers to see what goes into making a fine bowl, a cup of tea, or a harvest of rice and introduces the masters who dedicate their lives to this work. Part travelogue, part meditation on the meaning of work, and full of her own beautiful drawings and recipes, Kirshner's refreshing book is an ode to a place and its people, as well as a profound examination of what it means to sustain traditions and find purpose in cultivation and craft.