American Places.

First edition of collection of musings and photographs of the American landscape, depicting all aspects of American life from the Rocky Mountains to the state of Maine. Square quarto, original publisher's cloth, profusely illustrated with color photographs. From the library of writer Peter Matthiessen with his bookplate to the front pastedown. Peter Matthiessen remains the only writer to have won the National Book Award in both nonfiction (The Snow Leopard, 1979) and fiction (Shadow Country, 2008). In addition to his literary achievements, he was a co-founder of The Paris Review in 1953, a landmark literary magazine that became renowned for publishing emerging writers and for its influential “Art of Fiction” interview series, which featured major figures such as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and T.S. Eliot, and helped shape modern literary discourse. The magazine also played a key role in introducing new voices to a wider audience and has received numerous literary honors over the decades. More than 70 years after its founding in 1953, The Paris Review is still a major, ongoing literary magazine with new issues and contemporary contributors, now published by the Paris Review Foundation. A prominent environmental activist, Matthiessen received the National Book Award for Fiction in 2008 at the age of 81 for Shadow Country. As critic Michael Dirda observed, “No one writes more lyrically [than Matthiessen] about animals or describes more movingly the spiritual experience of mountaintops, savannas, and the sea.” Near fine in a very good dust jacket.