Mark Sundeen

In 2000, Daniel Suelo left his life savings—all thirty dollars of it—in a phone booth. He has lived without money—and with a newfound sense of freedom and security—ever since. The Man Who Quit Money is an account of how one man learned to live, sanely and happily, without earning, receiving, or spending a single cent. Suelo doesn't pay taxes, or accept food stamps or welfare. He lives in caves in the Utah canyonlands, forages wild foods and gourmet discards. He no longer even carries an I.D. Yet he manages to amply fulfill not only the basic human needs—for shelter, food, and warmth—but, to an enviable degree, the universal desires for companionship, purpose, and spiritual engagement. By retracing the surprising path and guiding philosophy that led Suelo from an idealistic childhood through youthful disillusionment to his radical reinvention of "the good life," Sundeen raises provocative and riveting questions about the decisions we all make—by default or by design—about how we live. The Man Who Quit Money inspires us to imagine how we might live better.

“An in-depth and compelling account of diverse Americans living off the grid.” —Los Angeles TimesThe radical search for the simple life in today’s America.On a frigid April night, a classically trained opera singer, five months pregnant, and her husband, a former marine biologist, disembark an Amtrak train in La Plata, Missouri, assemble two bikes, and pedal off into the night, bound for a homestead they've purchased, sight unseen. Meanwhile, a horticulturist, heir to the Great Migration that brought masses of African Americans to Detroit, and her husband, a product of the white flight from it, have turned to urban farming to revitalize the blighted city they both love. And near Missoula, Montana, a couple who have been at the forefront of organic farming for decades navigate what it means to live and raise a family ethically. A work of immersive journalism steeped in a distinctively American social history and sparked by a personal quest, The Unsettlers traces the search for the simple life through the stories of these new pioneers and what inspired each of them to look for -- or create -- a better existence. Captivating and clear-eyed, it dares us to imagine what a sustainable, ethical, authentic future might actually look like.

Existential essays set in the Southwest about half in Moab, Utah. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Mark Sundeen receives a call from a big city publisher with an offer to write a book about bullfighting in Spain. Sundeen agrees, assuming that this is his best and last chance to follow the trajectory of his literary heroes, despite the fact that he has never been to a bullfight, doesn't speak Spanish, and is not even a particularly good reporter.After squandering most of the book advance, Sundeen can't afford a trip to Spain, so he settles for nearby Mexico. But the bullfighting he finds there is tawdry and comical, and there's little of the passion and bravery that he'd hoped to employ in exhibiting his literary genius to the masses.To compensate for his own shortcomings as an author, Sundeen invents an alter ego, Travis LaFrance, a swashbuckling adventure writer in the tradition of Sundeen's idol, Ernest Hemingway. When LaFrance steps in, our narrator goes blundering through the landscape of his own dreams and delusions, propelled solely by the preposterous insistence that his own life story, no matter how crummy, is worth being told in the pages of Great Literature.The Making of Toro is a unique comic classic and a sly, poignant tale of the hazards of trying too hard to turn real life into high art.

In these new and selected essays, Mark Sundeen recounts two decades of political activism, outdoor exploration, and empathic curiosity. He was both witness to and active participant in pivotal cultural and political events of the new millennium, from Howard Dean’s presidential campaign to the Iraq War protests and the NoDAPL uprising in Standing Rock. But what brings these large phenomena into humanistic focus is the cast of idiosyncratic people he meets. Using first-person reportage, well-crafted storytelling, and wry, self-deprecating humor, Sundeen’s keen observations illustrate what everyday life is like for people in the contemporary American West, with all their systemic precarities and individual triumphs.ACCLAIM“Delusions and Grandeur is about what it means to be a man in the West—but if that conjures images of steely-eyed cowboys and oilmen, put those out of your mind. What struck me most is just how gorgeously tenderhearted, vulnerable, and emotionally engaged these essays and their characters are. If a smallish group of men have been the main perpetrators of the destruction of our planet, a larger group, including many of those in this fine book, have been their victims—and survivors.”—Vauhini Vara, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Immortal King Rao“This is the West as seen through the eyes of ordinary people with extraordinary connections who have explored politics, literature, environment, and the act of being human. Sundeen has an uncanny knack for finding himself in the thick of things. Once there, he dives deep and reports back with an unerring eye. As a writer, I’m exhausted imagining what he went through to get these stories, but as a reader I’m carried along and come away feeling like I’ve been everywhere.”—Craig Childs, author of Tracing Seasons of Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau“A riveting and powerful collection of essays that asks the reader to reconsider the connection between landscape, culture, and the past, Mark Sundeen’s latest book arises from a lifetime of experience not only in western places but with those who build their lives amid the boom and bust born from a region marked as much by beauty as a lack of it. It’s the people that matter to Sundeen, those passing through, those staying on, those leaving, longing, coming, touring, hawking, and forever hoping. Long disabused of any romantic notion of what it means to live in the West, Sundeen stands beside all those who populate his essays, bewildered, angry, but never without wonder roped to tenderness. Delusions and Grandeur frames a window through which we see how we far we have traveled, why we have arrived at this moment, and how much farther we still must go.”—Jennifer Sinor, author of Sky Meditations on Loving a Broken World“Mark Sundeen is a brilliant, funny, poetic guide through the landscapes of the American West, attuned to the dangers of white masculinity while disarmingly gentle in his critique. Each essay in this collection is a prism through which the desire to escape the world looks suspiciously like the desire to find one’s place in it. This is a coming-of-age book in the least-cheesy sense of the term.”—Sierra Crane Murdoch, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Yellow Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian CountryABOUT THE AUTHORMark Sundeen is an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Montana, and the author of four other books about the American The In Search of the Good Life in Today’s America; Car Camping; The Making o

Vast expanses of Utah — its entire northwest quadrant, specifically - are barren, waterless, windblown, salt-caked, too hot or too cold, God-forsaken and just generally unfit for human habitation. If not for the advent of rocket bombs, toxic waste, and casinos, this desert of Deseret might still be left to the coyotes. It's a land so vast, unpopulated and far-removed that the most you'll hear about it is from a book like this one.

Sig Hansen ist Fischer und Kapitän des Fangboots Northwestern, wie schon sein Vater, sein Großvater und Generationen vor ihm. Die Hansens sehen sich selbst in der Tradition der Nordmänner, die stoisch jedem Sturm trotzen. Furchtlos, hart zu sich selbst, gut zur Ihrer Crew zahlen die drei Hansen-Brüder die beste Heuer und für sie kochen sie norwegische Fleischbällchen. Northwestern ist mehr als eine Innenansicht vom rauen Leben er modernen Wikinger Alaska. Es ist eine berührende Familiensaga. Northwestern - fesselnd aufgeschrieben von Mark Sundeen, Reporter des New York Times Magazine - erzählt auch die Geschichte hinter einem Welterfolg. In knapp 140 Ländern ist Sig Hansen einem Millionenpublikum durch die TV-Serie Deadliest Catch des Discovery Channel bekannt. Vor allem in den USA gilt Hansen als Popstar. Illustriert wird diese Buch mit Bildern des preisgekrönten Fotografen (und Fischers) Corey Arnold, und Holger Gertz, Reporter der Süddeutschen Zeitung, steuert ein Essay bei.

Mark Sundeen cannot afford to go to Pamplona, but he won't let that stop him from having a "Hemingwayesque" adventure. And so he sets off for Mexico in search of a budget bullfight. Starting in Southern California, where politically correct, Portuguese-style spectacles are held (the bull is not killed), he proceeds to Tijuana, Mazatlan, and, finally, Mexico City, where the Spanish corrida tradition is strongest.Almost immediately, however, he encounters complications. In Mexico, the Spaniards' trademark passion is considered a namby-pamby rich boy's game -- decidedly not "for the people." Even worse, whatever popularity bullfighting may once have enjoyed in Mexico is declining in these days of NAFTA and "narcotrafficos." Unwilling to abandon his quest, Mark explores such substitutes as traveling carnivals, cockfights, and midget bullfight revues. And he seeks out the daring young men who, in nobler times, might have found themselves in a bullring but who today are working as cayotes, runners for drug cartels, marijuana-dealing surfers, and soldiers manning U.S.-funded drug checkpoints along desert highways."Toro" may not discover the real fiesta brava, but it certainly finds the real Mexico.

189pages. in8. Broch.

Ihre Fanggründe gehören zu den stürmischsten auf den Weltmeeren. Ihre Beute, die monströse Königskrabbe, macht sie zu reichen Männern. Oder führt ihre Schiffe ins Verderben. Die Kapitäne und ihre Crew der "Time Bandit", "Northwestern" und "Cornelia Marie" trotzen tückischem Packeis, bleierner Erschöpfung und gewaltigen Stürmen. DER TÖDLICHE FANG, vier Geschichten über das wahre Leben der Fischer auf der Beringsee. Von den Helden der DMAX-Serie "Fang des Lebens".