Howard Mansfield

We live in an era of monument building, yet we don’t look at most of the monuments and memorials around us. They disappear from view.

When Howard Mansfield grew up, World War II was omnipresent and hidden. This was also true of his father’s time in the Air Force. Like most of his generation, it was a rule not to talk about what he’d experienced in war. “You’re not getting any war stories from me,” he’d say...

An old farmer boasts that he has used the same ax his whole life -- he's only had to replace the handle three times and the head twice....

Before Thomas Edison, light and fire were thought to be one and the same. Turns out, they were separate things altogether. This book takes a similar relationship, that of time and place, and shows how they, too, were once inseparable. Timekeeping was once a local affair, when small towns set...

The mystery that attracts Howard Mansfield's attention is that some houses have lives—are home, are dwellings—and others don't. Dwelling, he says, is an old-fashioned word that we've misplaced. When we live with heart and soul, we dwell. When we belong to a place, we dwell. Possession, they...

In The Habit of Turning the World Upside Down, Howard Mansfield returns with thoughtful linked narratives examining a crucial and overlooked element of American identity: property. The book draws its title from Alexis de Tocqueville, who said in 1831, “It would seem that the habit of...

In this graceful collection, Howard Mansfield looks anew at the New England region he's called home for over twenty years. He studies the beautiful stonework of granite bridges with a local expert; contemplates the deserted second and third stories of the old mercantile buildings that populate...

In Summer over Autumn, Howard Mansfield sifts through the commonplace and the forgotten to discover stories that tell us about ourselves and our place in the world - in this case, Hancock, New Hampshire. Writer and critic Guy Davenport says Mansfield “has never written an uninteresting or...

When Thomas Jefferson committed the new nation to the “pursuit of happiness” he set up the primary occupation of every American. Chasing Eden: A Book of Seekers is about that pursuit, about Americans seeking their Eden, their Promised Land, their utopia out on the horizon - which by...

In the Memory House recalls what American society has forgotten—the land, its people, and its ideals. By examining what we choose to remember, this important book reveals how progress has created absences in our landscapes and in our lives.