book data
1,123 ratings,
3.80
average rating, 295 reviews
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published
May 27th 2003
by Penguin (Non-Classics)
binding
Paperback, 271 pages
literary awards
2002 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
isbn
0142002836
(isbn13: 9780142002834)
description
At the age of seventeen, Eustace Conway left his suburban existence to live in the wild--thirty years later, he's still there...
The Last America...more
The Last America...more
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| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Ulm High Scho...: Future book suggestions | 1 | 1 | 02/02/2009 05:44AM | |
| Paper Back Swap: Elizabeth Gilbert - Eat Pray Love & beyond | 3 | 15 | 05/28/2008 03:12PM |
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1,816)
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avg 3.80
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
Read in June, 2007
The Last American man is attempting to save our once great nation from its own greed and sloth by living in harmony with nature. Which obviously is not the exciting part of the book. Eustace Conway’s smaller and more successful journeys may be the exciting part of the book. What this guy has done in the name of fun, adventure, and self exertion kept my attention through the first halfish. Then rooting for Eustace to save our nation from the sedentary lifestyle, TV, and stupidity kept me in it ...more
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Read in January, 2007
This was my introduction to Elizabeth Gilbert. It was a random meeting, a freak of fate. Walking into my local public library I saw this book on a shelf I was passing, and thought "What... there aren't any men in America anymore?" Intrigued, I picked it up, positive it was some take-back-the-country-from-the-feminists spiel from some conservative talking head. I was a bit surprised to see it was written by a woman. What the heck… I’d check it out (mostly to see what had happen...more
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Read in August, 2008
recommends it for:
Jim Heetmann
I picked up The Last American Man thinking I was going to read about some environmentalist guy livin' out in the woods to prove a point to the world. While that is basically what the book is about- the author outlines a very different kind of man than you would expect to be living life in the woods. Eustace Conway is not only living on his 1000 acres of land, killing his own food and making his own shelter and clothing from surrounding materials- he is surprisingly a well versed businessman, a...more
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Read in January, 2007
After devouring Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, I ran to the bookstore and picked up this fascinating biography of Eustis Conway, who may or may not be the Last American Man, but he IS the last person you would want to live with or work for. He is in his own idealistic world that shuts out others and has no tolerance for varying levels of compentence or preferences that differ from his. Gilbert attempts to show why Conway is who he is, and the reader does develop empathy for this lost, misplaced-in-t...more
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
anyone who has a huge crush on Eustace Conway
Eustace Conway could teach us all a thing or two about how we should live on this earth. Unfortunately, all Elizabeth Gilbert wants to teach us is about his father issues and his relationships with women. There is almost no wilderness ethic to be had; the book reads like the diary of a 12-year-old girl smitten by a mountain man. It's difficult to think of Gilbert as a serious journalist when she constantly fawns over her subject and actually appears (unflatteringly) in the narrative herself. She...more
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Read in January, 2009
I listened to this in the car, again. Found it to be well-written and interesting, about a real man, Eustice Conway, whose goal in life is to live as naturally as possible, meaning on his land, in a teepee, growing his own food, etc. He also wants everyone else to live this way.
I didn't find Eustice to be a very nice guy, overall, although he did have some redeeming qualities, so I guess he's just pretty human, but so driven and so ego-centric that he was almost unlikeable. The story...more
I didn't find Eustice to be a very nice guy, overall, although he did have some redeeming qualities, so I guess he's just pretty human, but so driven and so ego-centric that he was almost unlikeable. The story...more
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Read in October, 2008
Elizabeth Gilbert has an ideal voice for this subject... though she obviously respects her subject, she displays the necessary healthy amount of skepticism needed to make palatable the biography a die-hard naturalist who feels he is destined to educate Americans about the evils of consumer culture. No one wants to be lectured, and Gilbert makes it clear that Eustace Conway -though he's arguably right- has spent his life alternately enamoring and alienating people doing just that.
On ...more
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Read in December, 2008
This book is about an extraordinary, ambitious and complex man. Elizabeth Gilbert, the writer of Eat, Pray, Love, wrote this a few years before her blockbuster memoir. It's equally engaging to learn about a modern American "Mountain man" as it is to read about her own worldly travels. The best thing about this portrait is that she doesn't forget to turn a critical eye towards this somewhat iconic man. He is a visionary, a hard worker, a genius, but he's also difficult, demanding, a...more
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This book is a portrait of an extraordinary man with very ordinary flaws. In all actuality the take away message of this book is a not as revolutionary as Eustace Conway seems at first glance. Ambition drives Eustace and it is the catalyst for many of the incredible stories Gilbert relates. In the end, however, the depth of the book comes from Eustace failing to find happiness in his ideals, but struggling to make compromises in order to get through this beautiful thing called life. This book ...more
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Read in January, 2009
I was drawn to this book for three reasons:
1)I semi-enjoyed Eat Pray Love.
2)The review on the cover from Outside magazine: "The finest examination of American masculinity and wilderness since Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild."
3) The title.
This is the story of Eustace Conway, a modern day naturalist and adventurer who seeks to live off the land like people did hundreds of years ago. (At 17, he goes and lives in a tepee for 17 years.) He has a great vision for t...more
1)I semi-enjoyed Eat Pray Love.
2)The review on the cover from Outside magazine: "The finest examination of American masculinity and wilderness since Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild."
3) The title.
This is the story of Eustace Conway, a modern day naturalist and adventurer who seeks to live off the land like people did hundreds of years ago. (At 17, he goes and lives in a tepee for 17 years.) He has a great vision for t...more
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Read in July, 2007
An extraordinary book about Eustace Conway, an idealistic, autocratic, mountain-man. He's a one-man crusade, wholly devoted to converting us to a mindful, natural way of living. But more than that, it's a book about what it means to be a modern American in all its complexity and contradictions. And how even Conway, as far removed as he is physically from modern America, can't escape the culture's mythology.
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Read in December, 2008
Just finished The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert, and its a haunting book about a wounded warrior seeking perfection first as a self-made native american living with and off the earth, then as an American pioneer farmer. The wounded part is what drives him, as is true of so many people: the inability to achieve a success or perfection that will warrant his father's approval. This is a very common theme in overachievers--kicked in the teeth by parents who find themselves in dire need of a...more
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Read in March, 2009
recommended to Jill by:
anna dill
Elizabeth Gilbert really gets to the heart of this amazing man. If you read Into the Wild and thought, "What an idiot," or "Damn that would be cool," then this book is for you. Gilbert succeeds in portraying Eustice Conway as both a heroic and tragic figure; a growing and dying breed. Having lived in Mendocino, I think there are still pockets of society that come close to embracing Conway's vision, but there is still a long way to go in order for every child to grow up lea...more
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Read in November, 2008
I absolutely love stories about people who decide to live an American existence that most would be appalled by. This book is one of the best of that subject. It is the true story of Eustace Conway, a man who left suburbia behind in pursuit of a more honest, nature-bound existence.
I enjoyed the book's historical aspects of America's west, frontiers, nature, food and Native Americans, as well as the (I felt) accurate description of today's society lacking the connection with food and nature.
...more
I enjoyed the book's historical aspects of America's west, frontiers, nature, food and Native Americans, as well as the (I felt) accurate description of today's society lacking the connection with food and nature.
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Read in March, 2009
In the Epilogue, Gilbert says "The history of Eustace Conway is the history of man's progress on the North American continent," and she has done her homework charting the path of the American male hero from Natty Bumppo to Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett to show parallels in Eustace Conway's life. She makes Eustace both hero and human, showing his enormous vision and passion for restoring us to a more natural lifestyle and also showing his failings in some human interactions. Gilbert's ...more
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Read in December, 2008
I had high hopes for this as it seemed an interesting subject (the life and times of a guy who lives quite literally off the land - a "pioneer" if you will.) I have no idea what the point of this book was supposed to be - it is disorganized and strange, the author switching tones, style, and storyline within the same paragraph. I found myself wondering more about the relationship between the author and the subject (as in, when did she sleep with him and how long afterwards did she conv...more
This book is fascinating if only in that Eustace Conway is such an enigma. He's truly a man born in the wrong century! He should have been contemporaries with Zebulon Pike and all those other crazy mountain men.
It's laugh out loud funny in parts, kind of puzzling in others. But it certainly shows how people, even now, long for "back to basics" style of life. His magnetic personality probably aids in that as well.
Again, I found Gilbert's style a bit distracti...more
It's laugh out loud funny in parts, kind of puzzling in others. But it certainly shows how people, even now, long for "back to basics" style of life. His magnetic personality probably aids in that as well.
Again, I found Gilbert's style a bit distracti...more
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This is one of the best books I've read in ages. Gilbert paints what feels like a real portrait of Eustace Conway, an incredibly smart, passionate man who's committed to bringing people to nature and nature to people. It feels like a real portrait of Conway because, in spite of Gilbert's clear admiration for Conway, she also illustrates his genuine failings.
I'm determined to not write a spoiler review here. Just give it a read. Amazing. You'll wonder where this awesome book has been ...more
I'm determined to not write a spoiler review here. Just give it a read. Amazing. You'll wonder where this awesome book has been ...more
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06/07/09
Beth
added it
This book was so unbelievably brilliant that it just makes me sad for Elizabeth Gilbert. Eat Pray Love?? What happened?? I was also just planning the syllabus for a profile class I'm teaching and went to look up one of my favorite profiles of all time, "Play It Like Your Hair's On Fire," about Tom Waits, which appeared in GQ in 2003, and realized she wrote that too. Of course she did. She's a genius. It's kind of how I feel about Belinda Carlisle. The Go-Go's were so amazing. And then....more
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Read in September, 2008
recommends it for:
fans of Susan Orlean's "The Orchid Thief"
Those of you who only know Elizabeth Gilbert from being annoyed at the tone of her book Eat, Pray, Love might want to give her another shot. The Last American Man is a profile of woodsman Eustace Conway, whose amazing ability to live off the land is matched by the enormity of his personal drive and, it must be said, his ego. The point of the book is not to make you like Conway or even to want to be like Conway. It's about what Conway represents: the idea that there is still a frontier that can b...more
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