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49th out of 171 books
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73 voters
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The Last American Man
In this rousing examination of contemporary American male identity, acclaimed author and journalist Elizabeth Gilbert explores the fascinating true story of Eustace Conway. In 1977, at the age of seventeen, Conway left his family's comfortable suburban home to move to the Appalachian Mountains. For more than two decades he has lived there, making fire with sticks, wearing ...more
Paperback, 271 pages
Published
May 27th 2003
by Penguin (Non-Classics)
(first published April 28th 2002)
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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 fo...more
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 happened t...more
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
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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Herbie
added it
I love this story.
I love people who dream an intense, crystal clear dream, and then arrange their lives to see it come true.
I love people who work hard.
I harbor a strange and conflicted love for old-fashioned living and values, and for primitive living. Gilbert describes the conflicts I feel so acutely. The wilderness life she descries combines backwards attitudes about gender and the impracticality and seeming irrelevance of it all with sublime moments, connection with nature,...more
I love people who dream an intense, crystal clear dream, and then arrange their lives to see it come true.
I love people who work hard.
I harbor a strange and conflicted love for old-fashioned living and values, and for primitive living. Gilbert describes the conflicts I feel so acutely. The wilderness life she descries combines backwards attitudes about gender and the impracticality and seeming irrelevance of it all with sublime moments, connection with nature,...more
Jeff Nicholson
rated it
Recommends it for:
anyone who has a huge crush on Eustace Conway
Shelves:
i-give-up
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
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
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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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
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
Eustace Conway lives on the fringe of society. Or more accurately Eustace Conway is living. And society is fat and groggy half asleep on the couch. Conway lives in the woods. He'd be a hermit, if he wasn't taking in folks and teaching them how to rebuild the land and live off of it.
This book is filled with a great personal philosophy of responsibility and backlash to consumerism. But be careful, cause Conway's logic and spirit is highly adictive. Before you know it you'll be living in your back...more
This book is filled with a great personal philosophy of responsibility and backlash to consumerism. But be careful, cause Conway's logic and spirit is highly adictive. Before you know it you'll be living in your back...more
I truly enjoyed this book. The narration and the writing were superb. From the first few sentences I was completely captivated by this story. There is an easiness and rhythm to the storytelling that is magical. What I particularly liked about this biography was how easily it would have been to romanticize Eustace Conway, yet EG didn't do this. She wrote about this man with a dignified honesty: a man with grand noble ideals who at the end of the day is just a man; flawed and haunted.
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You don’t have to be a fan of Eat, Pray, Love to like Gilbert’s biography about the extraordinary (and peculiar) life of Eustace Conway. Gilbert reveals a story of a man who rejects society from an early age to live in the wild. In the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, Eustace Conway hunts his own food, sleeps in a teepee and wears, at times, nothing but an animal-skin loin cloth. Preaching his philosophies to any listening ear, Eustace urges greedy, earth-destroying Americans to sell up t...more
Interestingly, I’m attracted to that type of books these days: I read the book on John Muir [Search for Muir in this blog, on the left menu], and some time before watched The No Impact Man.
These 3 men try each in his own way, to connect deeply with mature and show us how to do so, for the survival of our planet and our own sanity.
I have developed the habit of listening to XM Bookradio while driving. One day, I heard this captivating excerpt, about a certain “Justus” – I thoug...more
These 3 men try each in his own way, to connect deeply with mature and show us how to do so, for the survival of our planet and our own sanity.
I have developed the habit of listening to XM Bookradio while driving. One day, I heard this captivating excerpt, about a certain “Justus” – I thoug...more
A good friend of mine Aaron El Leon Boyd gave me this book while we were traveling in Costa Rica and being that we are both 'American', and in a way running from the false and tired system of Western Capitalism, I was engaged by the title alone. The main character Eustace Coneway depicts in many ways a lost archetype within the psyche of The United States, in that he lives entirely off of the land and has a deep respect for the Native American traditions that he learned from. This tenaciou...more
I liked Gilbert's lively, well-rounded portrait of Eustace Conway, but my enjoyment was tempered by one overriding thought: "Boy, that guy is a DICK." This has nothing to do with Gilbert's breezy, funny style. As a matter of fact, in anyone else's hands, I would have filed Conway's story in the "dull, thudding tract" section of my library. It boggles me that a man who is so aware of his natural surroundings, who lives WITH the earth, who conforms himself to the seasons and do...more
This book will disappoint if you are looking to it primarily for its ideas about the wilderness, ecology, and U.S. culture, about Conway's proposals for a new way. It is instead primarily a biography, with all the fullness that implies. So, there are many (repetitive) details about Conway's love life and his tortured relationship with his father. Still, there are interesting insights, such as how Conway cannot "manage" his love life as project like he does the other projects in his ...more
This book is a rough biography of a self-made mountain man living in the hills of North Carolina. The hero, Eustace Conway, dropped out of society to build his own version of utopia, living off the land, with his own hands and the help/hinderance of a lot of disciples. Somehow he and Elizabeth Gilbert become friends and through this relationship she gets to know Eustace and many people who orbit him. If the protagonist were happy enough living on his own, his life would have been a simple and pr...more
This book is the true story of Eustace Conway, a man who has been living a self-sufficient lifestyle on Turtle Island, his 1,000 acre property in Appalachia. Throughout the years he has hosted many school groups, apprentices, and other interested individuals on his land. He also tours around the country teaching kids and others about the skills of surviving in the wilderness. The author spends a significant about of time with Conway on his property, working alongside him and learning about hi...more
The Last American Man was an amazing book about the journeys of a man who refused to live like the typical American living in the suburbs. When he was only 12 he walked into the wild with nothing and survived off the land for a week. When he was 17 he moved out of his scary childhood and into the wild with his teepee. This was a fantastic book about the adventures and life stories of Eustace Conway.
Overall the book was very entertaining and enjoyable with a couple of slower parts. Th...more
Overall the book was very entertaining and enjoyable with a couple of slower parts. Th...more
This is absolutely one of my most favorite books of all-time. Gilbert captures the tale of the true Last American Man: Eustace Conway. Eustace is the perfect mix between Davy Crockett and Henry David Thoreau; he is a real man of nature. This is the true story of a man who lived his life in nature in the 1960s. He is famous, yet some people (such as myself) heard never heard of him or his story. He has so many stories to tell, so many adventures to share. Gilbert does such a great job of telling ...more
Finally, an Elizabeth Gilbert book I can really get behind! I had a suspicion I would like this book, mostly because it eliminates almost all of the navel-gazing house of cards her other books set up - because it is not, entirely, about her! Her humor and insight shine through, with the perfect amount of her own connection to the material built in to create a viable, genuine story, but leaving the majority of her own baggage at the door. This instead leaves more room for the baggage of her prim...more
Alright, so I don't need to go into my fan-dom for Ms. Gilbert again, but this book is such a great companion to EAT PRAY LOVE. Probably more so that COMMITTED. I wish I had read this first...but I probably wouldn't have even known about it, if it hadn't had been for the freakishly absurd success of EAT PRAY LOVE. Anyway...Eustace Conway is the lone wolf I have been waiting my life to read about. I know that the Amish have been doing what he's been doing forever, but...I've never read about ...more
Of course, Gilbert's book is amazing. I love her writing style -- thorough, humorous, heart-felt...analytical in a way that congratulates the whole (of the story) while taking into account ironies, metaphors, and layered-type reasonings...
This book is about a man's search for peace (that man being Eustace Conway). All the ways in which he finds it and all the way he does not. This is a raw account of his up-bringing, his pursuits, his relationships, and the development of his 100...more
This book is about a man's search for peace (that man being Eustace Conway). All the ways in which he finds it and all the way he does not. This is a raw account of his up-bringing, his pursuits, his relationships, and the development of his 100...more
Thank you, Keely for introducing me to this book - a nonfiction account of Eustace Conway, founder and director of Turtle Island nature preserve outside Boone, North Carolina (where I went to college) and where my roommate learned, from Eustace, how to skin a goat, among other things, and subsequently left said goat head in our freezer for six months. The personal connection peaked my interest. And I've actually been to Turtle Island, seen "Everybody's", the communal sleeping barracks,...more
The book gives an objective and fair account of his personality, but it is not the same as being around Eustace. Although he's intimidating and clearly more skilled and alert than most people go through their entire lives, he's also intuitive, gentle, accepting in a strong real way. The book doesn't describe the relaxing cultural art times just out in nature when Turtle Island is a HOME. It's fascinating to know someone on a limited level and then to read a publication about his whole life hi...more
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.
First of all, anyone can tell from reading some of these other reviews that Eustace Conway is a jerk. He just is; there’s no getting around it. I would even go so far as to say he’s a hypocrite. There’s no doubt that this man is talented and hard-working, and has at some point done all the things he has preached to other people about. And there may have been a point in his life in which he had the proper attitude and motivation to change the world, like he claims he wants to, but here’s where th...more
Greg Pettit
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommended to Greg by:
Karen
Shelves:
non-fiction,
library
Eustace Conway, the titular subject of this book, is a very interesting and unique man. He has amazing stamina and mental acuity that allows him to become adept at just about everything he attempts. He's an independent thinker (in many ways), a self-made man, and intelligent both in depth of knowledge and craftiness. But what really makes him stand out in a crowd (and deserve a book about him) is his devotion to being, for lack of a better word, a mountain man.
Raised in a more or les...more
Raised in a more or les...more
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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ELIZABETH GILBERT is an award-winning writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Her short story collection Pilgrims was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award, and her novel Stern Men was a New York Times notable book. Her 2002 book The Last American Man was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critic’s Circle Award. Since its initial publication in January 2006, her...more
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