Search

Ceremonial Time

Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile

John Hanson Mitchell

“Ceremonial time” occurs when past, present, and future can be perceived simultaneously. Experienced only rarely, usually during ritual dance, this escape from linear time is the vehicle for John Mitchell’s extraordinary writing. In this, his most magical book, he traces the life of a single square mile in New England, from the last ice age through years of human history, including bear shamans, colonists, witches, local farmers, and encroaching industrial “parks.”

Cover Image of Ceremonial Time: Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile
Paper: $19.95 | E-book: $16.99
ISBN-13: 9781611684889
Pages: 256 | Size: 5.5 in. x 8.5 in.
Date Published: August 6, 2013
Screenshot-2023-10-11-at-16.51.58

“I can think of no book that provides so personal and yet so comprehensive a view of America, past, present, and potentially, future.”

The New York Times Book Review

Reviews

  • Astonishing immediacy . . . as though Sherlock Holmes had set out to verify Grey’s musings in his country churchyard. . . . An unqualified success . . . I can think of no book that provides so personal and yet so comprehensive a view of America, past, present, and potentially, future.

    New York Times Book Review
  • A fine Thoreavian ramble… the book has real beauty and quiet power:…

    Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

JOHN HANSON MITCHELL, winner of the 1994 John Burroughs Essay Award, is the author of numerous books. Ceremonial Time is the first in a series of titles in the Scratch Flat Chronicles. His newest book is An Eden of Sorts: A Natural History of My Feral Garden.

Other Recent Titles

Stark Decency

Allen V. Koop

Relocating Eden

Alan Rudolph Marcus

After King Philip's War

Colin G. Calloway, ed.

Arctic Adaptations

Igor Krupnik; Marcia Levenson, trans.; Marcia Levenson, ed.

Barren Grounds

Skip Pessl