The Seven Ranges

“Will Hoyt possesses a trait that has become rare: the power of perception. The lens through which Hoyt sees the world is unclouded by ideology, prejudice, fear, cant—anything at all. There is a peculiar and profound pleasure in reading his prose and seeing the world along with him.”


—Jeremy Beer, author of Oscar Charleston





“This is deep, lyrical environmental prose on a level with Thoreau and Wendell Berry, encompassing a spiritual history of our wild sojourn in North America. In a time of epic national turmoil, Mr. Hoyt’s meditations on our homeland literally ground us as so much in culture, politics, and economy is swept away.”


—James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency





“A Berkeley carpenter turned Rust Belt innkeeper—think Beat Catholic with a practical bent—sets out on a towboat up the Ohio River and delivers a beautifully written book full of startling linkages as he interweaves stripmining, Dean Martin, the Civil War, corporate personhood, Jefferson’s ward republics, the Allegheny County Courthouse, and more. Wise Will Hoyt knows that even in a ravaged land, hope abides.”


—Bill Kauffman, author of Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette





“The greatest merit of Hoyt’s book is that it is very well-written. That is not a secondary virtue of a manuscript. Rather the contrary, the quality of the writing is not a packaging; it is the book itself. The very theme of this book is suffused with it. My commendation of it is emphatic.”


—John Lukacs, late author of A New Republic: A History Of The United States In The Twentieth Century