Monongahela Books

The latest from Monongahela Books: eight pocket editions of voices from the Early Republic suitable for woodland walking. At roughly 4x7, they slip snugly into the pocket of a heavy overshirt or over-the-shoulder satchel. Emerson’s essays “Nature” & "Self-Reliance," Thoreau’s “Wild Apples,” “Walking” & "A Winter Walk," the only known biographical sketch of “Johnny Appleseed” by one who knew him, Dana Gioia's seminal essay on Longfellow, and a little-known essay on Whitman by one of his early biographers -- subjects steeped in the climate of an earlier America and suited to outdoor reverie and rumination.

These are lightweight, bare-bones editions, free of backcover blurbs or scholarly clutter -- (not that commentary and notes are without their uses, but such fatter editions belong on the shelf, available for consultation, and not weighing down a saunterer’s pack). ~~~ Six are currently available for purchase, while the other two are in the works. Each fits easily in the hand (leaving the other free for an apple or a pipe), while taking one’s repose on a mossy stone beside the trail, or under a spreading oak in a meadow.

https://monongahelabooks.blogspot.com/2025/11/four-new-old-titles-suited-to-woodland.html

THE OLD HOTEL AT THE END OF NIGHT, by BJ Omanson. (Monongahela Books, 2020). 20 pages. $7.50.

Order here:

The Old Hotel at the End of Night A man is driving through the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, in what used to be the Old Republic, the old America, and he breaks down and begins walking-- through a night that never ends in a nation that is not quite gone. ~~~~~ "... a true American artifact, and a rare example of alle...