An American Child Supreme: The Education of a Liberal Ecologist
Nonfiction

An American Child Supreme

The Education of a Liberation Ecologist
By
John Nichols
“Like a pioneer, Nichols keeps lighting out for the territory ahead of the rest.” —LOS ANGELES TIMES
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John Nichols was raised among naturalists and nurtured by a family history as American as the Stars and Stripes: his great—times five—grandfather signed the Declaration of Independence for New York state. Nichols himself sailed happily through a top-notch private school education and sold his first, best-selling novel, The Sterile Cuckoo, at age twenty-three. At that point, he considered himself “a child blessed by the culture and fated for delirious success.”

But then a short trip to Guatemala changed his life, setting him on a very different path toward radical social and environmental commitment. This remarkable book describes a rich and often tormented journey out of a safe middle-class existence toward belief in what Nichols calls “a liberation ecology.”

ISBN
9781571312532
Publish Date
Pages
116
Dimensions
5 × 8 × 0.56 in
Weight
8.5 oz
Cover Art

Praise and Prizes

  • “This remarkable memoir describes John Nichols’s journey from his East Coast patrimony to belief in what he calls a ‘liberation ecology.’”

    New Republic

  • “John Nichols is a God-forsaken mountain of American conflict, spiritual doubt, political duality and gender confusion. Like a pioneer, he keeps lighting out for the territory ahead of the rest… . His language is fast and furious; his targets in order of rage are: capitalists, developers and politicians.”

    Los Angeles Times

  • “A glimpse of a man fighting his own conscience to make a choice: to drink from a tempting cup of material pleasures or remain true to the more palpable instincts of integrity, humanity, and humility.”

    Bloomsbury Review

  • “Descended from a signer of the Declaration of Independence, John Nichols experienced a kind of conversion experience after a trip to Guatemala radically changed his perspective. The book is an interesting look at a writer from the inside out and serves as a background on the concerns in both his fiction and nonfiction.”

    New Mexico Magazine

  • “John Nichols encapsulates his unusual life and uncompromising vision in a rousing tale of social conscience overriding privilege.”

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