The Tree of the Doves : Ceremony, Expedition, War EPUB

"A unique travelogue" that "explores the nature of terror, its place in the post-9/11 world and how it unites and galvanizes those in the throes of it" (Kirkus Reviews).

Using several ageless questions-"Where do we come from? Where are we going? What shall we do?"-as his point of departure, journalist and award-winning poet Christopher Merrill explores the related issues of terror, modernity, tradition, and epochal transformation. In three extended essays, Merrill observes the performance of a banned ritual in the Malaysian province of Kelatan; traces Saint-John Perse's epic voyage from Beijing to Ulan Bator in 1921 and relates it to the China of today; and embarks on a trip across the Levant in 2007 in the wake of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Merrill asserts that it is in this trinity of human actions-ceremony, expedition, war: all devised to keep terror at bay-that history is formed, and that the technological, political, environmental, and social changes we are witnessing now presage the end of one order and the creation of another.

"Merrill is a 'writer's writer': he spins sentences made of gold." -Publishers Weekly