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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Tory Johnson, The Shift
Beth Macy, Factory Man
Wallace J. Nichols, Blue Mind
Maximillian Potter, Shadows in the Vineyard
John J. Ratey, MD and Richard Manning, Go Wild
Josh Sundquist, We Should Hang Out Sometime
Matthew Paul Turner, Our Great Big American God
Newsletters
Copyright
MONTH 1
The Conversation
This day is going to suck.
Its Tuesday, December 20, 2011, a cold, dark winter morning. Having given up on a good nights
sleep, I make my way into the shower. Today, I am meeting with Barbara Fedida, senior vice
president for talent and business at ABC News. She is the highest-ranking woman in the news
division, and Im a contributor on Good Morning America. Its my first time having a one-on-one
with Barbara, and I am fairly confident that there is only one item on the agenda: my weight. I think
she plans to tell me that I am too fat to be on TV and that I must slim down. I am panicked because I
dont just like my job, I love it and want to keep it for a long time.
With a towel perched on my wet head, I take in the quiet of the early morning. This is my safe
haven: a three-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, a storied New York neighborhood that
has been featured in movies ranging from Annie Hall to Spider-Man. Each room is filled with the
people (and the dog) I love. My husband, Peter, is asleep in our bed. Friends say that hes a cross
between George Clooney and Russell Crowe. I can see that, but he also has a wit and warmth that is
all his own. He is my champion and best friend. If he were awake, hed be giving me the pep talk of
the century. Hes always telling me how beautiful I am, and I am so grateful. But I know that no matter
what he sees or says, this meeting is about my weight and Ive got to steel myself for what lies ahead.
My family has supported me in my ongoing battle of the bulge, but I am the only fighter on this
field. Gaining a few pounds in his forties hasnt hurt Peters looks at all. Men are lucky that way.
Down the hall, my fourteen-year-old twins, Jake and Emma, are sleeping. No weight problems there,
and yet I worry that if I cant get my act together and overhaul my diet and my body, I will pass along
my legacy of being overweight and the mental burden that comes with constantly struggling with your
size.
I stare in my closet, frantically pulling pieces off the rack, wondering what outfit will give me the
best illusion of thinness for this meeting. My closet has two bars. The eye-level shelf is for the things
that fit no matter what size I am: shoes and bags in all the designer labels that I have worked so hard
to afford. The other rack holds the black clothes that fitGap, Banana Republic, Talbots, Eileen
Fisher. They dont make high-end designer stuff in my size.
I want a superhero costume, something bulletproof to protect me from the blow that I know is
coming. Instead, what I grab is uninspiring at best: black wool pants and a black silk shirt, and I put
them on with all the courage and hope that I can muster, which is not much right now. Im so tired of
this, of never really being happy with the way I look, no matter where I shop or how much I spend on
clothing. Im sick of the mind games I play, trying to convince myself that Im not really that fat, that
plenty of people weigh a lot more than I do, that America is in the midst of an obesity epidemic, that I
am in good company.
My office is just fourteen blocks from my home, and when I get there I find the first of several
emails from Barbaras assistant. With each one, the venue for our meeting becomes more depressing.
First, its Le Pain Quotidien, the French bistro nearby that specializes in coffee and buttery croissants
for breakfast. Then its Barbaras office at ABC News near Lincoln Center: she is so busy but really
wants to meet today. Finally, its the ABC cafeteria. Oh, great. Im to be humiliated over a Styrofoam
cup of coffee as GMA colleagues stroll by and guess exactly why Barbara has summoned me.
I have survived not one but three anchor teams at GMA: Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer, Diane
and Robin Roberts, and now Robin and George Stephanopoulos. Not one of them has ever said a
word to me about my weight. In fact, the bosses routinely praise my work, which enables me to think
that a job well done means theyre willing to overlook the obvious. But Im not naive: I have been
around television news long enough to know that thinness rules. My fit colleagues underscore that
truth.
I arrive a few minutes early to scope out the scene. Barbara walks in on time wearing a fitted
brown sweater that complements her bouncy brown hair. If shes wearing any makeup, its very little.
There is an effortless beauty to her, a trait she shares with many women in TV news.
We pass through the breakfast displaybreads and muffins, cold cereal, eggs, bacon.
What would you like? Barbara asks.
Clearly, shes testing me to see if Ill biteliterally.
I opt for only a bottle of water. She grabs coffee. We find a table.
I deliberate: Take off my coat or leave it on? It adds bulk but also hides bulges. I remove it but
keep it on my lap, thinking Ill fool her.
I keep watching the clock. We spend fifty minutes catching up, talking about everything but the
matter at hand: our kids, New York City schools, husbands, and GMAs ratings surge. We talk about
how some women lack assertiveness in their careers. Barbara is funny and smart, like a character in a
Nora Ephron movie. I marvel at her confidence. It could be just another great conversation with one
of the many savvy women Ive met over the years in network news, except I am aware of the fact that
Barbara is not here to bond with me. She is warm, but she is also extremely direct. I know I am about
to get it. Then I do.
You dont look as good as you could, she says, smoothly changing the topic. I dont think your
clothing does you any favors.
In an instant, the blood rushes to my head. I feel slightly faint. My palms become sweaty and I start
to twist my wedding ring, a nervous tic Ive never once experienced before now. My mouth is dry. I
try to remain composed even though Im freaking out.
Im wondering if anyone is watching us. It doesnt matter that no one I know is around. Im certain
that Barbara is starting out slowly and will soon move in for the kill: How could you expect to be on
TV when youve let yourself go? Dont you have any self-respect? You knew this day would come,
right?
But she says none of that. Instead, Barbara offers to connect me with Sandy, a stylist who helps
women make smart wardrobe choices.
Im staring blankly at her on purpose. Im not going to make her job easy by giving her even a hint
that I know my weight is a problem, that although I can easily and happily talk to millions of viewers
on TV, dressing for my segment is an ongoing challenge. Finally, I crack a smile and say as cheerfully
as I can, Sure, that sounds great. Id be happy to meet Sandy. Id love her help.
This is a lie. Unless Sandy has a magic wand that will whisk away the pounds, I doubt she can do
any good.
But Barbara is not done. I always feel better when I work out. Exercise gives me so much
energy, she presses, mildly, neither asking if I exercise nor ordering me to.
I could tell her the whole sordid story about how much I hate breaking a sweat and how I havent
taken a gym class since elementary school, about how in junior high a kid named Brian called me a fat
cow when I corrected his answer and how the whole class, even the teacher, erupted in laughter. But
that would go against rule number one: I do not discuss my weight with anyone except Peter. I would
never share the anxiety I have about my size with people I work with, let alone someone who has the
power to fire me.
Barbara continues talking as if she and I are old friends and as if everything she brings up, from
her favorite spin class to the flattering effect of V-neck sweaters, is just girlish chitchat. I stare at her
BlackBerry, praying for it to ping and summon her back to her office upstairs. Please, God, give her
a crisis. Please, God, let this be over. But there is no such relief. At exactly the one-hour mark,
Barbara wraps up our meeting. Numbly, I thank her for caring enough to have this chat and tell her
that I look forward to meeting Sandy, which I do not. At all. We hug good-bye and wish each other a
happy holiday. It is five days before Christmas. After six happy years on TV, I feel like somebody
just put a lump of coal in my stocking.
As I walk quickly down the escalator and out the door onto West Sixty-Sixth Street, I try to assess
the damage. I did not cry. Advantage Tory. She didnt put me on the spot, humiliate me, or embarrass
me. Three points for Barbara. I marvel at how slick she was. She did not threaten me. Not once did
she call me fat, say I had to lose weight, or even hint that my job was in jeopardy. The words fat,
overweight, or obese never came up. But I also take her words for the clear warning shot they
are meant to be: lose weight or else.
What the F am I going to do?
About the Author
Tory Johnson is wild about small business success, which can be traced to
having been unexpectedly fired from a job she loved. The permanent scar
from that pink slip led Tory to shift from employee to entrepreneur. Shes
built two multi-million-dollar businessesWomen for Hire and Spark &
Hustlewhile serving as a weekly Good Morning America contributor, New
York Times bestselling author, contributing editor to SUCCESS magazine,
and a popular speaker.
You can visit her online at shiftwithtory.com.
Hachette Books
September 2014
PROLOGUE
The Dusty Road to Dalian
John D. Bassett III was snaking his way through the sooty streets of rural northern China on a three-
day fact-finding mission. It was 2002, and the third-generation Virginia furniture maker was gathering
ammunition for an epic battle to keep the sawdust in his factory flying. He was close to the border of
North Korea, on the hunt for a dresser built in the style of a nineteenth-century French monarch. If he
could find the man whod made that damn Louis Philippe, he might just save his business.
Back at Vaughan-Bassett, his factory in Galax, line workers had already deconstructed the dresser
piece by piece and proved that the one hundred dollars the Chinese were wholesaling it for was far
less than the cost of the materialsa violation of World Trade Organization laws. The sticker on the
back read Dalian, China, and now here he was, some eight thousand miles away from his Blue Ridge
Mountains, trying to pinpoint the source of the cheap chest of drawers.
It was November and snowy. The car creaked with every icy pothole it hit.
Word had already reached him through a friendly translator a few months earlier: There was a
factory owner in the hinterlands, a hundred miles outside of Dalian, whod been bragging that he was
going to bring the Bassett furniture family down.
If they were going to war, Bassett told his son Wyatt, their family needed to heed Napoleons
advice: Know your enemy.
Today, for once in his life, JBIII sat silent. The car lurched along northward, farther into the
remote province of Liaoning.
The first time John Bassett visited an Asian factory was in 1984, and it was only after dinner and way
too many drinks that an elderly factory owner in Taiwan revealed his real opinion of American
business leaders. The man was so candid that at first, his own interpreter clammed up, refusing to
translate his words.
The Taiwanese businessman had negotiated plenty of deals with Europeans and South Americans,
but hed never met people quite like the Americans.
What do you mean? JBIII pressed.
I have figured you guys out, the translator finally relayed.
Tell me.
If the price is right, you will do anything. We have never seen people before who are this greedy
or this naive.
The Americans were not only knocking one another over in a stampede to import the cheapest
furniture they could but they were also ignoring the fact that they were jeopardizing their own
factories back home by teaching their Asian competitors every nuance of the American furniture-
making trade.
When we get on top, the man said, dont expect us to be dumb enough to do for you what youve
been dumb enough to do for us.
It would take many more trips to Asia before it became clear to JBIII what the Taiwanese furniture
maker meant. During that time, two events helped ensure China would indeed get on top: Chinas
admission into the WTO, and the great exodus of 160 million rural Chinese to the citiesthe largest
migration in human history.
It would take the hundred-dollar dresser and getting eyeball-to-eyeball with the man behind it
before JBIII fully understood the battle he was about to enter. The rules of war had changed
drasticallyand cowboy capitalism seemed to be the only rule of international trade.
It was cold inside the factory where Bassett finally met with businessman and Communist Party
official He YunFeng in northern China in November 2002. The workers breath froze in little puffs of
vapor. The Chinese furniture magnate looked him in the damn eye, Bassett recalled. Then he said
something that raised the hair on the back of the Virginians neck.
He YunFeng would be happy to provide Bassett with the dressers at a fraction of what they cost to
make, a feat Bassett knew would not be possible without Chinese government subsidies. All Bassett
had to do in return, He YunFeng said, was close his own factories.
Close his factories? John Bassett pictured the whole lot of his hard-charging forebears turning en
masse in their graves. He thought of his 1,730 workersplainspoken mountain types, many of whom
had followed their parents and grandparents into the factoriesstanding in unemployment lines
instead of assembly lines. He thought of the smokestacks that for a century had borne his familys
name and of the legacy he wanted to leave his kids.
Back at home, he felt alone in the industry, with only his two sons and his scrappy little factories.
He was the last American furniture maker willing to raise hell about what was happening. If he could
prove the Chinese were selling the product below the cost of the materials, if he could prove their
factories were buoyed by Communist government subsidies in an illegal price dump designed to drive
American companies out of business, then his company just might survive. If he could convince a
majority of his industry to join him in persuading the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S.
International Trade Commission of the truth, maybe the entire industry could be saved.
But those were big ifs, with potentially huge pitfalls. Surely he would be scorned by both his
longtime customers and his competitors. Hed be ridiculed by the handful of families that had ruled
the fifty-billion-dollar industry, as well as some members of his own family, who were too busy
closing down factoriesand cashing their checksto protect their furniture-making legacy.
Hed be ostracized for trying to stop the flood of furniture jobs from America, for striking back
against the one-percenters who were about to move damn near all their plants to Asia and tear the
heart out of the Blue Ridge region he loved.
From the taverns of Virginia to the halls of power in Washington, DC; from the factory floor to the
back roads of Liaoning, China, where he would uncover a great lie at the heart of globalization, John
Bassett was going to war.
1
The Tipoff
What were all them little people doing at work today?
BASSETT FURNITURE LINE WORKER ON THE PRESENCE OF TAIWANESE FACTORY MANAGERS
Once in a reporters career, if one is very lucky, a person like John D. Bassett III comes along.
JBIII is inspirational. Hes brash. Hes a sawdust-covered good old boy from rural Virginia, a larger-
than-life rule breaker who for more than a decade has stood almost single handedly against the
outflow of furniture jobs from America.
Hes an asshole! more than one of his competitors barked when they heard I was writing a book
about globalization with JBIII as a main character. Over the course of researching this book, over the
course of hearing his many lectures and listening to him evade my questions by telling me the same
stories over and over, there were times that I agreed.
I first heard about him in Rocky Mount, Virginia, about half an hour from my home in Roanoke,
while eating breakfast with my neighbor and good friend Joel Shepherd. Joel owns Virginia Furniture
Market, a Rocky Mount retail establishment that began thriving at the same time the import boom hit.
Right now as I type, Im sitting in a paisley recliner that my husband and I still fight over because its
the comfiest seat in our 1926 American foursquare. I remember Joel showing it to me in his store,
rocking it back and forth. Despite what I might have heard about made-in-China furniture, he told me,
a swarm of high-school wrestlers could pin one another on this chair and it would not fall apart. With
the friendly-neighbor discount, I bought it for a hundred and sixty bucks.
I had invited Joel to breakfast to pick his brain. I was working on a Roanoke Times series on the
impact of globalization on southwest Virginias company towns, articles inspired by the work of
freelance photographer Jared Soares, whod been making the hourlong trek from Roanoke to
Martinsville three times a week for more than a year. His photos were gritty and moving: church
services and tattoo artists; a textile-plant conveyor belt converted for use in a food bank; a disabled
minister named Leonard whiling away the time in his kitchen in the middle of the afternoon. The
people of Martinsville and Henry County, Virginia, were refreshingly open about what had happened
to them, Jared told me, and hed long wondered why our newspaper didnt do more to document the
effects of globalization in our mountainous corner of the world.
Not that many other media outlets had done any better. According to a 2009 Pew Research Center
survey, the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression was largely being covered from the
top down, primarily from the perspective of big business and the Obama administration. The
percentage of economy stories that featured ordinary people and displaced workers? Just 2 percent. If
the people of Henry County wanted their stories to be heard, Jared and I were going to have to help.
It would be up to writers and photographers like us to paint the long-view picture of what had
happened when, one after another, the textile and then the furniture factories closed and set up shop
instead in Mexico, China, and Vietnam, where workers were paid a fraction of what the American
laborers were earning. In the Henry County region alone, some twenty thousand people had lost their
jobs.
In the early 1960s, Martinsville was Virginias manufacturing powerhouse, known for being home
to more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the country. But by 2009, one-fifth of the towns
labor force was unemployed, and many of the millionaires had fled for cheerier landscapes. Henry
County was now the capital of long-term unemployment, with Virginias highest rate for nine of the
past eleven years.
A week before my breakfast with Joel, an empty Bassett Furniture plant had burned to the ground.
Police arrested Silas Crane, a thirty-four-year-old Henry County man whod been trying to salvage
the factorys copper electrical casings to sell on the black market but instead had sparked an
electrical fire. His burns were visible in his police mug shot. Id heard many similar stories, as some
of the desperate moved from the unemployment rolls to the crime rosters. A stranger approached one
woman I know outside a CVS pharmacy and offered her a hundred dollars if shed sign for the
purchase of the cold medicine pseudoephedrinethe main ingredient used to make methamphetamine.
Most people, though, were scraping by in legal waysbabysitting, growing their own food,
working part-time at Walmart. The director of an area food bank told me that he could divine what
people used to do for work by their disfigurements: The women whod been bent over sewing
machines all day making sweatshirts had humps on their backs. The men who culled lumber were
missing fingers. Were the last, last, last resort, to come stand in line and get a box of old food, he
said.
But, Joel explained, there was this feisty old man in Galax, a small town about seventy miles away
from Rocky Mount, whod managed to buck the trend. He was from the family that had once run the
largest furniture-making operation in the world, Bassett Furniture Industries. His name was John D.
Bassett III, and, yes, he was from that Bassett familythe name inscribed on the back of so many
American headboards and dressers; the name often stamped on the bedroom suite behind door number
three on Lets Make a Deal . The story of how he fought against the tides of globalization was full of
legal cunning, political intrigue, and, judging from what Joel told me about Bassetts Asian
competitors, some serious cowboy grit.
As Joel explained over a plate of sausage biscuits and gravy that morning, imitating the patriarchs
booming voice and cringe-inducing chutzpah: The fucking Chi-Comms were not going to tell him
how to make furniture!
But there was another, even juicier element to the story. John Bassett was no longer living in the
eponymous company town of Bassett, Virginia. Hed been booted out of his familys business by a
domineering relative. Three decades later, the family squabble turned corporate coup still had local
tongues wagging with talk of a living-room fight scene (some say it was the front porch), a rescue-
squad call, and, my favorite detail: John Bassett tipping the ambulance driver a hundred bucks not to
tell anybody that hed had his battered brother-in-law hauled away, like something out of Dynasty.
But was any of it true? And what did the family infighting have to do with John Bassett giving the
middle finger to the lure of easy money overseas?
Plenty, it would turn out. But peeling that onion would take me more than a year. It would have me
burning up U.S. Route 58, the curvy mountain road that meanders through the former company towns
just north of the Virginia North Carolina line, where it hits you why the people of Henry County have
come to call what happened the 58 virus.
It would send me across the Blue Ridge to John Bassetts billowing smokestacks in Galax; to the
International Home Furnishings Market in High Point, North Carolina, to meet a crop of young MBAs
and marketing execs in their skinny suits and aggressive glasses; and, on the advice of laid-off Stanley
Furniture worker Wanda Perdue, to Surabaya, Indonesia, where much of the worlds wooden
bedroom furniture is now made.
I first met Wanda in early 2012 outside a community college computer lab, where she came for
regular tutoring in math. She was fifty-eight years old, cobbling together a living by working part-time
at Walmart and hoping to land a full-time position as soon as she got her associates degree in office
administration. Her one splurge was buying Lucks pinto beans, the only non-store-brand food she
allowed herself.
The farthest shed been from home was a trip to Myrtle Beach shed taken three years before. It
was her first time seeing the oceanat the age of fifty-five.
I want you to see what they do in Indonesia and explain to me why we cant do that here no
more, she said.
Fair enough, I thought.
Joel and I were sitting in a landscape of rusted silos and vacant factories. Weeds sprouted through
cracks in empty parking lots. Across the street from us was the shell of Lane Furniture, another
defunct furniture maker that, like Stanley, had family connections to Bassett. In the 1920s, Edward
Lane pushed the notion that every teenage girl in America needed to store her trousseau in a hope
chest made of protective cedarwood, a safe place to keep her hopes and household accessories until
she landed the man of her dreams. By the time soldiers returned from World War II, the cedar chest
was ubiquitous, a must-have in the starter kit for a suburban home. Its the Real Love-Gift, Say
Americas Most Romantic Sweethearts, proclaimed a 1948 ad featuring Audie Murphy, the
decorated combat soldier and movie star.
Joel pointed to the silk mills where his aunts had once worked, now closed, every one of them: the
victims of what economists call creative destruction. The lost jobs and vanishing industries that
resulted from the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and Chinas
joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 were necessary outcomes, the theory goes. Over time,
society becomes richer and more productive, and citizens across the globe benefit from higher living
standards.
Thomas L. Friedman devotes nearly all 639 pages of The World Is Flat to the benefits of
globalization, noting that it saved American consumers roughly $600 billion, extended more capital to
businesses to invest in new innovations, and helped the Federal Reserve hold interest rates down,
which in turn gave Americans a chance to buy or refinance homes.
Or as Joel put it, reminding me of my hundred-and-sixty-dollar recliner: Weve all enjoyed the
benefits of falling prices. A person can get far more value for [her] furniture dollar now than she
could thirty years ago. Not to mention that globalization has improved the standard of living among
factory workers in China, Vietnam, and Indonesia, people who used to toil in rice paddies and farm
fields.
The car put the carriage makers out of work, just like the Internet hurt mail carriers and many of
my own newspaper colleaguesone of the reasons my newspaper shrank its core coverage area and
no longer has a Henry County beat.
But as the daughter of a displaced factory worker, I wondered about the dinghies being sunk by
globalizations rising tide. I questioned why the unemployment stories rarely quoted the displaced
workers or mentioned the fact that many folks in the corporate offices had simply switched jobs from
factory bosses to global-sourcing managers.They were still there, still fabulously employed, some
hauling in seven-figure salaries. When the big guys werent off traveling the globe, their cars were
among the few left in the company parking lots.
In small towns across America, the front-page stories about escalating drug crime and lower test
scores seemed somehow linked to the page 3 briefs on deaths in faraway garment factories. But that
connection was hard to defineand even harder to report ongiven the complex Spirograph of
interlooping supply chains, impotent regulators, and press-avoiding CEOs.
No one, it seemed, was minding the back room of this new global store.
My first memory: Riding with an older sister to pick up my mom from work at Grimes, the
aircraft-lighting factory in Urbana, Ohio. Mom worked the graveyard shift when the economy was
good. When it wasnt, she waitressedbadly, she saidand watched other peoples kids. At
Grimes, she sat with other women at long tables in a cavernous, dimly lit rooms, tucked into a row of
Quonset huts. They soldered strobe lights for airplanes. When she got home, she used to pay me a
quarter to rub her throbbing neck.
I remember pointing to airplanes passing by overhead and saying to my friends, See that light?
My mom made that. So what if the lights Mom soldered were fixed to military transport planes, not
those passenger jets I pointed out. My moms handiwork was stellar. You could see it up there, right
near the stars.
The Vietnam War ended, and it would be a long economic slog in Urbana before the aircraft
lighting workers benefited from a thirteen-million-dollar contract to make searchlights for Black
Hawk helicopters, in 2012, some fifteen years after the heirs of inventor Warren Old Man Grimes
cashed out. Honeywell International now runs Urbanas aerospace lighting operations in modern
facilities staffed by about half the number of assembly workers it once employed. The company that
used to be the towns sugar daddy now employs about 650, down from 1,300 at its peak, with much of
the production accomplished via circuit cards and high-tech machinery rather then hand labor. One of
my high-school buddies helps manage the outsourced engineersvia video teleconferencingin
Bangalore, India, where theyre paid one quarter of what their American counterparts earn.
Throughout my childhood, my dad nursed his psychological wounds from World War II in VFW
and American Legion halls. He was a housepainter by trade, but in my shame, I saw him as the
serially unemployed town drunk. He didnt attend my band concerts or my softball games or even my
high-school graduationlapses that seem almost criminal to me now that I have kids. But thats the
way it was, and since I didnt know any different, it didnt keep me awake at night. The best thing he
provided was access to a doting grandmother: his mom, who lived next door, taught me to read when
I was four, and kept a roof over our heads (she owned our house).
We werent victims of globalization. But, like the blue-collar folks I interviewed in Bassett and
Galax who followed their parents and grandparents to the assembly lines, we didnt have a lot of
options beyond high school. I managed to get to college thanks to the nudging of wonderful teachers
and friends (and friends parents), federally funded Pell Grants, work-study jobs, and scholarships.
My older brother edged his way into the middle class through grit and brains. A high-school dropout
with moderate epilepsy, he progressed through a series of car-safety jobs until he landed at a major
automotive research-and-development center in Raymond, Ohio, where he designs crash-test fixtures.
By the time I graduated from college and got my first newspaper job, he was making more than twice
my salary.
A few years back, a group of researchers at the University of Virginia invited him to share the
details of his work. My brother, with his GED and a few community college courses under his belt,
was summoned to Mr. Jeffersons University to tell those PhDs what hed put together by way of
experience and elbow grease. Not long ago his company gave him a bonus for inventing a new
process that saved it thousands of dollars. Hes been lucky to get to use his innate intelligence despite
his lack of a formal degree. Its no big deal, he tells me when I brag about his ability to make or fix
not just cars but anything. Mostly its just common sense.
The moment I heard there was a company owner who had actually taken on big business and the
Peoples Republic of China, I knew I had to find out who John Bassett was. He had not only kept his
small factory going but somehow managed to turn it into the largest wooden-bedroom-furniture
factory in America.
I got on the highway to Galax to meet the Southern patriarch, then seventy-four, at his Vaughan-
Bassett Furniture Company. Id already mapped out his insanely twisted family tree at the Virginia
Room of the Roanoke City Library, already called around to get the real scoop about his long-
simmering family feud. Id already interviewed several Henry County textile and furniture workers
who were laid off not long after Taiwanese managers showed up to take pictures of the Virginia
assembly lines so they could copy them back home.
One woman described her mom hobbling home from work, her knees shot from decades of
standing on concrete floors, and wondering aloud, What were all them little people doing at work
today?
I already knew that JBIII (as I began to refer to him) was grooming his middle-aged sons, Wyatt
and Doug, to take over. Both had returned home after business school to help save the family
company. Id heard, too, that hed cut their salaries when the recession hit rather than lay off more
line workers, and he personally stopped pulling a paycheck during the leanest years.
One rainy afternoon, a furniture-store owner in nearby Collinsville described for me how
globalization had taken a 70 percent bite out of his business, a store that used to be frequented by
people who worked in the Henry County textile and furniture plants. Delano Thomassons father had
worked down the road from Bassett at Stanley Furniture, in Stanleytown, and his mother down
another road at Fieldcrest, a sprawling textile plant started by Chicago-based Marshall Fieldsand
now the site of a weekly community food bank. (In the ladies room of the Fieldale Caf, a meat-and-
three diner frequented by retirees, a framed photograph proudly displays what put this town on the
map: a stack of Fieldcrest towels.)
Bassett Furniture was no longer made in Bassett, Delano explained in his Southern drawl as rain
plinked into metal buckets set down to protect the sofas and bedroom suites (pronounced suits in
Southern furniture lingo). With his determination, John Bassett probably would have kept some of
Bassett Furniture factories going if he couldve kept the company.
I should have made up a shorthand for that statement the first time I heard it. Ive interviewed
scores of people since then whove said essentially the same thing.
Delano knew all about JBIIIs covert mission to Dalian, China, and he had his own version of the
evil-brother-in-law yarnthe story of the man whod elbowed JBIII out of the CEO job at Bassett
Furniture, the company John Bassett III had been reared to run. But would any of the Bassetts open up
to me about those things? Would JBIII reveal what it felt like to be the family black sheep with a
dresser-size chip on his shoulder? Would he tell me the real story of how hed fought the Chinese? If
he wouldnt, would the people who grew up under the thumb of the family that ran the company town
be bold enough to spill the beans?
You dont even realize what kind of spiderweb youve got going, said Bassett Furnitures
longtime corporate pilot, a man who worked for years under John Bassetts brother-in-law and
nemesis, Bob Spilman. War and Peace will seem like a ten-cent novel compared to your spiderweb.
But lucky for you, the scorpion is already dead, he added, referring to Spilman, the Bassett CEO
who could be equally brilliant and biting.
JBIII comes from an imposing family of multimillionaires whose ancestors signed the Magna
Carta and who maintain a persistent but unspoken code that, no matter what, one should always keep
the family secrets where they belong: in the family closet. What secrets would he tell me, the daughter
of a former factory worker?
I relate better to people like Octavia Witcher, a fifty-five-year-old displaced Stanley Furniture
worker who gave me her elderly mothers phone number as a contact, because her own phone was
about to be turned off. And to people like divorced former Tultex worker Mary Redd, who described
trying to raise her fourteen-year-old daughter alone, working the only job she could findas a thirty-
hour-a-week receptionist, with no benefits. When she told me that, I recalled receiving full financial
aid for college because my mom, widowed by that time, made just eight thousand dollars a year test-
driving cars for a Honda subcontractor.
When Mary recounted running into the former Tultex CEO at a party she was helping cater for
Martinsvilles elite, what she said to him literally made me gasp: If Tultex were to open back up
today and the only way I could get there would be to crawl on my belly like a snake, I would do it.
John Bassett grew up with chauffeurs, vacation homes, and prep schools. I was the longshot and the
underdog, but fortunately for me, John Bassett was too, whether he was ready to admit it to a reporter
or not.
With any luck at all, he would help me explain this circuitous piece of American history, from its
hardwood forests to its executive boardrooms; from handsaws and planing tools to smartphones and
Skype; from the oak logs that sailed from the port of Norfolk, Virginia, to Asia and then returned,
months later, in the form of dressers and beds.
About the Author
Beth Macy writes about outsiders and underdogs. Her work has appeared in
national magazines and the Roanoke Times, where her reporting has won
more than a dozen national awards, including a Nieman Fellowship for
Journalism at Harvard. She lives in Roanoke, Virginia.
You can visit her online at intrepidpapergirl.com.
To learn more, visit littlebrown.com/factoryman.html.
Little, Brown and Company
July 2014
1
Why Do We Love Water So Much?
Water is lifes matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.
ALBERT SZENT-GYRGYI, M. D.,
DISCOVERER OF VITAMIN C
Im standing on a pier at the Outer Banks of North Carolina, fifty feet above the Atlantic. To the left
and right, forward, back, and below, all I can see is ocean. Im wearing a light blue hat that looks like
a bejeweled swim cap, and a heavy black cable snakes down my back like a ponytail. Even though I
look like an extra from an Esther Williams movie who wandered into Woody Allens Sleeper by
mistake, in truth Im a human lab rat, here to measure my brains response to the ocean.
The cap is the nerve center of a mobile electroencephalogram (EEG) unit, invented by Dr. Stephen
Sands, biomedical science expert and chief science officer of Sands Research. Steves a big, burly,
balding guy of the sort that could be mistaken for the local high school science teacher whos also the
football coach, or perhaps the captain of one of the deep-sea fishing boats that call the Outer Banks
home. An El Paso (a city on the San Antonio River) resident by way of Long Beach, California, and
Houston, Texas, Steve spent years in academia as a professor, using brain imaging to research
Alzheimers disease. In 1998 he established Neuroscan, which became the largest supplier of EEG
equipment and software for use in neurological research. In 2008 Steve founded Sands Research, a
company that does neuromarketing, a new field using behavioral and neurophysiological data to track
the brains response to advertising. Peoples responses to any kind of stimulus, including
advertising, include conscious activitythings we can verbalizeand subconscious activity, he
once wrote. But the subconscious responses cant be tracked through traditional market research
methods. When groups of neurons are activated in the brain by any kind of stimulusa picture, a
sound, a smell, touch, taste, pain, pleasure, or emotiona small electrical charge is generated, which
indicates that neurological functions such as memory, attention, language processing, and emotion are
taking place in the cortex. By scrutinizing where those electrical charges occur in the brain, Steves
sixty-eight-channel, full-spectrum EEG machine can measure everything from overall engagement to
cognition, attention, the level of visual or auditory stimulation, whether the subjects motor skills are
involved, and how well the recognition and memory circuits are being stimulated. When you
combine EEG scans with eye-movement tracking, you get unique, entirely nonverbal data on how
someone is processing the media or the real-world environment, moment by moment, Steve says.
Given current perplexity about the value of promotional efforts, Steves data are increasingly
sought after. Sands Research does advertising impact studies for some of the largest corporations in
the world; its perhaps best known for an Annual Super Bowl Ad Neuro Ranking, which evaluates
viewers neurological responses to those $3.8-million-per-thirty-second spots. (Among those that
Steves team measured were the well known ads that featured people sitting on a beach, backs to the
camera as they gazed at white sand and blue water, Corona beers on the table between them, and only
the lapping of the sea as a soundtrack. That campaign made the brewer famous, forever associated
with tropical ocean leisure.)
In the months prior to my trip to the Outer Banks, Id been contacted by Sands Researchs director
of business development, Brett Fitzgerald. Bretts an outside kind of guy with a history of working
with bears in Montana. Hed heard about my work combining water science with neuroscience and
contacted me to see if we could do some sort of project together. Before I knew it, he was on a plane
to California, and we met along the coast north of my home to talk brain on ocean. Not long after, I
was on a plane heading to North Carolina.
Today Brett has fitted me with a version of the Sands Research EEG scanning apparatus that can
detect human brain activity with the same level of precision as an fMRI (functional magnetic
resonance imaging). The data from the electrodes in this ornamented swim cap are sampled 256 times
per second and, when amplified for analysis, will allow neuro-scientists to see in real time which
areas of the brain are being stimulated. Typically such data are used to track shoppers responses in
stores like Walmart as they stop to look at new products on a shelf. In this case, however, the sixty-
eight electrodes plugged into the cap on my head are for measuring my every neurological up and
down as I plunge into the ocean. Its the first time equipment like this has been considered for use at
(or in) the water, and Im a little anxious about both the current incompatibility (no pun intended)
between the technology and the ocean, but also about what we might learn. So is Brettthe cap and
accompanying scanning device arent cheap. In the future such a kit will be made waterproof and used
underwater, or while someone is surfing. But for today, were just hoping that neither the equipment
nor I will be the worse for wear after our testing and scheming at the salt-sprayed pier.
Its only recently that technology has enabled us to delve into the depths of the human brain and
into the depths of the ocean. With those advancements our ability to study and understand the human
mind has expanded to include a stream of new ideas about perception, emotions, empathy, creativity,
health and healing, and our relationship with water. Several years ago I came up with a name for this
human water connection: Blue Mind, a mildly meditative state characterized by calm, peacefulness,
unity, and a sense of general happiness and satisfaction with life in the moment. It is inspired by water
and elements associated with water, from the color blue to the words we use to describe the
sensations associated with immersion. It takes advantage of neurological connections formed over
millennia, many such brain patterns and preferences being discovered only now, thanks to innovative
scientists and cutting-edge technology.
In recent years, the notion of mindfulness has edged closer and closer to the mainstream. What
was once thought of as a fringe quest for Eastern vacancy has now been recognized as having
widespread benefits. Today the search for the sort of focus and awareness that characterizes Blue
Mind extends from the classroom to the boardroom to the battlefield, from the doctors office to the
concert hall to the worlds shorelines. The stress produced in our overwhelmed lives makes that
search more urgent.
Waters amazing influence does not mean that it displaces other concerted efforts to reach a
mindful state; rather, it adds to, enhances, and expands. Yet this book is not a field guide to
meditation, nor a detailed examination of other means toward a more mindful existence. To use a
water-based metaphor, it offers you a compass, a craft, some sails, and a wind chart. In an age when
were anchored by stress, technology, exile from the natural world, professional suffocation, personal
anxiety, and hospital bills, and at a loss for true privacy, casting off is wonderful. Indeed, John
Jerome wrote in his book Blue Rooms that the thing about the ritual morning plunge, the entry into
water that provides the small existential moment, is its total privacy. Swimming is between me and
the water, nothing else. The moment the water encloses me, I am, gratefully, alone. Open your Blue
Mind and the ports of call will become visible.
To properly navigate these depths, over the past several years Ive brought together an eclectic
group of scientists, psychologists, researchers, educators, athletes, explorers, businesspeople, and
artists to consider a fundamental question: what happens when our most complex organthe brain
meets the planets largest featurewater?
As a marine biologist as familiar with the water as I am with land, I believe that oceans, lakes,
rivers, pools, even fountains can irresistibly affect our minds. Reflexively we know this: theres a
good reason why Corona chose a beach and not, say, a stockyard. And there are logical explanations
for our tendency to go to the waters edge for some of the most significant moments of our lives. But
why?
I look out from the pier at the vast Atlantic and imagine all the ways that the sight, sound, and
smell of the water are influencing my brain. I take a moment to notice the feelings that are arising. For
some, I know, the ocean creates fear and stress; but for me it produces awe and a profound,
immersive, and invigorating peace. I take a deep breath and imagine the leap, cables trailing behind
me as I plunge into the waves surging around the pier. The EEG readings would reflect both my fear
and exhilaration as I hit the water feet first. I imagine Dr. Sands peering at a monitor as data come
streaming in.
Water fills the light, the sound, the airand my mind.
Our (Evolving) Relationship to Water
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W. H. AUDEN
Theres something about water that draws and fascinates us. No wonder: its the most omnipresent
substance on Earth and, along with air, the primary ingredient for supporting life as we know it. For
starters, ocean plankton provides more than half of our planets oxygen. There are approximately
332.5 million cubic miles of water on Earth96 percent of it saline. (A cubic mile of water contains
more than 1.1 trillion gallons.) Water covers more than 70 percent of Earths surface; 95 percent of
those waters have yet to be explored. From one million miles away our planet resembles a small blue
marble; from one hundred million miles its a tiny, pale blue dot. How inappropriate to call this
planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean, author Arthur C. Clarke once astutely commented.
That simple blue marble metaphor is a powerful reminder that ours is an aqueous planet. Water
is the sine qua non of life and seems to be all over the universe and so its reasonable for NASA to
use a follow the water strategy as a first cut or shorthand in our quest to locate other life in the
universe, Lynn Rothschild, an astrobiologist at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View,
California, told me. While it may not be the only solvent for life, it certainly makes a great one since
it is abundant, its liquid over a broad temperature range, it floats when solid, allowing for ice-
covered lakes and moons, and its what we use here on Earth.
Whether searching the universe or roaming here at home humans have always sought to be by or
near water. Its estimated that 80 percent of the worlds population lives within sixty miles of the
coastline of an ocean, lake, or river. Over half a billion people owe their livelihoods directly to
water, and two-thirds of the global economy is derived from activities that involve water in some
form. Approximately a billion people worldwide rely primarily on water-based sources for protein.
(Its very possible that increased consumption of omega-3 oils from eating fish and shellfish played a
crucial role in the evolution of the human brain. And, as well discuss later in the book, the seafood
market is now global in a manner that could never have been imagined even a few decades ago.) We
use water for drinking, cleansing, working, recreating, and traveling. According to the U.S.
Geological Survey, each person in the United States uses eighty to one hundred gallons of water every
day for what we consider our basic needs. In 2010 the General Assembly of the United Nations
declared, Safe and clean drinking water is a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life.
Our innate relationship to water goes far deeper than economics, food, or proximity, however. Our
ancient ancestors came out of the water and evolved from swimming to crawling to walking. Human
fetuses still have gill-slit structures in their early stages of development, and we spend our first
nine months of life immersed in the watery environment of our mothers womb. When were born,
our bodies are approximately 78 percent water. As we age, that number drops to below 60 percent
but the brain continues to be made of 80 percent water. The human body as a whole is almost the
same density as water, which allows us to float. In its mineral composition, the water in our cells is
comparable to that found in the sea. Science writer Loren Eiseley once described human beings as a
way that water has of going about, beyond the reach of rivers.
1
We are inspired by waterhearing it, smelling it in the air, playing in it, walking next to it,
painting it, surfing, swimming or fishing in it, writing about it, photographing it, and creating lasting
memories along its edge. Indeed, throughout history, you see our deep connection to water described
in art, literature, and poetry. In the water I am beautiful, admitted Kurt Vonnegut.
2
Water can give
us energy, whether its hydraulic, hydration, the tonic effect of cold water splashed on the face, or the
mental refreshment that comes from the gentle, rhythmic sensation of hearing waves lapping a shore.
Immersion in warm water has been used for millennia to restore the body as well as the mind. Water
drives many of our decisionsfrom the seafood we eat, to our most romantic moments, and from
where we live, to the sports we enjoy, and the ways we vacation and relax. Water is something that
humanity has cherished since the beginning of history, and it means something different to everyone,
writes archeologist Brian Fagan. We know instinctively that being by water makes us healthier,
happier, reduces stress, and brings us peace.
In 1984 Edward O. Wilson, a Harvard University biologist, naturalist, and entomologist, coined
the term biophilia to describe his hypothesis that humans have ingrained in our genes an
instinctive bond with nature and the living organisms we share our planet with. He theorized that
because we have spent most of our evolutionary historythree million years and 100,000 generations
or morein nature (before we started forming communities or building cities), we have an innate
love of natural settings. Like a child depends upon its mother, humans have always depended upon
nature for our survival. And just as we intuitively love our mothers, we are linked to nature
physically, cognitively, and emotionally.
You didnt come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not
a stranger here.
ALAN WATTS
This preference for our mother nature has a profound aesthetic impact. The late Denis Dutton, a
philosopher who focused on the intersection of art and evolution, believed that what we consider
beautiful is a result of our ingrained linkage to the kind of natural landscape that ensured our
survival as a species. During a 2010 TED talk, A Darwinian Theory of Beauty, Dutton described
findings based on both evolutionary psychology and a 1997 survey of contemporary preference in art.
When people were asked to describe a beautiful landscape, he observed, the elements were
universally the same: open spaces, covered with low grass, interspersed with trees. And if you add
water to the sceneeither directly in view, or as a distant bluish cast that the eye takes as an
indication of waterthe desirability of that landscape skyrockets. Dutton theorized that this
universal landscape contains all the elements needed for human survival: grasses and trees for food
(and to attract edible animal life); the ability to see approaching danger (human or animal) before it
arrives; trees to climb if you need to escape predators; and the presence of an accessible source of
water nearby. In 2010 researchers at Plymouth University in the United Kingdom asked forty adults to
rate over one hundred pictures of different natural and urban environments. Respondents gave higher
ratings for positive mood, preference, and perceived restorativeness to any picture containing water,
whether it was in a natural landscape or an urban setting, as opposed to those photos without water.
Marcus Eriksen, a science educator who once sailed a raft made entirely of plastic bottles from
the U.S. Pacific coast to Hawaii, expanded upon Duttons hypothesis to include seacoasts, lakeshores,
or riverbanks. In the same way the savannah allowed us to see danger a long way off, he theorized,
coastal dwellers could see predators or enemies as they came across the water. Better, land-based
predators rarely came from the water, and most marine-based predators couldnt emerge from the
water or survive on land. Even better than that: the number of food and material resources provided
in or near the water often trumped what could be found on land. The supply of plant-based and animal
food sources may vanish in the winter, Eriksen observed, but our ancestors could fish or harvest
shellfish year-round. And because the nature of water is to move and flow, instead of having to travel
miles to forage, our ancestors could walk along a shore or riverbank and see what water had brought
to them or what came to the waters edge.
While humans were developing an evolutionary preference for a certain type of water-containing
landscape, the human brain was also being shaped by environmental demands. Indeed, according to
molecular biologist John Medina, the human brain evolved to solve problems related to surviving in
an unstable outdoor environment, and to do so in nearly constant motion. Imagine that you are one of
our distant Homo sapiens ancestors, living in that ideal savannah landscape more than 200,000 years
ago. Even if you and your family have inhabited this particular spot for a while, you still must be alert
for any significant threats or potential sources of food. Every day brings new conditionsweather,
animals, fruits, and other edible plants. Use up some sources of food and you have to look for more,
which means constant exploration of your environment to learn more about where you are and what
other sources of food and water are available for you and your family. Perhaps you encounter new
plants or animals, some of which are ediblesome not. You learn from your mistakes what to gather
and what to avoid. And while you and your children learn, your brains are being shaped and changed
by multiple forces: your individual experiences, your social and cultural interactions, and your
physical environment. Should you survive and reproduce, some of that rewiring will be passed on to
your descendants in the form of a more complex brain. Additional information for survival will be
socially encoded in vivid stories and songs.
A nervous system is the part of an animal that coordinates activity by transmitting signals about
whats happening both inside and outside the body. Its made up of special types of cells called
neurons, and ranges in size and complexity from just a few hundred nerve cells in the simplest worms,
to some 20,000 neurons in the California sea hare, Aplysia californica (a very cool mollusk whose
large, sometimes gigantic, neurons have made it the darling of neurobiologists for the past fifty years),
to as many as 100 billion in humans. Well be looking in detail at the human brain and DNA in later
chapters, but theres an important point to be made before we leave our ancestors on the distant
savannah: just as the human brain changed and evolved over the millennia, our individual brain
changes and evolves from the day we are born until we die. Critical studies starting in the 1970s and
1980s demonstrated that our brains are in a state of constant evolutionneurons growing, connecting,
and then dying off. Both the brains physical structure and its functional organization are plastic,
changing throughout our lives depending on need, attention, sensory input, reinforcement, emotion,
and many other factors. The brains neuroplasticity (its ability to continually create new neural
networks, reshape existing ones, and eliminate networks that are no longer used due to changes in
behavior, environment, and neural processes) is what allows us to learn, form memories throughout
our lifetimes, recover function after a stroke or loss of sight or hearing, overcome destructive habits
and become better versions of ourselves. Neuroplasticity accounts for the fact that, compared to most
of us, a disproportionate amount of physical space in a violinists brain is devoted to controlling the
fingers of his or her fingering hand, and that studying for exams can actually increase the amount of
cortical space devoted to a particular subject (more complex functions generally require more brain
matter). As well see later, it also accounts for certain negative behaviors, like obsessive-compulsive
disorder.
You will hear the term neuroplasticity a lot in this book, because it exemplifies one of the
fundamental premises of Blue Mind: the fact that our brainsthese magnificent, three-pound masses
of tissue that are almost 80 percent waterare shaped, for good or ill, by a multitude of factors that
include our perceptions, our emotions, our biology, our cultureand our environment.
Youll also hear a lot about happiness. While the pursuit of happiness has been a focus of
humankind since almost before we could put a name to the feeling, from ancient times onward
philosophers have argued about the causes and uses of happiness, and composers, writers, and poets
have filled our heads with stories of happiness lost and found. In the twenty-first century, however,
the pursuit of happiness has become one of the most important means of judging our quality of life.
Happiness is an aspiration of every human being, write John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, and
Jeffrey D. Sachs in the United Nations World Happiness Report 2013, which ranks 156 countries by
the level of happiness of their citizens.
3
Its a vital goal: People who are emotionally happier, who
have more satisfying lives, and who live in happier communities, are more likely both now and later
to be healthy, productive, and socially connected. These benefits in turn flow more broadly to their
families, workplaces, and communities, to the advantage of all.
4
The purpose of our lives is to be happy, says the Dalai Lamaand with all the many benefits of
happiness, who would disagree? As a result, today we are bombarded with books on happiness,
studies (and stories) about happiness, and happiness research of every kind. Well walk through some
of the studies later, and discuss why water provides the most profound shortcut to happiness, but
suffice it to say, greater individual happiness has been shown to make our relationships better; help us
be more creative, productive, and effective at work (thereby bringing us higher incomes); give us
greater self-control and ability to cope; make us more charitable, cooperative, and empathetic;
5
boost
our immune, endocrine, and cardiovascular systems; lower cortisol and heart rate, decrease
inflammation, slow disease progression, and increase longevity.
6
Research shows that the amount of
happiness we experience spreads outward, affecting not just the people we know but also the friends
of their friends as well (or three degrees of the famous six degrees of separation).
7
Happy people
demonstrate better cognition and attention, make better decisions, take better care of themselves, and
are better friends, colleagues, neighbors, spouses, parents, and citizens.
8
Blue Mind isnt just about
smiling when youre near the water; its about smiling everywhere.
Water and Our Emotions
Some people love the ocean. Some people fear it. I love it, hate it, fear it, respect it, resent
it, cherish it, loathe it, and frequently curse it. It brings out the best in me and sometimes
the worst.
ROZ SAVAGE
Beyond our evolutionary linkage to water, humans have deep emotional ties to being in its presence.
Water delights us and inspires us (Pablo Neruda: I need the sea because it teaches me). It consoles
us and intimidates us (Vincent van Gogh: The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm
terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore). It creates
feelings of awe, peace, and joy (The Beach Boys: Catch a wave, and youre sitting on top of the
world). But in almost all cases, when humans think of wateror hear water, or see water, or get in
water, even taste and smell waterthey feel something. These instinctual and emotional
responses occur separately from rational and cognitive responses, wrote Steven C. Bourassa, a
professor of urban planning, in a seminal 1990 article in Environment and Behavior. These
emotional responses to our environment arise from the oldest parts of our brain, and in fact can occur
before any cognitive response arises. Therefore, to understand our relationship to the environment,
we must understand both our cognitive and our emotional interactions with it.
This makes sense to me, as Ive always been drawn to the stories and science of why we love the
water. However, as a doctoral student studying evolutionary biology, wildlife ecology, and
environmental economics, when I tried to weave emotion into my dissertation on the relationship
between sea turtle ecology and coastal communities, I learned that academia had little room for
feelings of any kind. Keep that fuzzy stuff out of your science, young man, my advisors counseled.
Emotion wasnt rational. It wasnt quantifiable. It wasnt science.
Talk about a sea change: today cognitive neuroscientists have begun to understand how our
emotions drive virtually every decision we make, from our morning cereal choice, to who we sit next
to at a dinner party, to how sight, smell, and sound affect our mood. Today we are at the forefront of a
wave of neuroscience that seeks to discover the biological bases of everything, from our political
choices to our color preferences. Theyre using tools like EEGs, MRIs, and those fMRIs to observe
the brain on music, the brain and art, the chemistry of prejudice, love, and meditation, and more.
Daily these cutting-edge scientists are discovering why human beings interact with the world in the
ways we do. And a few of them are now starting to examine the brain processes that underlie our
connection to water. This research is not just to satisfy some intellectual curiosity. The study of our
love for water has significant, real-world applicationsfor health, travel, real estate, creativity,
childhood development, urban planning, the treatment of addiction and trauma, conservation,
business, politics, religion, architecture, and more. Most of all, it can lead to a deeper understanding
of who we are and how our minds and emotions are shaped by our interaction with the most prevalent
substance on our planet.
The journey in search of people and scientists who were eager to explore these questions has
taken me from the sea turtles habitats on the coasts of Baja California, to the halls of the medical
schools at Stanford, Harvard, and the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, to surfing and
fishing and kayaking camps run for PTSD-afflicted veterans in Texas and California, to lakes and
rivers and even swimming pools around the world. And everywhere I went, even on the airplanes
connecting these locations, people would share their stories about water. Their eyes sparkled when
they described the first time they visited a lake, or ran through a sprinkler in the front yard, caught a
turtle or a frog in the creek, held a fishing rod, or walked along a shore with a parent or boyfriend or
girlfriend. I came to believe that such stories were critical to science, because they help us make
sense of the facts and put them in a context we can understand. Its time to drop the old notions of
separation between emotion and sciencefor ourselves and our future. Just as rivers join on their
way to the ocean, to understand Blue Mind we need to draw together separate streams: analysis and
affection; elation and experimentation; head and heart.
The Tohono Oodham (which means desert people) are Native Americans who reside primarily
in the Sonoran Desert of southeastern Arizona and northwest Mexico. When I was a graduate student
at the University of Arizona, I used to take young teens from the Tohono Oodham Nation across the
border to the Sea of Cortez (the Gulf of California). Many of them had never seen the ocean before,
and most were completely unprepared for the experience, both emotionally and in terms of having the
right gear. On one field trip several of the kids didnt bring swim trunks or shortsthey simply didnt
own any. So we all sat down on the beach next to the tide pools of Puerto Peasco, I pulled out a
knife, and we all cut the legs off our pants, right then and there.
Once in the shallow water we put on masks and snorkels (wed brought enough for everyone), had
a quick lesson on how to breathe through a snorkel, and then set out to have a look around. After a
while I asked one young man how it was going. I cant see anything, he said. Turns out hed been
keeping his eyes closed underwater. I told him that he could safely open his eyes even though his head
was beneath the surface. He put his face under and started to look around. Suddenly he popped up,
pulled off his mask, and started shouting about all the fish. He was laughing and crying at the same
time as he shouted, My planet is beautiful! Then he slid his mask back over his eyes, put his head
back into the water, and didnt speak again for an hour.
My memory of that day, everything about it, is crystal clear. I dont know for sure, but Ill bet it is
for him, too. Our love of water had made an indelible stamp on us. His first time in the ocean felt like
mine, all over again.
The Beginnings of Blue Mind
In 2011, in San Franciscoa city surrounded by water on three sidesI gathered a group of
neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, marine biologists, artists, conservationists, doctors,
economists, athletes, urban planners, real estate agents, and chefs to explore the ways our brains,
bodies, and psyches are enhanced by water. I had realized that there was a constellation of innovative
thinkers who had been trying to put the pieces together regarding the powerful effects of water, but
they had mostly been isolated from one another. Since then, the Blue Mind gathering has become an
annual conference that taps into a growing quantity of new mind/body/environment research and
continues to produce new and startling insights on how humanity interacts with our watery planet.
Both the brain and the ocean are deep, complex, and subtle realmsscarcely explored and poorly
understood. However, we are on the cusp of an age when both the brain and the ocean are giving up
more and more of their secrets to dedicated scientists and explorers. As more researchers from
varied disciplines apply their expertise to the relation between water and humanity, the insights from
their collaborations are illuminating the biological, neurological, and sociological benefits of
humanitys Blue Mind.
Every year more experts of all kinds are connecting the dots between brain science and our watery
world. This isnt touchy-feely lets save the dolphins conservation: were talking prefrontal cortex,
amygdala, evolutionary biology, neuroimaging, and neuron functioning that shows exactly why humans
seem to value being near, in, on, or under the water. And this new science has real-world
implications for education, public policy, health care, coastal planning, travel, real estate, and
businessnot to mention our happiness and general well-being. But its science with a personal face;
science practiced by real people, with opinions, biases, breakthroughs, and insights.
At subsequent Blue Mind conferences on the shores of the Atlantic and Pacific, scientists,
practitioners, and students have continued to share their research and lifes work, huddling together to
discuss, create, and think deeply. Weve produced documents describing what we think we know
(facts), what we want to explore (hypotheses), and what we want to share (teachings). At Blue
Mind 2013, held on Block Island, we discussed topics like dopaminergic pathways, microplastics
and persistent organic pollutants, auditory cortex physiology, and ocean acidification, but for those of
us drawn to the waves, no discussion of water is without joy and celebration. At dawn we sang
together, overlooking the sparkling blue Atlantic Ocean, and in the evening we drank wine, those
waters now black and sparkling, and listened to former Rhode Island poet laureate Lisa Starr.
Listen, dear one, it whispers.
You only think you have
forgotten the impossible.
Go now, to that marsh beyond
Fresh Pond and consider how the red
burgeons into crimson;
go see how its been preparing forever
for today.
This is poetry, this is science; this is science, this is poetry. So, too, are oceans and seas, rivers
and ponds, swimming pools and hot springsall of us could use a little more poetry in our lives.
We could use a lot more, tooand, in some cases, a lot less. Too many of us live overwhelmed
suffocated by work, personal conflicts, the intrusion of technology and media. Trying to do
everything, we end up stressed about almost anything. We check our voice mail at midnight, our e-
mail at dawn, and spend the time in between bouncing from website to website, viral video to viral
video. Perpetually exhausted, we make bad decisions at work, at home, on the playing field, and
behind the wheel. We get flabby because we decide we dont have the time to take care of ourselves,
a decision ratified by the fact that those extra hours are filled with e-mailing, doing reports,
attending meetings, updating systems to stay current, repairing whats broken. Were constantly trying
to quit one habit just to start another. We say the wrong things to people we love, and love the wrong
things because expediency and proximity make it easier to embrace whats passing right in front of us.
We make excuses about making excuses, but we still cant seem to stop the avalanche. All of this has
a significant economic cost as stress and its related comorbid diseases are responsible for a large
proportion of disability worldwide.
9
It doesnt have to be that way. The surfers, scientists, veterans, fishers, poets, artists, and children
whose stories fill this book know that being in, on, under, or near water makes your life better.
Theyre waiting for you to get your Blue Mind on too.
Time to dive in.
About the Author
Wallace J. Nichols, PhD, is a research associate at the California Academy
of Sciences and founder-codirector of Ocean Revolution, SEE the WILD,
and LiVBLUE. His work has been broadcast on NPR, BBC, PBS, National
Geographic, and Animal Planet and featured in Time, Newsweek, GQ,
Outside, Fast Company, Scientific American, and New Scientist. He lives in
California with his partner, Dana, and two daughters.
You can visit him online at wallacejnichols.org.
wallacejnichols
wallacejnichols
Little, Brown and Company
July 2014
CHAPTER 1
The Grand Monsieur
The sun over Burgundys seemingly endless expanse of richly green vineyards belonged to late
summer. What few clouds there were, were fantastical, fat, and luminousgiant dollops of silver and
white acrylic paint that had not yet finished drying onto Gods vast canvas of sky. Plush canopies of
leaves on the tens of thousands of vines fluttered in breezes so faint that if not for the subtle sway it
would have appeared there wasnt any breeze at all. Chirping sparrows swooped every which way,
as if theyd spent the night drinking from an open barrel in one of the nearby cuveries. With the gentle
rise and fall of the terrain, the vineyards resembled a slow rolling ocean of unpredictable currents.
The temperature that September morning in 2010, in the Cte dOr region, which is the heart of
Burgundy, and for many serious wine collectors the only part of Burgundy that matters, was already
well on its way to sweltering. The humidity was as present as a coastal mist. Soon, the workers
would spill from the villages to tend to the vines. The enjambeurs would arrive: The spider-shaped
tractors, with their high tires to easily traverse the meticulously ordered vine rows, would scurry
about dodging the tourists bicycling along the narrow ribbons of dirt road between the vineyards. For
the moment, however, the landscape was quiet; as far as the eye could see the only person among the
vines was the Grand Monsieur.
Dressed in shades of khakieven his wide-brimmed, cloth hatseventy-one-year-old Aubert de
Villaine walked in the parcel called Romane-St.-Vivant. Tall and thin, he waded through the vines
as he had done for more than four decades: in bursts of long strides, arms out slightly from his sides,
palms skimming the vine tops.
Every so often he would stop, fish the handkerchief from his pocket, wipe the perspiration from
his brow, and look about. Monsieur de Villaine knew that everything and nothing was unfolding
before his eyes, and that it was his challenge to determine which was the everything and which was
the nothingto find the clues in natures mystery.
At moments like this, surrounded by the sublime splendor of the vineyards before the harvest, the
Grand Monsieur sometimes thought of the French mastersPissarro, Renoir, Monet. He suspected
they would have appreciated Burgundy and understood his work.
One must have only one masternature, Pissarro had said. Renoir had put it this way: You
come to nature with your theories and she knocks them all flat. And Monetah, Monet. Was it any
wonder he described it best of all? A landscape hardly exists at all as a landscape because its
appearance is changing in every moment. But it lives through its ambiance, through the air and light,
which vary constantly.
Though Monsieur de Villaine would have insisted he was unworthy of such a comparison, he had
much in common with Monet. When Monet first picked up his brush he saw and painted the natural
world in pieces. He put the water here and the sky there; the field went here; flowers and trees went
here, here, and there. Each was an element unto itself, existing almost independent of its surroundings,
as if, just like that, any one of the elements could have just as easily been placed in another scene,
transported to another painting.
As he matured, however, Monets work became less technical and more organic, spiritual. He
came to understand natures power. It was as if one day, while standing alone on the banks of that
pond covered in water lilies, Monsieur Monet discovered a crease in the universe, pulled it open like
curtains, stepped inside, and turned and viewed the world from another dimensionfrom a
perspective that allowed him to see the interconnectedness of it all, to see the light and air, and the
flicker and flow of energy among all natural things.
It was then that Monet began to make the invisible visible. The lines he had once thought defined
and separated some natural order dissolved into a liquefied oneness, filling the canvas for others to
drink in, and, if only for a few moments, to experience the divine.
This was what the Grand Monsieur labored to do. Only with grapes. His life had been dedicated
to transcending the technical and vinifying natures invisible energy.
As he studied the masterpiece of the landscape around him, the Grand Monsieur prayed for a sign.
He prayed although he wasnt as confident in the power of prayer as he once had been. Because of
recent horrific events and the possibility of unsettling outcomes, the Grand Monsieur had begun to
question Gods very existence.
You wouldnt have been able to detect his fermenting anxieties just by looking at him. Or maybe
you could have. If you were among the very few he trusted to know him well enough, and you
happened to glimpse him in a moment like thishis long, weathered face and forlorn brown eyes
when he thought no one was looking at him, when he thought he was alone and could be himself.
Then again, it had been so long since Monsieur de Villaine had known what that was like: a
private moment, unto himself. There was no himself. Only the tangle of what he represented: the
vines, the families, the Domaine, Burgundy, Francethe storied legacy of countless holy men and one
unholy prince. A legacy subjected to the currencies of markets too often ignorant of how to truly
appreciate a bottle of Burgundy, and that were instead driven by the whims of buyers who were
obsessed with the bangs of auction gavels and status-symbol trophy bottles.
For the longest time Monsieur de Villaine had wanted no parts of any of it. He had resisted. It
would be fair to say he had fled Burgundys vines. But crawling into a blackness that he believed was
certain death, riding horseback into the starry night of the American West, repeatedly enduring the
heartache of the unbornwell, these things have a way of altering a man.
Over time, like the best Pinot Noirs, within the bottle of his skin Monsieur de Villaines
composition had become something other than what it had been. He matured. He came to accept and
to appreciate what had always been his destinycaring for his enfant vines, and producing the most
magnificent and most misunderstood wine in the world.
Hi s employs referred to him as the Grand Monsieur. The moniker signified their respect. A
recognition of his grace and kindness. Monsieur de Villaine put up a reserved front, but his people
knew it was a faade, his way of protecting the Domaine and also his own heart, broken several times
over and patched together, it seemed, with rose petals.
Years ago, when one of their beloved fellow workers, distraught over a lost love, was found
hanging from a rafter in the winery, it was the Grand Monsieur to whom they turned for guidance. The
workers gathered in the winery and bowed their heads as he led them in prayer and reminded them
that the Lord indeed works in mysterious ways. He told them this was part of Gods plan. He
petitioned them to have faith, to believe.
When the torrents of rain came and lasted for days and drowned their scheduled vineyard tasks, as
was often the case in mid-to late summer just before the vendange, it was the Grand Monsieur who
assuaged their concerns. Although during such times he more than anyone else worried that they
would fall behind or the crop might be lost, he exuded a serenity; he reassured his crew that when the
skies would clear they would be able to complete the work. In due time, he would tell his men when
their partners, God and Mother Nature, were ready. Have faith, he would say to them. Believe.
Although the Grand Monsieur presided over the Domaine that was above all other Burgundian
domaines, a national treasurea cathedral of a winery, as a French official in Paris had once put it
and a winery that had made him one of the wealthiest men in France, Monsieur de Villaine carried
himself with equal parts dignity and humility. He emanated gratitude and took nothing for granted. He
was ever mindful of the time when the Domaines wines made no profit at all, and he never lost sight
of the fact that such a period could easily come again.
He was often one of the first to arrive at the Domaine in the morning, in his silver Renault station
wagon, and he was among the last to leave. His back was just as sore as theirs; his hands just as
calloused. He was the kind of Grand Monsieur who once, when his wife, Pamela, asked him to travel
into Paris to meet her at a party hosted by an American starlet, he lingered at the farm, as he called
the worlds greatest Domaine, for as long as he could, and then only grudgingly attended the soire.
He arrived late, as one of his family members recalled the evening, dressed in his khaki farmhand
clothes.
During the long days of the vendange, the Grand Monsieur made sure his pickers were paid much
better than the other domaines crews were paid; he contracted a locally renowned chef to prepare
their meals. Rather than ensconce himself in an air-conditioned office, he opted to be in the cuverie,
or in the vineyards for the clipping and sorting, often inquiring about his employees welfare and their
families. He asked, his people knew, because he cared. As far as the Grand Monsieur was concerned,
anyone who worked at the Domaine was family; they grasped they were part of something very
special.
One day during a harvest, as the Grand Monsieurs vendangeurs picked the Domaines vines in the
parcel called Richebourg, one of his workers approached me. Squat, husky, with a nose that looked
as if it got smashed crooked and flat by a barroom one-two wallop. He wore shorts, a white T-shirt
tank top, work boots, and a skullcap. A cigarette dangled from the side of his mouth. He struck me as
someone who would be more at home as a stevedore on the docks heaving bags of coffee beans or
bundles of bananas rather than given over to the painstaking, delicate detail work of harvesting tiny
bundles of berries.
He shouldered a backpack pannier and was tasked with transporting the picked fruit from the
vineyard to a nearby flatbed trailer. Pannier! Pannier! The pickers called for him when their
harvesting baskets were filled. For days as he worked Id watched him stealing peeks at some of the
female pickers as they bent over using their wire-cutter-like secateurs to clip off the clusters of the
Pinot Noir. At least once hed caught me watching him. Id gotten the impression this Monsieur
Pannier didnt care to be observed. I thought he was going to tell me as much when he approached
me.
Can I tell you something? He spoke to me in English. By then Id been around the Domaine for
two harvests and for enough months that everyone at the Domaine knew I spoke very little French. He
stood with his face inches from my face. I could smell his sweat and the nicotine on his breath.
Bien sr, I answered. Of course. I tried to use what little I knew of the language.
He flicked his cigarette onto a nearby ribbon of road. I reassured myself that it was unlikely he
would pick a fight with me here, in front of everyone.
The big boss, he said, nodding in the direction of Monsieur de Villaine. The big boss was well
out of earshot, over on the back of the flatbed, alone, sorting through the grapes that had been picked
and carefully poured from the panniers into the plastic crates that would be transported to the cuverie.
Oui? I said.
Son cur est dans la terre.
Pannier could see I was trying to process his French. He knelt down in front of me. Genuflected
was more like it. He took his right hand and pressed his palm flat to his chest, over his heart. He
looked up at me, his eyes locking on to mine, to make sure I was watching his gesture.
Son cur, he said.
His heart?
Oui, son cur. He removed the hand from his chest and pressed it into the soil. Est dans la
terre.
Is in the earth?
Oui. He stood. He looked into me until he was satisfied I understood.
He softly punched my shoulder and said it again:
Monsieur de Villaine, le Grand Monsieur, son cur est dans la terre.
With that, Monsieur Pannier smiled in the big bosss direction and walked off back into the vines
to see the sights and wait for his next load of fruit.
On the quiet morning in mid-September 2010, as the Grand Monsieur walked through the vines of
Romane-St.-Vivant and looked to the sky, he searched for clues that would help him determine when
to begin another years vendange.
Off and on, for centuries, ruling aristocrats and government officials had set the date for the start
of the harvest for all of Burgundy. Typically, and most unfairly, this ban de vendange corresponded
with the wishes of the wealthiest owners of the finest vineyards, which produced the highest quality
grapes. In theory, the policy of a unified harvest period made sense, as the harvest took over the entire
region. Horse-drawn wagons filled with grapes on their way to the wineries clogged the rural roads
and tight city streets. Businesses closed, willingly or otherwise, to allow friends and family of
vignerons to pick and sort. But in the way that mattered most, for bureaucrats to choose when the
harvest would begin for all was inherently flawed policy.
Only the vigneron who tends his vines knows when his berries are ready. Only the vine farmer
himself knows that the grapes growing in one section of his vineyard, say, where there tends to be
more exposure to sunlight and wind, will mature faster than the berries in another section of that same
parcel. An east-facing slope of vines likely gets more of the hot midday sun. And so on.
Then theres the myriad farming techniques. Each Burgundian grower has his own way of doing
thingsa hybrid of science and metaphysical voodoo, informed by tradition and faith, and, of course,
viticulture. So many nuances. In the end, no one understands the contours of a parcel of vines better
than its vigneron. The way Mark Twains riverboat captains knew the secret shoals of the
Mississippi. The way a husband understands the curves and mysteries of his beloveds form.
France is relatively small country, eight thousand square miles smaller than the geometrically
similar state of Texas. The Burgundy region, the mostly pastoral countryside to the southeast of Paris
and comprising four departmentsthe Yonne, Nivre, Sane-et-Loire, and the Cte dOr
represents only about one-twentieth of the country. The roughly forty-mile-long by three-mile-wide
corridor of Cte dOr wine country, which stretches from the city of Dijon to just south of the city of
Beaune, is little more than a wrinkle in the universe.
Yet within that wrinkle, the temperature and the terrain vary dramatically. The Cte dOr is
divided into two regions: Vineyards in the south belong to the Cte de Beaune, and the vineyards in
the north are in the Cte de Nuits, which at the time was where all but one parcel of Monsieur de
Villaines vines grew. Although the two ctes (literally, slopes) are in such intimate proximity, they
may as well be on different planets when it comes to late summer weather. So the officials in Beaune
ultimately surrendered to the reality that the decision of when to harvest should rest where it does
now, with the vignerons themselves.
When Monsieur de Villaine walked his vines he would sometimes picture the prehistoric ocean that
covered this part of France. Visions of ancient fish floated like sunspots before his eyes. He watched
the creatures swim, then, as the earths crust moved apart and came together, pushing up mountains
and cracking off faces of cliffas the ocean recededhe watched as the sea creatures fossilized,
atomized, sprinkled down, and vanished into the soil. He saw the holy ghosts enter the wild landthe
monks in their pointed hoods cutting away brush, raking the earth, then kneeling and putting the earth
in their mouths, and then marrying their vines to the soil.
Monsieur de Villaine sensed the energy in the veins of the earth around him, an energy that would
infuse the Burgundy wines that King Charlemagne had so very long ago declared worthy to be
consecrated the blood of Christ. The Grand Monsieur imagined the princely namesake of his Domaine
pacing these vines, ensuring his parcels were not too densely planted, insisting that quality never be
compromised in favor of quantity. Of course, too, the Grand Monsieur would see himself as a boy in
these vines, disinterested and trailing behind his own father and grandfather.
Like virtually all Burgundians, the de Villaines were Catholic. The Grand Monsieur had spent a
fair amount of his life in churches. He likened the many thousands of vineyards of Burgundy to the
shards of a stained glass window. Thousands upon thousands of parcels divided, seemingly without
rhyme or reason, and within those parcels, a range of asymmetrical climats that were at once unto
themselves and yet exquisitely pieced together into a meticulously engineered, breathtaking whole.
So far, the growing season of 2010 had brought much rain and humidity. Which could mean
disaster for the Pinot Noir. Pinots are so named because the clusters of this grape varietal resemble
a pinecone. Just as the structure of a pinecone is as dense as it is delicate, the Pinot grapes grow in
tight bunches that leave little room for the flow of air between the berries. Under the shade of the
canopies of leaves, within the tight cone-shaped clusters of 2010, because of the humidity, moisture
had set in.
If Monsieur de Villaine timed his harvest too late, rot and mildew might eat away the grape skins.
The botrytis fungus might render the grapes so many white, dusty cadavers that would turn to dust
during picking. It was bittersweet irony that as the berries matured to peak ripeness and sugar levels,
just when they would have the best to offer, they were simultaneously decaying, soon fit only to be
left on the vine, to fall off and die into the soil.
At this stage of his life this viticultural reality was something Monsieur de Villaine understood
quite well. Many who knew him, or thought they knew him, whispered that he was beginning to
appear frail and often seemed fatigued; that his vision and instincts were not quite as sharp as they
had been. There was the story circulating in the vineyards that driving home one evening he had struck
a young girl on a bicycle. It was nothing serious. And of course, according to the talk, the Grand
Monsieur felt terrible and had visited the young girl in the hospital. In short, people had begun to
wonder how many vintages Monsieur de Villaine had left in him.
He was aware of the talk. He pretended not to hear it or care, but he did care. Such whispers
raised the question of whether he was leaving himself too long on the vine.
Truth be told, there were times when he thought of the talk and it caused him to doubt himself.
More often than not, when he considered the gossip it emboldened him. He would shrug and blow the
air from his cheeksas the French like to doand he would tell himself that he still had much of his
best to give.
Besides, he thought, what was the alternative for the Domaine? Whenever the question of his
successor crept into his head he told himself he had more pressing matters to resolve, like now, the
decision of when to harvest. He persuaded himself to believe that on the matter of his retirement and
his heir apparent, the longer he waited the better.
The soft September breezes that rustled the waist-high leaves surrounding him were welcome. The
winds dried the moisture, combated the fungi, and prolonged those last critical days of ripening,
enabling the grapes to reach maximum sugar level and balance; giving them just that much more time
to swell on the vine like so many sweet supernovas, which in turn, so went the hope, would infuse the
wine with marvelous flavor.
In that September mornings air, though, Monsieur de Villaine sensed the sort of stealthy humid
heat that he had come to learn often foreshadowed violent rainstorms, perhaps even hail. This raised
more questions that required immediate consideration: Were storms imminent? At what pace were the
humidity and rain spreading rot on his fruit? Could he give his berries more time on the vines or did
he need have his vineyard manager, Nicolas Jacob, call in the pickers?
The Grand Monsieur wiped his brow with his handkerchief. The sound of the rustling leaves
reminded him of the soft winds that blow across the tiny whitecaps on his favorite fly-fishing spot, the
Loue River, to the east, in the Jura region. If he closed his eyes Monsieur de Villaine could see
himself there, standing in the current with his rod, with the music of the birds and the wind and water.
He cast his line, his hope, forward. A flick of the wrist and he watched his line soar and then dance
down onto the waters surface of brisk currents. He would either catch a prize or, just like that, his
line would float back to him, giving him the chance to cast again. In the fly-fishing stream there was
no such thing as failure, no family shareholders or critics to disappoint. No pressure.
This was not the case standing in a vineyard contemplating a harvest. Monsieur de Villaine would
tell you that every growing season affords the chance for new beginnings, another opportunity to
conjure forth from nature and then vinify and bottle some new interpretation of the terroir.
Terroir meaning the sum of the natural characteristics unique to each parcel or climat of vines: the
amount of sunlight and rain an area receives, the pitch and composition of its earth, and, of course, the
vines. Roots pull the energy from the earth below, while the leaves harness heavens sun and draw
the rising sap. All of this together, the essence of terroir, the very essence of Burgundian winemaking.
Although the French Impressionists did not think in such terms, what their very best paintings capture
is the magic of terroir.
This idea that each vineyard, and then even each climat within each vineyard, is its own
spiritually charged ecosystem wherein everything is connected in unique alchemythe grapes merely
a manifestation, a by-product of this divine collaborationis a philosophy that skeptical outsiders
have oft dismissed as nothing more than a marketing ploy or misguided pretentious hooey of the
French. For the Grand Monsieur the mysterious power of terroir was as real as the Saviors death
and Easter rising.
In every harvest there was the chance, too, for the vigneron to be born anew, to catch a prize, to
achieve poetry and forget, if only for a short time, past missteps, lost loves. Another opportunity to
produce a wine more interesting, more pure, than the previous vintage. A chance, if necessary then,
for the vigneron to achieve validation, redemption, to rise again, or, perhaps, bottle what might be
his final mark.
There was also, of course, the possibility of crushing disappointment, to fall short of fully
harnessing the potential God had provided. Like those vintages the Grand Monsieur had bottled in the
1970s, when he was just starting. Many of those wines were technically correctdrinkable, as the
French say when they are being polite about wine that is subparbut some were remarkably
unremarkable.
In theory, Burgundian winemaking is very simple. The vignerons greatest challenge is to do as
little as possible, to get out of the way of the metaphysical, leaving the terroir to nurture and birth the
fruit. The vigneron is merely akin to the midwife who facilitates the delivery.
Then comes the pressing of the fruit, where, again, the goal is to meddle as little as possible. Yet
the Burgundian process done right must be synchronized to the rhythms of the moon and relies on the
soul of the vigneron. At once it is all so simple, and yet maddeningly unpredictable and complex. Like
love. Like poetry. Like philosophy.
As a young man, that was all Monsieur de Villaine aspired to doto travel, to fall in love, to read
and write poetryto study and attempt to unlock the wisdom of the great thinkers. Farming vines, the
young Aubert de Villaine thought, he would leave that to others.
As he walked through Romane-St.-Vivant, Monsieur de Villaine paused, gazed in one direction.
Then he took a few more steps, paused, and looked in another direction. He removed his hat and
scratched his bald head. In the center, there was a pink spot rubbed raw from so much thinking.
Even the professional meteorologists regard forecasting the late summer weather in Burgundy as a
fools errand. Hail. Rain. Sun. Warm breezes. No breeze. Gentle. Violent. One minute, there is peace;
the sun warmly kisses the vines. The next, those storybook clouds turn dark and spit hail that tears
through the leaves and pelts and pulverizes the grapes, destroying a whole crop.
In the days to come of this 2010 vintage, Monsieur de Villaine would write in his vineyard
journal:
At the approach of harvest which we anticipated would begin September 20, it was hard to
be optimistic. The weather remained uncertain, governed by west and south winds that
brought recurrent humid heat, alternating with rainstorms. We were in the classic situation
of the northern vineyards, when often at the end of the vegetative cycle, weather conditions
install a well-known scenario: as the warm southern winds furnish the finishing touches to
the maturation of the grapes, this heat is also the source of storms that favor the growth of
botrytis.
The maturation had not been uniform. The June floweringthe floraisonwhich had filled the air
with that sweet, familiar aroma that ever since he was a child he had likened to the scent of honey,
had occurred unevenly throughout the vineyard. The fruit on some vines was further along than the
fruit on some other vines. Were the least mature grapes mature enough?
Interestingly, in his vineyard journal, the Grand Monsieur made no mention of the evil that had
occurred in his most prized vineyard.
Because the Grand Monsieur consistently produced the greatest wine in the world, everyone who
knew anything about wineand the many who pretended to know about winerightly considered
him the greatest vigneron in the world. Some went so far as to liken him to a Buddha, to a shaman.
For only a spiritual teacher, so went the thinking, could summon from the terroir such divinely
balanced wines. In fact, it was about that time in the fall of 2010 that representatives of the wine
magazine Decanter had informed Monsieur de Villaines representatives in the United States that the
magazine wanted to put him on the cover as Man of the Year.
His advisers at the Domaines esteemed exclusive U.S. distributor, Wilson Daniels, urged him to
seize the public relations opportunity. One of the firms owners, Jack Daniels, was advising him to go
for it. Daniels had nothing at all to do with Jack Daniels, the famous American whiskey, yet he had a
knack for pouring shots of the kind of American straight talk that Monsieur de Villaine had come to
value.
The Grand Monsieur would never forget how Jack had stood by him when the Domaines wines
were of such poor quality that they had to be quietly destroyed behind the Wilson Daniels
headquarters in St. Helena, California. Jack had stuck by his side, too, when the family tensions
threatened to tear apart the Domaines reputation and even the Domaine itself.
Still, the Grand Monsieur wasnt sure about this award and magazine cover business. Grateful as
he was, he didnt want another award. The idea of posing for a cover photograph struck him as
immodest and contrary to the Burgundian way. Hoping to entice him, the magazines people had
pointed out that he would be the first Burgundian to ever receive the honor. Though at that moment he
remained undecided, the idea that the Decanter exposure would be an opportunity for Burgundy to be
honored and recognized so publicly dovetailed nicely with his World Heritage campaign.
Since 2008, Monsieur de Villaine had been leading an effort to have the United Nations add the
Cte dOr to its list of protected and cherished international landmarks. The list of some nine hundred
sites included wonders such as Australias Great Barrier Reef, the Athenian Acropolis in Greece,
Americas Yellowstone National Park, and a select few wine-growing regions, such as Hungarys
Tokaj area and the Jurisdiction of Saint-milion in Bordeaux.
The Grand Monsieur believed the Cte met several of the criteria for World Heritage status, such
as being an exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition and an outstanding example of a
traditional human settlement and land use. And how could anyone deny that the Cte dOr contained
superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance?
It wasnt just the wine magazines and the worldwide legions of oenophiles and critics with their
allegedly supernatural palates who regarded Monsieur de Villaine as something akin to the Shaman-
Pope and Supreme Professor of wine. Most, if not all, of the worlds top winemakers held the same
opinion. Certainly, all of Burgundys winemakers, whether they admitted it or lied and denied it,
looked to the Domaine with awe and respect.
One of the neighbors to Monsieur de Villaines Domaine is the Domaine Georges Mugneret-
Gibourg, a winery that itself produces some of the regions most highly regarded wines. For the better
part of a year and a half, I lived across the road from Domaine Georges Mugneret-Gibourg. It was
comanaged by Marie-Andre Mugneret-Gibourg. With her porcelainlike skin, youthful eyes, and
pixie-style hair, the middle-age Marie-Andre could have passed for a university student.
One afternoon while we visited and talked of the Grand Monsieur she spoke as if she indeed had a
schoolgirl crush on him. Covering her mouth as if she were sharing a secret, she said, Monsieur de
Villaine. You know, you are very lucky to spend so much time with him and to learn about wine from
him. Then, in a reverential whisper, she told me, I have only spoken to him once. Learning wine
from him, you must realize, this is like learning physics from Einstein.
Another nearby winery was the Domaine Faiveley, one of Burgundys most esteemed and
dominant domaines, with vineyard holdings throughout the Cte dOr. Domaine Faiveley is owned by
Franois Faiveley, whose family had founded a company that had helped build much of the modern
railway system throughout France and much of Europe. Even in his early sixties, Franois was a
formidable ox of a man who appeared as if he could hammer a rail-car together and lay a few miles
of track himself if the need arose.
Not so long ago, when the world-renowned American wine critic Robert Parker, whose point-
rating system dramatically shaped the modern wine market, crossed a line that Franois felt should
not have been crossed, Franois led a campaign that single-handedly drove the critic out of Burgundy,
essentially forever.
When Franois oversaw his familys winery, his wines took on his personality. They were famous
for being bold and masculine. Now that the winery was directly managed by his son, Erwan,
Domaine Faiveleys wines had a reputation for being more ethereal and having more finesse.
One evening, Franois was hosting a small group of wealthy American collectors at his domaine
for a dinner, and as he poured a few of his sons prized wines, he told the group that he believed the
high point of the evening would come when he poured some wines sent over as a gift from Monsieur
de Villaine. Upon hearing the unexpected news, Monsieur Faiveleys guests were unable to restrain
themselves. They clapped with delight and began to speculate among themselves which of the
Domaines wines and which vintage they were about to experience. Franois benevolently nodded
and smiled. All of us in Burgundy aspire to what the Domaine achieves, he said. The Domaine is
the standard.
While his guests pretended not to be racing to finish their first pour of the 1999 La Tche and
positioning their glasses for a second, Franois nursed his first glass as if he were alone. I watched
him take a sip, then he raised the glass before his eyes. He rolled the stem between his fingers and
gazed over his bifocals into the Pinot. It was if he was pouring himself into the glass.
After a few long moments he turned to me with an apologetic expression on his face, as if to
convey he was sorry for having drifted away.
In his gruff rumble of a voice Franois said: When I drink this, when I drink the Domaines
wines, what makes it special for me is I think of my dear friend, Aubert de Villaine. I see his face and
I think of what he has gone through. I know the sacrifices he makes. During that crime against the
Domaine, when the police were investigating, and no one knew anything, I never before saw him so
distraught. In his face, you could see this was
Franoiss voice trailed off. He turned away and with his massive hand brushed a tear from his
cheek.
Unlike the contemporary generations of vignerons who jockey for apprenticeships at the Domaine,
Monsieur de Villaine had no degrees in oenology or agricultural engineering from celebrated French
universities. Suffice it to say, Monsieur de Villaine could tell a lot from a grape just by looking at it,
from considering the skins color and thickness. Tasting, he would tell you, was the truest way to
know.
He squatted down between rows of vines where he knew the grapes were the least mature. He
moved aside a canopy of leaves. He did this as lovingly as a parent might brush aside locks of hair
from a small childs forehead before a good-night kiss.
He plucked off a small bundle of grapes. He held them just so in his cupped hands, and carefully,
with his long, slender fingers, he pushed apart the bundle to examine the quality of the interior grapes.
He found only a modest and typical amount of moisture. He tugged off a berry, placed it in his mouth.
He bit down on it, ever so gently, just enough to release the juice onto his palate, where he could
savor it on the back center of his tongue, and deconstruct it, and cross-reference it with his forty years
of tasting pre-harvest grapes.
He spit the grape onto his palm for examination. Poked at it. The purple skin mashed with the
yellow-orange mush of the insides. The texture was good. The juice was good and sweet. Romane-
St.-Vivant was ready. If the weather heldand he judged it wouldhe could give these grapes even
a few more days on the vine. For a moment, Monsieur de Villaine felt his hope float like a line cast
high above the Loue.
Then he looked in the direction of his most precious vineyard, the most legendary vineyard in the
world. It was just on the other side of the dirt road, marked by a tall concrete cross. Suddenly,
everything he wished to forget came back: the ransom notes, the surveillance cameras, the midnight
sting operation in the cemetery in Chambolle-Musignythe murdered vines.
He felt uncertain and sickand overwhelmed by an emotion he seemed incapable ofanger.
He wondered why God had betrayed him.
The Grand Monsieur walked toward the cross.
The Lord works in mysterious ways, he told himself.
Have faith. Believe.
CHAPTER 2
Unthinkable
The chamber the man had built for himself was small and dark, filled with a kind of disquieting
energy. The very same things could be said for his mind.
It was a late fall night in 2009, and inside that small, dark space, he began to stir. A barely audible
click, then a lighthis headlamp.
He had been lying down, not so much resting as he was waiting for nightfall. Now that it was
about 1 a.m., just when he was certain the world around him was asleep, he rose and readied himself.
He was short and squat, with a thick neck and a head like a canned ham. He shuffled about as one
tends to do in darkened, cramped quarters. He bumped into things. He was groggy. His breathing
heavy. Always, there was wine in his blood.
As the man moved, his tiny spotlight moved with him, darting here and there, illuminating his
surroundings in flashes: four walls, a couple of center posts, a roof. The framework formed a
chamber no larger than eighty square feet. The limbs that served as vertical supports were anchored
into a dirt floor. Wall and ceiling unions bound together by rope and L-brackets. Exterior walls and
roof made of blue plastic tarps stretched taut. Blue plastic also covered the floor and on top of the
plastic, like a flower floating on a mud puddle, a brightly colored doormat. The overall aesthetic of
the place was akin to Robinson Crusoe meets the Unabomber.
The interior felt vacuum-sealed. The trapped air was greenhouse humid, weighted atmosphere,
invisible cobwebbing, stale. Tolerably uncomfortable. That the space was subterranean, burrowed
into the earth like a giant weasel warren, was palpable. So, too, were the smells: plastic of the tarps,
dirt, body odor, laundry in need of washing, pungent cheese, stale wine.
Along the east wall was a cot, also made of tree branches and topped with a foam mat and a
sleeping bag. Against the west wall a hot plate, pots and pans, and a narrow tablea plywood top
affixed to tree-branch legs. On the floor, around the interior perimeter, plastic bins were neatly
stacked, even under the cot and table. Tight. Well organized. All in all, an efficient use of meager
space, correctly giving the impression that this was someone accustomed to making use of a confined
room.
An array of items was scattered on his makeshift table: a clock-radio, an MP3 player, work
gloves, a jar of moutarde, a Tupperware container of carottes, a small wheel of Lepetit brand
cheese, a pair of bent and smudged bifocals, a diary like notebook. And there was a magazineone
of those large-format, richly colored glossies. In the headlamps light the magazines cover shined
like a polished pearl. It was titled Bourgogne Aujourdhui , or Burgundy Today, a periodical
dedicated to Les Vins et les Vignobles de Bourgogne , The Wines and Vineyards of Burgundy. One
of the stories in that issue was a feature on the legendary Domaine de la Romane-Conti.
On just about any list of the worlds twenty-five top-rated wines, the Domaine de la Romane-
Conti regularly places seven: Richebourg, chzeaux, Grands chzeaux, La Tche, Romane-St.-
Vivant, the Domaines only white grand cru, Montrachet, and the worlds very best wine, which is
the winerys namesake grand cru, Romane-Conti. For its unparalleled and sustained excellence, the
Domaine de la Romane-Conti is known by wine critics and serious oenophiles around the world and
frequently referred to by its initials, or simply as the Domaine.
The article noted the insatiable marketthe legal and otherwise gray marketfor the wine.
This, despite the fact that not surprisingly the wines also happen to be among the very most expensive
in the world. A bottle of the Domaines least expensive wine, chzeaux, in the most recent vintage
available, which is typically the least expensive vintage of any wine, was then going for about $350.
For a single bottle of the Domaines priciest wine, Romane-Conti, the cost was roughly ten times
that of the chzeaux, at $3,500.
As astonishing as those retail prices were, they were misleadingly low. Because the Romane-
Conti vineyard is so very small4.46 acresand because its yield is kept low, the wine is
extraordinarily rare. Whats more, the Domaine itself keeps strict control over its allotted sales to
distributors and select individual clients who buy up the wine in pre-sale orders before the wine is
even bottled.
Frankly, there is almost zero chance of finding a bottle or Romane-Conti in your local fine wine
retailer at all. Thus the shady back-channel gray market and the wines booming Internet and
auction sales, where the price for a bottle of the most recent vintage of Romane-Contiwhich for
all practical purposes is the baseline pricewas then more like $10,000 per bottle.
Bottle for bottle, vintage for vintage, Romane-Conti is the most coveted, rarest, and thereby the
most expensive wine on the planet. At auction, a single bottle of Romane-Conti from 1945 was then
fetching as much as $124,000.
In one of the photos that accompanied the article the Romane-Conti vineyard indeed appeared to
be a remarkably tiny patch of earth at the base of a gently sloping hillside. Nothing at all outwardly
different from the ocean of vineyards around it. A low stone wall lined a portion of its borders. On
top of the wall stood a tall, concrete cross, its elongated shadow swimming across the leafy canopy
tops behind it.
In another picture, a draft horse tugged a plow between the vine rows. It was a contemporary
photograph, to be sure, which made the antiquated farming technique appear all the more odd. These
pages of the magazine were dog-eared and pen-marked, as if the man had lain in his cot studying the
pages over and over again.
Also among the items on the makeshift table were three bottles of wine: a Ctes du Rhne, an
cusson Grand Cidre, and a Hrault. All of them drunk into varying degrees of fill levels. The label
on the bottle of Grand Cidre promoted it as cuve spciale. This distinction, as the man had been
formally educated and generally raised to recognize, was little more than one of the wine worlds
many gimmicks.
There was nothing especially spcial or grand about the Grand Cidre, or, for that matter, the other
two bottlesexcept maybe that they had been in the special sale section at the local supermarch.
These wines were what the French referred to as common. The sort of plonk youd pick up for a
few euros at the local SuperU if you wanted to wash down a microwavable quiche, or, if you were in
the market for something to polish off in order to forget, to ease nerves, or, as was now the case for
the man, to gin up what might pass for courage before executing the unthinkable.
His selection of wines from the Ctes du Rhne and Hrault regions of France, the man knew,
amounted to a perverse irony. It was in the southern part of the Rhne-Hrault region, a century and a
half earlier, that a trespasser had crawled into the vineyards and launched an attack on vinestocks that
wiped out nearly every vineyard in France. It was a nationwide economic issue, a countrywide
identity crisis. Authorities of the time dubbed that menace Phylloxera vastatrixaka the devastator
of vines.
And now here he was.
Over the years, for previous jobsprojects, as he liked to call themthe man had relied on
pipes, handcuffs, guns. During the job he was on before this one he had made a point of laying out all
three of those tools, piece by piece, ever so slowly, on the kitchen table of his female victim in order
to terrify her into compliance.
On that job, which he executed in another famous French wine region, Bordeaux, the man had
proven he would pull a trigger, even if it meant taking aim at les policiers of the gendarmerie.
However, he had done enough crimes, done enough time, exchanged enough gunfire, to realize there
were easier ways to take a buck. This current project with the vines, it was not that kind of job; those
kind of tools and that kind of risk were not necessary. Thats what the man told himself. Still, he kept
a pistol nearby, just in case.
His headlamp beam settled on a container not much larger than a lunch box. It was on the floor near
the cot. He opened the case. Inside was a battery-operated drill. A Black & Decker. Not far from the
drill, a few syringe like devices similar in size and appearance to turkey basters. He grasped one of
the syringeshis fingers were as stubby as hors doeuvres sausagesand reached for a plastic
gallon container and from it clumsily poured a liquid into the syringe.
His heavy breathing became more strained as he pulled on calf-high green rubber boots. From a
hanger dangling on one of the crossbar tree limbs he removed a long hooded rain jacket. Green and
rubbery like the boots, it wasnt so much a coat as it was a hooded cape. He put it on, tucked the drill
and syringe into a pouch belted about his waist, and turned to the door.
The hatch, too, was made of sticks. He pulled on the door, once, then again. The bottom of the
door, as always happened, had snagged on the dirt ground. He opened it just enough to squeeze
through.
Outside, the chilly air sent a shiver up his sweaty back. He scrambled a few feet up into a small
clearing surrounded by dense woods. The night sky was as black and as soft as tuxedo satin. So many
stars. The moon was full and bright. Liquidy, as if the orb were filled with white lava. Wisps of
clouds crossed its face. There was no need for the headlamp. He clicked it off. Doing so decreased
the already slim chance of his being noticed.
He waited a moment to give his eyes time to adjust.
Sometimes, at about this hour, there were the sounds of wild boar cracking through the woods
around him. Off in the distance, straight out in front of him, to the east, he could hear the faint
whooshing whistle-groan of the TGV. The high-speed train streaked along tracks either bound for the
city of Dijon in the north or heading south toward Beaune.
The train was how he would make his getaway. He was so close. He just needed to finish this last
critical bit, then collect the money, and take his cut, and be gone.
As he stood there above the shelter, it would have been understandable if the man felt a sense of
accomplishment. Viewed from this perspective his handiwork was all the more impressive. His flat,
square box of a cabin was inside a square ditch. The walls, which were about six feet high, were
almost entirely below ground level. The exterior was wrapped in olive-colored plastic tarp. The
roof, covered over with leaves and twigs, was indistinguishable from the forest floor.
Some of the most skilled detectives of the French national police soon would come to learn you
could fly a helicopter over it a dozen times and not see it. Hell, you could be standing right next to it
and never realize it was there. Investigators would marvel at the structure. The excavation alone, not
to mention everything else involved in erecting and equipping the place
sturdy, water resistant, bivouacked into the earth, buffered from the wind, masterfully
camouflaged it had taken months.
The man headed off into the woods.
Within minutes he emerged from the forest and stepped into a panorama that was as expansive and as
ethereal as his shelter was small and squalid. A silhouette in the hooded cape, he stood atop a hill,
his pulse throbbing within his thick neck. As he had done so many nights before, he scanned the
landscape to make sure all was clear.
In the moons glow, the view was empowering; the world was at his feet: Spilling down the
hillside and then everywhere was a vast patchwork of vineyards. Sprawling straight out in front of
him, to the east, and to the north and south, seemingly without end. Row after row they unfurled,
barely separated from one another by ribbons of fallow land or narrow road. The vines were frost
dusted and barren, twisted and vulnerable, like the skeletons of arthritic hands reaching for spring.
Just as he had come to expect, just as it had gone on the previous nights, no one else was out. The
only movement was the headlights out east, well beyond the vines. The cars traveled on Route
Nationale 74. Beyond the RN-74, the train tracks. He could once again have his way without fear of
detection. It never ceased to amaze him, to please him, that so much value was just left there
unprotected.
The hillthe cteon which he stood is part of a formation that stretches through much of the
Cte dOr, some twenty miles to the north and twenty miles to the south. He turned right and took a
footpath south.
With the vines to his left and the tree line on his immediate right, he took the path for about a half
mile. He then descended the slope and entered the vines.
The vine rows continued as the hill flattened out and then right up to the edge of the small hamlet,
less than a mile away. The tiny towns skyline was humbly marked by a church steeple. Walking
through the vines in the direction of the town, he exuded the purpose of someone who knew precisely
where he was headed and what must be done when he arrived.
Midway between the hilltop and the town, on the upper edge of a vineyard that was at the base of
the gently sloping hillside, he stopped and fell to his knees. Had anyone happened upon him he might
have appeared to be praying. Which he knew would not have been unusual.
For months, he had been casing the vineyards, on bike and on foot. He watched as people from all
over the world arrived every day at that vineyard. Some were your typical tourists. Many, however,
were zealots, passionate about Burgundy wines. Like pilgrims traveling to Mecca, these
Burghounds came not so much to see the vineyard, but rather to behold its presence. Often these
pilgrims quite literally would kneel. Always they would go to the tall, concrete cross towering over
the vines and snap a photograph.
Affixed to the low stone wall, not far from the cross, was a sign. Words written in French and in
English stated:
MANY PEOPLE COME TO VISIT THIS SITE AND WE UNDERSTAND. WE ASK YOU NEVERTHELESS TO
REMAIN ON THE ROAD AND REQUEST THAT UNDER NO CONDITION YOU ENTER THE VINEYARD .
THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMPREHENSION.THE MANAGEMENT
Truth be toldand the Management realized thisit was not unusual for a visitor to dismiss the
sign; to throw a leg over the wallwait for a moment as if they half expected an alarm to sound
then throw the other leg over the wall and timidly scurry a few feet into the vines and pluck one of the
grapes for a taste, or to grab a handful of soil, or even to pocket one of the small chunks of white
stone peppered throughout the vineyard.
It was with a mix of pride and benevolence that the Management had resigned itself to the reality
of these occasional acts. Not that the Management encouraged such behavior or would ever look the
other way if they were present to witness such an intrusion, but they realized these lawbreakers do
what they do only out of admiration, adoration even; they meant no harm; they were misguided but
well-intentioned. They were like the tourists who ignore the many clearly posted signs at the entrance
of the Sistine Chapel and nevertheless snap photographs of Michelangelos ceiling masterpiece.
Only this vineyard was more ancient; its history every bit as epic, and, to many, even more sacred
than that of any of Michelangelos sixteenth-century paintings. Unlike a masterwork painting, this
scene didnt seem to come aliveit was alive. And while the wine it produced was out of financial
reach for most mortals, locked away in cellars of wealthy collectors, as far as the vineyard goes there
were no alarms, no security personnel, no camerasthe vineyard was right there in the open, just off
to the side of a strip of crumbling road, within reach of everyone, vulnerable to anyone.
The man got down on all fours. His barely moonlit face hovered inches above where the vinestocks
were married to the earth. The tendrils of his hot breath rose into the night. The topsoil was cold and
hard, but scratch just beneath the surface, dig down a few inches as the man did and there was
Mon dieu, le senteur.
Nutrient-rich, rocky soil that had been churned over and over again thousands of times, hundreds
of thousands of times, so that the earth could breathe and the vines could drink, hydrating roots that at
that very moment, every moment, pushed through, around the rocky geological layers belowpushing
through both because of and despite nature.
Le senteur.
It filled his nostrils, cut to those parts of his brain that triggered memories of his childhood.
His father.
His earth.
His vines.
Here, though, the smell was different.
This earth emanated a musk. A musk infused with the scents of salty ocean, minced seashells, a
wet mineralitylike chalky stone damp with spring rain.
Here the geology was luscious. This earthiness, odd as it may sound, was mouthwatering. There
was an aromatic come-hither temptation to taste the dirt, to want a droplet of its textures to roll and
spread, and rest in the back of the mouth. A musk that caused the tongue to fatten with anticipation
of a sip.
He produced the cordless drill and the syringe like device. He pressed the drill bit into the
vinestock, just where the vine disappeared into the earth, and he began to drill. Into the pied de
vignethe foot of the vine.
The sound, the soft whir of the drills motor, registered as nothing in the vast quiet. In the distance,
the quaint town, with its shutters drawn, was too far off, too asleep, too trusting to notice. No one in
all of Burgundyreally, no one in all the worldhad ever contemplated that anyone would
conceive, let alone execute, such an act, such a sacrilege.
Crouched among the vines, the man shifted his attention to a neighboring vinestock. It was less
than a yard away from the one hed already drilled. With the Black & Decker, he repeated the same
procedure on the foot of that vine.
Next he took the syringe, inserted it into one the holes he had drilled, and injected some of the
syringes contents. He did the same to the other vine, emptying out the rest of the liquid. From his
pouch, he fished out two tiny wooden plugs; he pushed one into each of the holes he drilled and
returned the soil around the vinestocks, best as he could, to the way he found it. As if they had never
been disturbed.
The man understood perfectly what he was doing in terms of the crime, in terms of the science of
the vinethe viticulture. He could grasp the localized smallness and he understood destruction. The
implications of his actions, the transcendent largeness of it, that was something he could not
comprehend. For him, this was about the money. Well, if he had been forced to admit it, it may also
have been about a personal vendetta.
Matter-of-factly, he collected his equipment and made his way up the hill. He emerged from the
vines, traveled the brim of the cte, and again vanished into the dense tree line.
Inside his underworld studio he hung up his hooded cape on the hanger and poured himself a glass
of the supermarch swill. A toast to the final stages. The two vines he had drilled were among the
more than seven hundred vines that had been drilled in the vineyard of Romane-Conti.
He lifted his MP3 player from the table and pushed the earbuds into his meaty head. Mozart, as the
police would learn from the statement of someone else involved, was the mans favorite. The music
poured into him, flowed through him. The man knew that come spring, the sap travels through a
vinestock, carrying nutrients to the outer extremities, infusing the precious fruit. Similarly, the music
traveled through him.
According to the reams of information that would be gathered by investigators, viticulturists, and
scientists, then photocopied, stapled, scanned, shared with the head of the Police Nationale in Paris
and the courts, and then finally filed away in confidential dossiers, where it was hoped the
unprecedented case would quietly disappear as if it never happened, when this project on the vines
was over, when the money was divvied up and the man had his cut, his dream was to buy an old
church with an organ. His dream was to learn to play Mozart on the organ, which was how he
believed Mozart was meant to be played.
CHAPTER 3
Conti
As he stepped into a Paris night late in the summer of 1755, Louis-Franois de Bourbon presumed
he was under surveillance. He figured spies had eyes on him that very moment. He had no doubt they
had been intercepting and inspecting his mail. Someone had been clumsy about removing the seals on
his letters. Melting away wax marques by candle heat and then replicating and reapplying counterfeit
seals was an art that required surgical attention to detail. It was a task that needed to be assigned to
the steady hands of a master; whoever had been slicing into his correspondence was no master.
Louis-Franois was an expert on such matters. That was why he rarely committed compromising
words to ink. Instead, if he had to write such a note, he did so only by pinpricks. Furthermore, he took
steps to ensure the recipient understood in advance to immediately destroy the correspondence after
reading. Having noticed that his mail had been breached gave Louis-Franois a counterintelligence
advantage: the opportunity to disseminate disinformation to throw them off his trail. He was quite
good at that sort of thing, too.
No matter, he was confident they had no idea of his exact plans. Despite what some at Versailles
thought of him, the prince was not so full of himself to believe he was infallible. The prudent course
of action was to move under the cover of night and to not underestimate his adversaries. And so he
considered the possibility of operatives lurking nearby.
Espionage was a game Louis-Franois played better than anyone. Really, it was his game. He was
the French spymaster, by virtue of practice and by occupation. There would have been no Secret du
Roi without him. He was the architect of that spy network of mid-eighteenth-century France. He was
the one who oversaw the Secret du Rois recruiting and managing of the Crowns agents throughout
Europe.
There werent many, if any, tactics Louis-Franois had not seen or employed. Now that he himself
was the subject of intense surveillance it concerned him, of course, but it most certainly did not
unnerve him. Part of him found the irony of it, the personal challengeand indeed he viewed it as a
personal challengerather delicious. He carried on just as he would have advised his own agents to
do: cautiously, but with typical Parisian, aristocratic composure, as if nothing at all were out of the
norm.
Which was not the case. Moments that set in motion seismic historical events, that compel men to
take up arms and kill, that change the balance of world power, that overthrow kingsthis, he thought,
was one of those. He had to believe that. Or else, what point was there in all of the risk?
It was August, the month of his forty-first birthday, and Monsieur Louis-Franois de Bourbon, the
Prince de Contia royal-blood cousin of King Louis XV, and also His Majestys de facto chief of
staffclimbed into a carriage bound for a clandestine rendezvous that by definition of the kings law
constituted conspiracy to commit the highest treason.
More than anyone else it was the Prince de Conti who had the ear of King Louis XV. Their
relationship was a subject of great interest within the corrupt and catty royal court. The nobles and
their servants whispered about it, and noted it in their memoirs and correspondence thusly: People
are always astonished by the intervention of the Prince de Conti in affairs of the state. His
intimacy with the king, his access to His Majesty, and influence upon him are quite remarkable.
The Prince de Conti, alone, would daily enter the kings private study by the backdoor carrying great
portfolios. Often not emerging until hours later.
There was no doubt the two men talked strategy for Frances foreign affairs, which were rapidly
escalating into military conflicts. Frances claims in North America were being challenged. The
previous spring, in 1754, over in America, a local British militia under the control of a Lieutenant
Colonel George Washington had ambushed a contingent of French forces.
It was one in a steady stream of ongoing guerrilla battles between the two countries in that foreign
land. This one, though, occurred in the critical Ohio Territory and became a spark for what was now,
more than a year later, all-out war. This French-Indian battle exacerbated tensions between the
two powers, already fighting over shipping routes; it contributed to their taking opposing sides in a
war between Prussia and Austria, in which Russia and Spain were also invested. All of it one big,
bloody international mess that was turning into a Seven Years War.
A testament to the truly top-secret nature of the meetings between the prince and the king, no one at
the court had any gossip about the specific discussions of their meetings. Due to the mystery shrouding
their sessions, as one member of the royal court wrote, people had difficulty understanding what can
be the nature of their work. That is not to say that Conti was someone who otherwise kept a low
profile.
He distinguished himself as a character among characters. A pre revolutionary James Bond. The
prince left such an impression on Madame de Genlis, a noted contemporary writer and noblewoman
from Burgundy, that she mused on him in her diary:
The Monsieur le Prince de Conti was the only prince of the blood who had a taste for the
sciences and for literature, and who knew how to speak well in public. He was strikingly handsome,
with an imposing figure and manners. No one was able to pay a compliment with more finesse and
graciousness and, despite his success with women, it was impossible to discern in him the slightest
nuance of fatuity. He was the most magnificent of our princes.
Born on August 13, 1717, into a family with Burgundian roots, and one of the most noble of
Frances families, Louis-Franois studied philosophy and the arts, having a particular fondness for
Mozart. Most notably, perhaps, he was a lover of love, and, as was common for the noblemen of the
times, more often than not with women other than his wife. Louis-Franois had been fourteen years
old when he wed his cousin, the fifteen-year-old Louise-Diane dOrlans, the youngest daughter of
the duc dOrlans, Philippe II.
Louis-Franois had married into quite a family. When King Louis XIV died in 1715, he had
already buried his son and the grandson who would have been next in line for the throne. The
monarchy, then, had to wait for his great-grandson, Louis XV, who was only five years old at the time
of his grandfathers death. Until Louis XV was old enough to wear the responsibilities that came with
the crown, the duc dOrlans, Philippe II, served as the Regent of the Kingdom. The union of his
daughter, Diane, and Louis-Franois was celebrated in grand fashion at Versailles and, of course, had
been arranged for purposes of bloodline politics. The marriage did nothing to discourage the teenage
Louis-Franois from promptly beginning an affair with a mistress inherited from his uncle. ( Louis-
Franoiss uncle was moving on to a Parisian dancer.)
The Prince de Conti was the type of renaissance man who continued to engage in picaresque,
libidinous adventures, relishing every opportunity to insert himself into affairs of all sorts. Along
with the women, there was the wine. At parties, whether at his cousin-kings palace of Versailles, or
at one of his own residencesthe Palais du Temple, where he had a rank among the Knights
Templar, or at his private residence, Htel de Conti in Paris, or at his retreat at the L Isle-Adam, a
couple of hours carriage ride south of the cityno soire was complete without the prince filling a
beautiful womans ear with charm and her glass with exquisite wine.
Not long after the covert business of that summer in 1755, the inviolable secret, as Conti himself
had begun referring to it, would reach its stunning, almost inexplicable dnouement: The prince
would commission a painter to memorialize one of his own dinner parties.
In the scene that Michel-Barthlemy Ollivier would paint, a dozen white-wigged nobles sit around
a long table, amid the warm glow of candlelight. In a nearby corner, a harpist strums. In the room so
vividly alive with the buzz of intimate conversation and cascading string music, Conti looks into the
eyes of a woman on his right, his mistress du jour, while his left hand seductively caresses the neck of
a bottle of his private reserve, which was then known as La Romane.
By the time the prince would acquire the Burgundian vineyard its Pinot Noir would already have a
reputation for being sensationally smooth, stunningly complex, the perfect balance of seductive and
powerfulmuch like Conti himself. However, legend would have it there were other reasons the
prince would go to the great lengths he would to acquire the vineyardalso involving surreptitious
maneuvering. Reasons that were only now in his present secret matter beginning to take shape. Before
there would be Burgundy, there would be Paris, and if the prince had his way, there would be
revolution.
That Conti was so openly dashing yet so politically discreet was one of his many dichotomies.
The image of the bespoke, silver-tongued playboy belied the prince in full. He was a decorated war
hero several times over, a murderer, a spya double, maybe even a triple, agent. He was a fiercely
intelligent operator, and generally speaking, an illusive chameleon.
One of the princes fellow noblemen astutely sized him up as a composite of twenty or thirty men.
He is proud, he is affable, ambitious and a philosopher, at the same time; rebel, gourmand, lazy,
noble, debauched, the idol and example of good company, not liking bad company except by a spirit
of libertinage, but caught up in much self-love.
Considering the princes shrewdness, he may have sustained such a colorful and charismatic
dandy-man persona to distract from his covert and most grave sleights of hand. A misdirection by
faade. By that August of 1755, Conti was someone whom his cousin-king and Louis XVs
omnipotent mistress, the Madame de Pompadour, had come to fear and mistrust. The king and
Pompadour, Conti had no doubt, were the ones who had ordered the postmaster to intercept his mail.
They had put him under the surveillance of the French police.
The mission was overseen by Lieutenant Nicholas-Ren Berryer and a contract agent, Soulier de
Puechmaille, aka Lagarde. Lagarde had been recommended for the task by none other than the
archbishop of Avignon. The Crown, the church, just about everyone benefiting from the monarchys
stranglehold on the people, considered Conti a threat to all that was royal and holy. Their suspicions
were warranted.
That night, as the prince made his way to his clandestine meeting, if one of the spies would have
found a way to casually emerge from the shadows and inquire the prince about his destination, Conti
might have offered an explanation that he was en route to conduct official business of the king, a
mission for the good of France. For it was exactly the sort of politically deft response for which Conti
had such a gift: a shred of fact that provided just enough cover for the whole treasonous truth.
Rattling over the cobblestones, navigating Pariss narrow rues, the carriage almost could not avoid
jolting to starts and jerking to stops, twisting with expected unpredictability into the abrupt turns of
the capital city. It would have been prudent of Conti to instruct his driver to make a few unnecessary
turns along the way to make the route all the more circuitous and harder to follow. During the day, the
urban labyrinth teemed with the activity; a mosh pit of nobles and peasants, where it was difficult to
discern vice from virtue. In the words of a writer of the time, the city was a rapid and noisy
whirlwind.
With a population approaching 25 million, France was three times the size of its mighty and
increasingly nervous neighbor England. Nobles and clergymen togetherthe First and Second Estates
formed the 2 percent of the population that controlled most of the countrys wealth. The poorest of
everyone else, the Third Estate, labored to buy the bread they could already barely afford. Peasants
had petitioned their aristocratic landowners to invest in agricultural improvements or, at least, to tax
them less so that they themselves could modernize and more efficiently harvest grains and wheat, thus
producing more bread and making it more affordable. Such requests had been met with indifference.
With the Catholic Churchs blessing, nobles openly scoffed at labor as something only bourgeoisie
did, in order to earn the taxes aristocrats could invest in the church and their own leisurely pursuits:
patronizing the arts, which were often odes to themselves or packed with messages to reinforce the
necessity of classism; and building their grand palaces, like Versailles, where the Prince de Conti
himself kept an apartment; and throwing decadent parties. In the tradition of the late King Louis XIV,
every nobleman worth his unearned livres peacocked on the dance floor. Small fortunes were spent
trying to outdo the Italians in the latest fashions.
Among the masses squeezed into the poorly defined Parisian city limits, wigged noblemen wore
splendid collar-band waistcoats and polished, buckled, high-heel shoes; the powdered noblewomen
were tightly corseted inside brightly colored hooped skirts of the finest imported fabrics, and many of
them wore their hair styled in a towerlike fashionthe gravity-defying pompadour style made
popular by the madame above all madames, Madame de Pompadour. Aristocrats promenaded on their
way to doing positively nothing at all, doing their best to gracefully pass untouched through the
masses.
The petites gensthe small people: workers, servants, artisans, shopkeepershurried about,
fortunate to have jobs. Pickpockets, whores, and beggars in their tattered clothes, often infested with
lice, ill and in some cases deformed by disease, assertively targeted their marks. Many nobles
traveled in decorative, phone-booth-like sedans carried by servants or in carriages that rolled through
the streets with footmen jumping from the carriage rails to shoo off the glut of commoners to make
way.
As the rich and poor rubbed against one another, economic and religious friction sparked tensions
that the media had lately fanned into flames. Reading had become more than the fad that French
aristocracy thought it would be, or rather hoped it would be. For reading meant education and thought,
and thereby enlightened challenges to the status quo. In the cafs and salons literate members of the
Third Estate drank the common wine made from the Gamay grape, and read the papers and
pamphlets and works by the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Only a year earlier, in 1754, Rousseau had published his essay What Is the Origin of Inequality
Among Men? And Is It Authorized by Natural Law? In it Rousseau wrote what those who had no
voice longed to have heard:
Such was, or may well have been, the origin of society and law, which bound new fetters on
the poor, and gave new powers to the rich; which irretrievably destroyed natural liberty,
eternally fixed the law of property and inequality, converted clever usurpation into unalterable
right, and, for the advantage of a few ambitious individuals, subjected all mankind to perpetual
labor, slavery, and wretchedness.
It wasnt just economic oppressionand oppression was now the wordit was also religious
oppression. It was the Catholic states oppression of Protestants. On his deathbed, Louis XVs
predecessor had reaffirmed that Catholicism was the only religion in France. All subjects must kneel
before Christ or else be regarded as traitors, and, as was the case for some Protestant pastors, be put
to death. Protestant churches routinely were burned to the ground.
Rendered pariahs, the countrys community of Protestants peppered about the country gathered in
open secret to worship and rallied one another in their treasonous conviction that they had a right to
worship as they saw fit. Meanwhile, priests steadfastly preached the divine right of kings, now the
authority of King Louis XV, who not surprisingly held the view that the Huguenots were a lesser
species in need of conversion. Louis XV issued laws reinforcing Catholic hegemony, reiterating that
only Catholic births, marriages, and deaths were legitimatelegislative genocide.
The Huguenots were not the only religious group feeling persecuted. Nudged by the church, Louis
XV launched a political crusade against a Catholic splinter group. The Jansenists believed that God
alone, through his mysterious and divine ways, determined who had grace, and that no man, no
clergyman, not even the king himself could determine who was forgiven in the eyes of the Lord. As
far as the establishment was concerned this was both religious and political heresy. Louis XV
supported his bishops who banned Jansenists from receiving Catholic sacraments.
Protestant and Jansenist leaders appealed to their king and more directly to the magistrates of the
French law courts, the parlements, and in particular, to the most influential of all the law courts, the
Parlement of Paris, for equality, or at least some compromise that would allow them to live free, as
citoyens. Parlementary magistrates wanted to provide a degree of what amounted to civil rights to
accommodate the religious sects. To ease the tensions, the procureur gnral to the Parlement of
Paris, Guillaume-Franois Joly de Fleury, suggested that the king consider recognizing Protestant
marriages as civil unions. The reality denied by the monarchy was that Catholics lived quite nicely
among Huguenots and Jansenists. Not only that, the Protestants were integral to the day-to-day French
economy.
If the king would not reconsider his views for altruistic purposes or for reasons of economic
necessity, the magistrates pointed out, there was the growing fear that the disenfranchised groups
would coalesce into an uprising. Bloody riots already flared around the country. Passions were
especially volatile in the south of France, where Protestant leaders like Crown-defined enemies of
the state Pastor Paul Rabaut and Jean-Louis Gibert preached with rhetoric that was becoming more
and more militant. Rabaut was of the mind that the persecution is becoming stronger from day to day;
and for quite a while, we have had so many reasons to cry, Lord, save us, for we are perishing.
Gibert was brazenly defiant. He proclaimed that his flock was prepared to break the bonds of our
captivity and uphold our liberty and that of our religion, even at the cost of our lives.
Outside the echo chamber of the royal court, the reality had become so intense that in that spring of
1755 the Parlement of Paris refused to ratify Louis XVs decision to allow the church to ban
Jansenists from receiving the sacraments. Taking the position that the kings policies required the
approval of the parlement, the magistrates simply packed up and went on strike. In shutting down
government business, the magistrates thumbed their noses at the king, also tabled approving his funds,
putting a crimp in his debauchery. Louis XV dispatched musketeers to arrest four of the most vocal
opposing magistrates, and he sent two hundred magistrates into exile.
The more steps Louis XV took to centralize his power, the more it fractured. While the French
military was at war in several international theaters, by that summer of 1755 he feared a domestic
revolt. Louis XV began to hear the protesting voices in his head like a relentless monastic chant, the
vibrations of which began to shake his throne and his mental stability.
The king saw traitors where there were none, and trusted aides were there were traitors. As
Pompadours personal handmaid wrote in her diary, the king had long been habitually melancholy;
now he began to sense threats from all directions. While some members of the court whispered about
paranoia, death was indeed coming for the king. Perhaps at that very moment it was choosing its
weapon and path. A plot for assassination was under way.
In his private study, just as he had on matters of foreign affairs, the king turned to the man who had
been his friend since they were children; the one person he trusted and respected more than any other;
a man who was equally trusted and respected by the parlement, by the Protestants and Jansenists, by
the French military, and for that matter, by the French peoplehis cousin, seven years his junior, the
Prince de Conti.
During the day, when Contis carriage would travel through Paris, pushing through the crowds, his
street-level perspective afforded him an intimate view of the volatility of the times. Everyone,
everything, it was all right there in the streets of Paris: the people together before him, around him, so
tightly mashed together, yet divided. Such that the country maybe could not stand. The inequity, the
resentment, the hate: All of it was seething. He could smell it as plainly as he could smell the raw
sewage dumped into the streets. The operative in Louis-Franois knew that such dissension could be
a valuable tool. It could be harnessed; it was a power. He carried these observations with him into
the darkness and his secret rendezvous.
The secret meeting had been facilitated by Contis aide, Nicolas Monin. Monin had served in the
army under Conti and remained by his side when the prince returned to the royal court in the mid-
1740s. It was as King Louis XVs trusted chief of staff that Conti had been empowered to pursue
delicate diplomatic missions and persuaded the king to agree that a network of spies was necessary to
gather and relay intelligence throughout Europe via codes and other means. Monin had been an
integral part of helping Conti build that infrastructure and managing reconnaissance assignments.
Recognizing the extraordinary nature of what was to be discussed that summer evening, Monin
arranged for the treasonous appointment to take place down on the waterfront, in an abandoned
building on one of the anonymous quays that wind along the banks of the Seine. Inside Conti greeted
his visitor, none other than the Protestant pastor and wanted enemy of the state, Paul Rabaut.
It was the second meeting for the two, the first having occurred just a few weeks earlier. There
was less of a need for small talk before getting to business. It would have been typically gracious of
the prince to thank Rabaut for once again making the long trip from Nmes to Paris. Rabaut, a man of
devout faith and with immense respect for the prince, was always expressing his gratitude to Conti for
his continued interest in the Protestant cause.
Because the meeting occurred around the princes August birthday, Conti would have had his age
and mortality on his mind. Considering the endeavor in which the two of them were engaged, it was
reasonable for Conti to wonder if he would live to see his next birthday.
Rabaut had contacted Conti months earlier, at first writing to him care of intermediaries, and then,
having been assured that the prince sympathized with the Huguenots, to the prince directly. He had
asked the prince if he would lobby the king to reconsider his policies regarding the Protestants. The
prince had agreed.
The ostensible reason for the secret discussion now was a status report. The prince shared with
Rabaut whatever progress he was making in his private sessions with the king. Rabaut briefed the
prince on the state of affairs of the Protestants down south. In short, none of it was going very well.
King Louis was unwilling to budge in any meaningful way and the Huguenots only grew more
restless.
Before long, Conti began ever so softly exploring Rabauts interest in an armed uprising. The
prince wanted to know just how united Rabauts parishioners were. He asked if they had access to
arms. They did. He asked if they would they be willing to use them. Rabaut suspected they would.
The prince wondered how often Rabaut or any of his colleagues communicated with their Huguenot
brethren in England. More specifically, the prince was keenly interested in whether the Protestant
leadership had any communication with the British military or government.
Indeed, the Protestants were communicating with England. It was likely that Conti already had
some knowledge of this, as he had his own well-established lines of communication to London
courtesy of the Secret du Roi network. The prince also had an idea, which he was now softly floating
to his Protestant contacts like Rabaut: a nationwide Protestant uprising triggered by an English
invasion on the southwestern coast of France.
Agents involved on both sides of the English Channel had begun to call the plan the Secret
Expedition.
About the Author
Maximillian Potter, an award-winning journalist, is the senior media adviser
for the governor of Colorado. He was the executive editor of 5280: Denvers
Magazine, and previously a staff writer at Premiere, Philadelphia, and GQ.
He has been a contributing editor to Mens Health, Best Life, and Details,
and contributes to Vanity Fair. Potter is a native of Philadelphia, with a BA
from Allegheny College and an MSJ from Northwestern Universitys Medill
School. He lives in Denver with his wife and two sons.
You can visit his website at maximillianpotter.com.
@maxapotter
Twelve
July 2014
Introduction
Go Wild. This title at first might suggest scenes such as college kids run amok on spring break, so its
fair to ask up front: What do we mean by this? If not college kids, then maybe survivalists foraging on
an island? Loinclothed hunters pitching spears at antelope or fleeing lions? We mean nothing nearly
so lurid, but youre getting warmer. Wild is one of those overworked words with layers of loaded
meanings, but we intend to strip it to its core in order to make it usefuluseful even to your own
personal well-being.
Our meaning is easy enough to grasp. Think of wild versus tame, wolf versus dog, bison versus
cow. We have the same sort of distinction in mind now when we ask you to expand this with the
somewhat revolutionary notion of applying the idea to humans. Wild humans. Its not as odd as it
sounds. In fact, through deep history, through tens of thousands of years, everyone was a wild human.
The very same forces that tamed wolves and made them dogs tamed humans. Call these forces
civilization, and yes, obvious and abundant benefits came with the deal. Were not here to dispute
those blessings. Our bedrock point has more to do with genes, evolution, and time. Human evolution
occurred under wild conditions, and this made us who we are. The modern human still operates on
those same genes, almost wholly unchanged. We are designed to be wild, and by living tamely we
make ourselves sick and unhappy.
We are going to tell you a number of fascinating details about that design: that you are born to
move with grace, born to embrace novelty and variety, born to crave wide-open spaces, and, above
all, born to love. But one of the more profound facts that will emerge is that you are born to heal.
Your body fixes itself. A big part of this is an idea called homeostasis, which is a wonderfully
intricate array of functions that repair the wear and tear and stress of living. This ability lies at the
very heart of what we mean by going wild.
Were going to make our case by first showing you the real, sweeping, catastrophic consequences
of taming. The worlds leading causes of death and sufferingkillers like heart disease, obesity,
depression, and even cancerare the price we pay for ignoring our genetic code, our design. But
fixing this, especially fixing this on the individual level, in your life, is not as overwhelming as it
sounds. Thats where homeostasis comes in. The task at hand is to get out of the way and let your
bodys wonderfully evolved abilities for self-repair do their job. The steps are simple and doable,
even in our modern world. This is not speculation. Lots of people have taken these steps, including
the authors. Well tell you about them in detail, but we also have something more planned for you. If
you trace these ideas along with us through this book, we think you will come away with a new
appreciation for the human condition.
One of the realizations we hope to deliver is how everythinghow you eat, move, sleep, think,
and liveis connected. All of it is relevant to your well-being. This seems a simple enough idea, but
it flies straight in the face of the fundamentals of Western thought, of science, and especially of
modern Western medicine. The tame idea is to break down a problem into components, find out
which component is malfunctioning, and fix that probleman idea that works well enough with
machines, but we are not machines. We are wild animals. The wild idea is to embrace complexity.
The fact is, your depression is not solely a condition of mind and is not isolated in the brain. It
may be directly and firmly a fault of your exercise routine or choice of vegetables and protein. Your
obesity may be caused by your diet or it may be linked to bacteria or lack of sleepor, even more
curiously, your maternal grandmothers low birth weight. Your failure at your job may be cured by
long walks in the mountains with your dog.
Even the childs song knows that the leg bone is connected to the thigh bone; we mean to press this
idea a lot further to provide some appreciation of the enormous complexity and interconnectedness of
the various elements of human life.
The chapters that follow will begin to assemble the case by breaking down our various topics into
subcategories, and some are the usual suspects. We will begin with the basics, by examining diet and
then exercise, but thats not to say we will deliver up the usual advice. Rather, we are going to use
some emerging realizations in both of these areas to establish a habit of mind, a method of thinking
about the human condition. Well build on that case by looking at a broader set of behaviors: sleep,
mindfulness, tribalism, relationships, and contact with nature. As the case builds, you will notice a
couple of themes. First, it will quickly become apparent that the boundaries of our categories are
porous indeed. We will begin talking about nutrition, and suddenly there is a firm, physical link
through an identifiable pathway to, say, brain function or the immune system. This is as it should be,
because this is the reality.
But more important, you will also notice that each of these categories is a pathway, and each path
leads eventually to the brain and the mind. Of course it does: the mind is the seat of well-being.
Which leads us to a set of fundamentally contradictory ideas that will channel what follows. Each of
these contradictory ideas is correct in its own way, and each has much to teach us.
The first of these emerges in a whole slew of statements through the years, but its perhaps best
stated in a sentence attributed to Native Americans: Every animal knows way more than you do.
The contradictory statement to this one has a long and robust tradition in Western thought, explicitly
articulated even at the very root of the Judeo-Christian tradition: you, as a human, are the crown of
creation, better, more evolved, and therefore somehow separate from and superior to all other
animals.
Maybe its best to hear the first case from a field biologist, because these are often the people
who, like traditional Native Americans, truly understand the idea. The act of close observation of a
given species of wild animal does nothing so much as instill a deep appreciation for the inherent
abilities that attune animals to the environment. The biologist was expressing this very idea to an
observer one time when the observer challenged him. Okay, if owls are so smart, why dont they
build houses, cars, and computers? The biologists instant response was Theyre so smart that they
dont have to.
The same idea emerges in a more common event. You dont have to be a biologist to make a close
study of an animal, and many of us do. We study our dogs. And many of us have had the experience of
watching the familiar family pet deliver a litter of pups. Being proper dog surrogate parents, we
research the coming event as thoroughly as possible. We make trips to the vet, we prepare for the
various procedures we will need to follow to ensure each pups first breaththeres a series of
defined and specific steps to effect a clean entry into the world: clear obstructions and mucus and
then stimulate, stroking gently to encourage those first few magical breaths. We think we have to,
because our dog, smart as she may be, has never mothered pups before and has no access to how-to
books or the instructions we printed from the Internet. And then the pups come and the supposedly
ignorant first-time mother flawlessly executes each complicated step precisely as the instructions
specified, and then she looks at us as if to say, What are you here for? The dog doesnt need to read
the manual, because every animal knows way more than you do.
This is an especially important example, because it involves hormones, in this case oxytocin.
Dogs have them. So do all animals, including humans, and oxytocin will figure in much of this book
even, in fact, in some surprising areas like business transactions, exercise, and violence.
But we are not restricted in thinking about instinctive knowledge of well-being in other animals, a
statement that lies at the very heart of our argument. Somehow, we have gotten to the point of
believing that we must ensure our personal well-being by a series of complicated gyrations and
contortions, whole shelves of self-help books, multiple gym memberships, moon-launch-capable gear
and telemetry, daily attention to the health section of the newspaper, support groups, and a constant
count of calories. Yet imagine for a second a group of Masai menthe storied herders of Kenya
making their way across the Serengeti, an effortless trot of lithe, formed bodies, perfect conditioning,
and a beauty and economy of motion that would be the envy of every dedicated gym rat. When do the
Masai count calories or read the manuals? Where are their personal trainers? Or, for that matter, how
do we explain the apparent well-being of the hunter-gatherer groups so assiduously studied for
centuries by anthropologists and universally reported to be fit, thin, and happy? Hunter-gatherers are
wild humans. Like every wild animal, they know way more than we do, which flies straight in the
face of the crown of creation argument, and we do indeed mean to, at least at first, challenge that
notion. Much of the damage that we inflict on ourselves, on others, and certainly on the natural world
stems from extreme adherence to the notion of human exceptionalism.
Nonetheless.
The jury is still out on the question of whether the human brain is the pinnacle, the best thing
evolution has ever done. The experiment has been in progress for only a couple of million years, and
we have yet to see all the downsides, although a few are coming clearly into view. However, it is a
simple matter of fact (and wonder) that the human brain is the most complicated and profound organ
ever. In the early days of thinking about human evolution, or even today, much of what we consider
exceptional about our brain is our cognitive abilities: using tools, planning, being cleverthat sort of
thing. These abilities are marvelous and unique. We dont mean to understate them here, but it may
help to begin thinking about some other abilities as well. For instance, the purpose of all brainsnot
just ours, but in all sentient beingsis to allow movement, locomotion, coordination, and
manipulation. Were exceptionally good at these skills as well.
Yet our cleverness, recall, learning, and grasp of fact are not all that complex as brain functions
go. It turns outand we know this because of sophisticated tools that measure and assess brain
activitythat some activities we take for granted (empathy, language, and everyday social skills) are
exceedingly complex; they light up the whole brain, a buzzing glow of unimaginably dense neural
networks. This is what we do and what no other species can do. Well unpack this idea slowly as we
go, but know up front that what makes us human is our unprecedented ability to get along with one
another. This is our crowning achievement.
And this is what interests us, but also offers a model or framework for the case we will build in
the following chapters. We are going to talk about components of human activity, like diet, sleep, and
exercise. But, as we have said, there are important connections among these components. More to the
point, each of these activities supports the brain. Each of them in meaningful, measurable, tangible,
nameable ways supports the brain and the brains ability to light up that hypercharged network of
neural pathways. These are the neural pathways that sponsor and record your well-being and
ultimately your ability to connect to other humans. Light up the whole system, and you will feel better.
This book builds its case in succeeding chapters along just this path of logic. Well begin by
laying out a baseline, a summary of what we know about initial conditions and the details of human
evolution. What exactly is the human condition and what is human nature? And well make the
overarching case, by updating a more-than-century-old inquiry into diseases of civilization, that
violation of those initial conditions has made us ill. Most of what ails us today are precisely these
afflictions: diseases of civilization. Then in successive chapters well look at the subsets of human
activity: diet and exercise, sleep, tribalism, contact with nature, relationships, and mindfulness. Well
then summarize with a chapter of practical advice on the personal level.
Wild. This is the word we need now. Before civilization, everything was wild, including
humans. The polite term of anthropology is hunter-gatherer, but calling our ancestors wild
explains so much more. Before there was farming and cities, we were wild humans. Ever since, more
and more of us have been tamed, and this is what is making us ill. All that unfolds in the following
chapters will be the case for honoring the design of our bodies that evolution gave us, but the easier
way to say it is this: Go wild.
Worldwide, there is a growing and necessary trend toward restoring wild systems via ecological
restoration. The Europeans call this process re-wilding. We are arguing that the human body is
every bit as complex and biodiverse, it turns out, as any wild ecosystem, and like an ecosystem, it
works best when restored to wild conditions. So think of this book as instructions for re-wilding your
life, and maybe even an introduction to ideas that may change the way you think about life.
In the beginning, though, it may help you to imagine three scenes. Youll want to recall them every
now and again throughout this book to see how different they appear. Like old-style chemical photo
developing, the narrative that follows should reveal more detail in these images as our story unfolds.
At first, the images will seem fuzzy and disconnected; if we do our work correctly in the pages to
come, they will begin to reveal much about the human condition.
Heres one:
This is a photograph that we encountered years ago but that kept popping into mind as we thought
about this project. Theres probably a good reason it persisted, and it must begin with the fact that this
is a classic photo of a band of hunter-gatherers recorded in 1947, before encroachment by civilization
had compromised their way of lifeand civilization did indeed make these people as sick as the rest
of us in a very short time. But this is a before photo, and it shows a group of San people of Africas
Kalahari gathered in conversation or, probably more accurately, in storytelling, an activity that has
bound us and defined our humanity for longer than we can imagine. The nakedness, of course, strikes
us first, but thats a normal enough state for most of humanity for most of history. But beyond that,
notice what the nakedness reveals: the lithe, fit bodies, upright and strong. Count ribs. But then check
out the guy telling the story: the animation, the affect, the engagement. See what his face is doing, that
he radiates a sort of magnetism that holds the circle together, engaged and involved. Who among us
today communicates so well? And the circle itself? Notice that it is mostly children, that it hangs
together, almost literally. There is an undeniable and readily apparent bond. There is trust.
The second image derives from a video readily available on YouTube, but anyone who has
trained in developmental psychology has already seen it and heard it discussed at length, because its
content explains a crucial issue of human development. But no need to go to the actual video: the
scene it shows is normal enough and repeated often in every childs upbringing, at least every child
lucky enough to have a reasonably normal upbringing. The scene is easy to imagine. A mother and a
toddler are alone in a room full of attractions and distractions for the toddlerbrightly colored toys
and other objects of fascination. But its a strange room. Toddler clings to mom but eyes attractions
surreptitiously. Then courage builds, bolstered by moms affection, and toddler leaves mom to engage
an attractive object, maybe a big block. The block falls and makes a noise, and toddler immediately
bolts for mom, goes through an interval of comforting, and then works up the nerve to once more go
exploring, to venture off in search of the unknown.
All of this is exactly as it should be, now and from the beginning of human time. This pattern of
balancing between comfort and exploration of the unknown is how we build our brains, and it is
enabled by the presence of a mothers affection and support. It is the normal state of affairs, and we
will need this image later, because it is not just about toddlers; it is about each of us.
The third image would at first blush seem to be about very few of usa special case. We mean to
address human well-being here as a universal, but autism is not universal. Most of us see it from afar
and categorize it as one of those unlucky twists of fate that trouble a few people, maybe a genetic
problem, but what has this to do with me? Yet we will build the case here that the relevance of this
neurological problem goes well beyond the social costs. Autism may well be a disease of
civilization, placing it right at the heart of the issues we trace here.
We were particularly struck on a visit to the Center for Discovery, in upstate New York; its a
residential facility that serves 360 people with autism, many of them too violent or disruptive to
function in a normal family setting. Not all autistic people are violent or this disruptive, but the few
who are wind up in places like the Center for Discovery. On the day we visited, staffers escorted us
in and out of a series of classrooms, and we engaged some students without a second thought. Staffers
told us that a month or so earlier this openness and access would not have been possible, that some of
these people might have erupted. The staff credited the remarkable improvement in large part to an
exercise regimen, and we watched people run, jump, and dance. This was their treatment: running,
jumping, and dancing with one another. But just as important, this new routine built on a long-standing
practice at the center of ensuring sound nutrition and connection with nature.
The scene we keep coming back to, however, was in a single tiny classroom, where four
adolescent boys were seated in a row facing a simple bell and wood block that they each played in
turn. A slight, dark woman with a cherubic face and a pageboy haircut sat at a small electric piano
and tickled out a simple refrain, over and over again, as repetitive and simple as it had to be to
engage the boys to ring the bell or strike the block, each in strict simple time to the beat laid down by
the piano player. The words of the refrain echoed the activity: Ring the bell, ring the bell, ring the
bell, on and on and on. Rhythm and music, melody, meter, keeping time. This is the rhythm that calls
forth a brain retreated from social engagementthe hallmark of autism.
But then we noticed the piano player, that she must perform this repetitious exercise for hours on
end each day, because that is what is required of her. We noticed, too, that she was not treating this
like repetition, that she was putting something of herself into each phrase, throwing in little
embellishments and improvisations, that she sang from her center and, like all good singers, from the
core of her emotional self. She was summoning a ray of hope to make musicnot just sound, not even
just melody and rhythm, but musicand doing it again and again and again in a situation that most of
us would find hopeless. She was every bit as engaged and invested with the circle around her as the
!Kung San storyteller. She was living the moment. She was mindful.
Appropriate, then, that this image came to us in this place, the Center for Discovery, because this
was the site of one of two major turning points in each of our own stories. We have long said that
there is no reason to write a book unless the process of doing so changes the authors life. Forever.
Fair enough, because we hope that this book will change your life. Eventually, we will report how
this happened for each of us in detail. But up front, we can say that Richard Manning lost fifty pounds
and became an ultramarathon trail runner. John Ratey lost some weight, too, and changed the way he
eats every daybut the big change was a major expansion in what he thinks about. He is well-known
for writing about exercise and the brain, but the compelling story that is emerging at the Center for
Discovery has made him far more attentive to issues like sleep, food, nature, mindfulness, andmore
importanthow they work together to create well-being. But its not just the Center for Discovery
that has changed Johns thinking. One chance meeting, and a remarkable, spontaneous, wrenching
personal account, changed his life. Well get to that, too.
1
Human 1.0
Why Evolutions Design Endures
Evolution has hard-wired health to happiness, which means happiness is not as hard to assess as we
make it out to benot if you approach it from the wild side. Ultimately, we dont need someone else
(or a book, for that matter) to define our happiness. Our brains do that. Every single aspect of the way
we are wired and evolved makes it our brains job to tell us if we are okay. Our survival depends on
it being so.
Think of what our lives would be like if this were not true, if the body operated on perverse
feedback loops that would tell us we are okay when we are, in biological terms, doing badly: we are
hungry, cold, exhausted, and broken, and the brain says we are fine. Imagine such a feedback system,
and then imagine the prospects of survival for an animal that has it. Imagine it being encoded and
passed on in genes. But no need to imagine. This is precisely the perverse system that prevails in a
drug addict, a hijacked system that says he is doing well when everybody can see he is not. Survival
prospects? We know this answer without further study.
What we need most to understand from this is that our happiness is greatly dependent on our
biological well-being, and the conditions of that well-being have been laid down by the imperatives
of survival, by evolution. All of this means we need to pay attention to the conditions of human
evolution to ensure our happiness. But the problem is, we dont. The popular understanding of human
evolution is more or less wrong. But more important, the way we live is a clear and long-standing set
of violations of the rules of human well-being, and its making us sick.
First, summon that image that invariably pops into mind when we begin to think about human
evolution: the series of cartoon panels in progressionfirst ape, then caveman, then us, and then a
punch line. These ubiquitous cartoons make great jokes, but the idea behind them is wrong in an
important way. So is the concept of a missing link. The cartoon supports the idea that evolution
gradually produced modifications and changes in human design in one neat, clear progression from
our ape ancestors to who we are today, that the change was progressive, and that the process
continues. All of this is wrong.
Since the time of Darwin, there has been a running debate among evolutionists, with Darwin
himself taking the view that evolution was and is built on gradual transition, shade to new shade,
almost imperceptibly between generations. The opposing and minority view through most of this
debate has been that evolution makes sudden radical shifts, a view the controversial evolutionary
biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge labeled punctuated equilibrium. The consensus
now in human evolution is with the latter pointpunctuated equilibriumand we agree.
In fact, the consensus view says the package we call human, Homo sapiens, emerged as a whole in
Africa on the order of about fifty thousand years ago. Not much has happened since. This is Human
1.0 and there have been no significant upgrades.
The consensus view was laid out by Gould himself: Theres been no biological change in humans
in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization weve built with the same body
and brain.
Yet embedded in this same cartoon and in popular understanding is a second, wrong idea, the idea
of a series of links and missing links. In fact, there was not a neat line of human ancestors, each
shading to the next to become more and more humanlike every step of the way. The human family tree
is not a towering pine with a dominant central trunk. It is more of a bush than a tree, with a series of
side branches and dead ends. The most obvious example of this is the case of the Neanderthal, long
known from the fossil record in Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Neanderthals are the knuckle
draggers in the middle panels of the cartoon; theyre also a term of insult that we use for fellow
humans we consider unrefined or unevolved, to cite one of the more egregious readings of the
fundamentals of evolution. The assumption in this is clear. Neanderthals were simply a step along the
way to the pinnacle, to us.
But human evolution is not a linear progression. Rather, there evolved and existed for literally
millions of yearsmuch longer than we have existeda handful of species of viable, big-brained,
upright, tool-wielding, hunting, social primates, each successful in its own niche and place. Yet
modern Homo sapiens appear on the scene only fifty thousand or so years ago, after 90 percent of
hominid evolutionary time has already passed, and suddenly we become a breakout species.
Suddenly, all of those other perfectly viable hominid species are extinct, every single one. We are the
only remaining species in the genus Homo.
Interestingly enough, there was a corresponding decrease not just in species but in genetic
diversity among Homo sapiens. All species of Homo, not just Homo sapiens, trace their lineage to
Africa. There is no serious debate or disagreement about this. And there remains in Africa some
genetic diversity among Homo sapiens, just as one might expect in a center of origin. But beyond
Africa, there is very little genetic variation in humans. Theres a good explanation for this. Separation
of populations is the sponsor of diversity and speciation. That is, branches occur in an evolutionary
tree when some sort of usual natural eventsea level rise makes an island; glaciers divide a home
rangeisolates subpopulations and they begin to diverge genetically. But for at least fifty thousand
years, all humans have been connected to one another through travel, trade networks, and migration.
The result is a genetically homogeneous population. As a practical matter, this means when we speak
of human nature, we speak of all humans, both through the time span of fifty thousand years and across
the planet. Our long-standing networks of connection mean there is no pressure to drift toward a new
species, no pressure to evolve.
Nonetheless, there is some variation and even innovation. Much is made of these differences
among populations for deep-seated reasons having nothing to do with genetics. Take, for instance, the
relatively recent experiment in light skin and blond hair. Through most of human history, maybe 80
percent of it, humans were universally dark-skinned. The experiment in light skin began in Europe
only about twenty thousand years ago, an adaptation to inhabiting places with little sun. Think of how
much we humans make of this tiny and insignificant blip in the total genetic makeup of our species,
how much of recent human history hinges on who has it and who doesnt, it being a subtle little
tweak not even readable in the collective genome.
Other recent experiments include such genetic variations as lactose tolerance and resistance to
malaria as evidenced in a tropical disposition toward sickle-cell anemia. In this sense, we humans
are evolving, but over the course of fifty thousand years, the changes have been so slight as to border
on inconsequential. At least by genetic predisposition, we are no taller, no faster or slower, no
smarter than were the first Homo sapiens. We are to the core the same guys who somehow
outcompeted, outsurvived a handful of very similar upright apes to do something no other species has
done before or since: inhabit every square inch of land on our planet.
But no matter how it happened, it is clear that something unprecedented took place about fifty
thousand years ago. This creature called human appeared all of a sudden and almost as suddenly
was a breakout species. The evolutionary changes that powered this breakout are the core strengths of
our species and the very characteristics that we ought to pay attention to. What are these traits?
BORN TO RUN?
Start with bipedalism and running. Our habit of walking on two legs is instructive in terms of what we
might gain by reexamining the issue with a fresh set of eyes.
Theres a beat-up pair of Inov-8 running shoes parked under David Carriers desk in his office at
the University of Utah, and the trained eye can spot these as every bit as telling as the shape of a thigh
bone. This brand is British and happens to be favored by a subset of the tribe of minimalist runners
who negotiate rough mountain trails. Carrier, a trim, genial middle-aged guy with oval metal-rimmed
glasses, a brush of a mustache, and a frizz of curly hair, confirms for a visitor that he is indeed a
mountain runner, but this is not his claim to fame, at least in the running world, and his claim to fame
in the scientific world is different still. Runners know him as the guy who tried and failed to run an
antelope to death in Wyoming but then eventually figured out how to get the job done with instruction
from African bushmen. Turns out it wasnt about running; it was about empathy.
Carriers work and that of his colleagueshis mentor Dennis Bramble, also of the University of
Utah, and Daniel Lieberman of Harvardis significant beyond dead antelope to those of us who run
and those of us who should run. Their findings figure front and center in a way-too-common
experience: a runner consults a doctor to complain of some injury and then hears the doctor intone the
sober advice, You know, the human body is just not made for running. Thanks to Carriers work,
the runner can confidently answer, Nonsense. Humans are in fact the best endurance runners on the
planet. The best. Might this have something to do with our dominance of the planet, that we are the
lone surviving upright ape?
Much is made of the fact that apes are our closest relatives, that humans are the third species of
chimpanzee, and this has produced the related and wrong assumption that humans are simply apes
with somehow more refined apelike features, a tweak here, a tweak therenew shades, not new
colors. Yet the evidence from endurance running makes a very different case. Humans are a radical
departure from chimp design.
In their pivotal paper about this in the journal Nature, Bramble and Lieberman analyzed the whole
issue in terms of running versus walkinga way of challenging the common assumption that humans
are built to walk, not run. All apes can run, sort of, but not fast and not far, and certainly not
gracefully. Humans can do all of this, and this simple fact can be clearly read in our anatomical
structure, in the bones. The research detailed twenty-six adaptations of the human skeleton specific to
running, not walking. Some of these are, as you might expect, in the legs and feet. For instance,
running requires a springy arched foot, which humans have but no other apes do. Likewise mandatory
are our elongated Achilles tendons and long legs relative to the rest of the body. Running, as opposed
to walking, requires counterrotation, which is to say that the upper body rotates counter to the lower,
negotiated by a pivot of the hips. So running requires a far greater commitment from the upper body
than walking does, and a whole collection of features designed to cope with the shifting mass.
All of these features we share with other running species, even though all of the others are
quadrupeds like horses and dogs (and the fact that these two elegant runners are our closest
domesticated companions through time ought to serve as a hint to the basis of the relationship). We
share none of these characteristics with other species of apesthat is, with the species one limb
away on the family tree. To adapt humans to running, evolution reused some older adaptations from
unrelated species, and all of this took place suddenly about two million years ago with the emergence
of our genus, hominids. This means that not only are we adapted to run, but running defines us.
Science has known some of this for a long time, but it was Carrier who demonstrated why this
sudden departure from the rest of the ape line was so important. His working hypothesis was
something called persistence hunting. True enough, many mammals, especially mammals long
recognized as important food sources for humans, are terribly fast runners. Evolution takes care of
them as well. But those creaturesusually ungulates like deer and antelopeare sprinters, meaning
all flash but no endurance. Carrier believed that if running was so important as to deliver a watershed
in evolution, humans must have used the skill to get food, persistently running game animals until they
tired and faltered, and then closing in for the kill.
He gave this a try in Wyoming, where there are plenty of antelope. He found he could indeed
single out an animal from the herd and track it and chase it long distances, but just as the chosen
animal was beginning to tire, it would circle back to the herd and get lost in the crowd, and Carrier
would be stuck on the trail of a fresh animal ready to run. Finally, though (and by chance), Carrier
learned of tribesmen in South Africa who still practiced this form of hunting. He went to Africa and
learned the trick, and it did indeed involve endurance running, but it also involved a sublime
knowledge of the prey species and its habits, a knowledge bordering on a supernatural ability to
predict what the animal would do. The running itself was meaningless without a big brain. This
connection is a track worth following, but the success of the bushmen in Africa at least allowed
Carrier, Bramble, and Lieberman to close their case. Humans are indeed Born to Run, to cite the title
of Christopher McDougalls popular book, which summarized their work.
End of the trail? Not really. In our conversation, Carrier mentioned almost none of this, and in fact
took issue with some work by Bramble and Lieberman that says the human gluteus maximus buttresses
the case that we are born to run. He says that the muscle in question, the butt muscle, plays almost no
role in running but does show up in a host of other activities, and it is those other activities that have
his attention now. He launches into a line of thought drawn from a concept pivotal in the original
researchan enigma, really: a notion called cost of transport.
Its a relatively simple concept that gets straight at the efficiency of locomotion. Imagine a graph,
with one axis showing speed and the other axis graphing energy expended by the creature in motion.
For most species this graph forms a U-shaped curve, and the bottom of the U is a sweet spot. At this
speed, the animal in question covers the most distance with the least energy, just as a car might get its
best gas mileage at, say, fifty-five miles per hour. It marks the point of maximum efficiency, the best
speed in terms of units of energy expended. The very existence of the U shape says that most animals
have bodies meant for a given speed, a point where energy use is minimized.
Humans match the rule, but only when walking. That is, human walkers lay out a curve with
maximum energy efficiency of about 1.3 meters per second. That speed uses the least amount of
energy to cover a given distance. But running, at least for humans, does not produce a similar curve
with a defined sweet spot; it yields a flat one. We have no optimum speed in terms of energy spent.
Meanwhile, all other running animalshorses, dogs, deerdo produce a U-shaped curve when
running. So if humans are born to run, wheres the sweet spot? Evolution likes nothing so much as
energy efficiency. Species live and die on this issue alone, so why isnt human running tuned for
maximum efficiency?
Further, the whole question offers a parallel line of inquiry, not among species but within the
human body itself. Thats where Carrier is headed with this, but he first notes that the flat cost-of-
transport curve for human running appears only when you summarize data for a number of humans. On
the other hand, looking at data for each individual does indeed produce a U-shaped curve, but the
sweet spot is in a different place for each human. Thats not true for other species, so right off, this
suggests that there is far more variability in humans, and it has much to do with individual
conditioning and experience.
But more interestingly, this whole line of reasoning can be and has been examined not just
between species and among individual humans but among individual muscles within a given body.
Muscle recruitment and efficiency vary according to activity, even with running. Running uphill
requires one set of muscles, downhill another, on the flat or side hilling different ones still. So does
running fast or running slow. But further still, so does jumping. And throwing, pushing, punching,
lifting, and pressing.
Carrier says that the research on this shows no favoritism, no sweet spot according to any one
activity, no real specialization, and this result is counter to whats found with any other species. For
other species, one can make a categorical statement like born to gallop, but for humans, no. Born to
run? Yes indeed, but also born for doing other activities as well. Humans are the Swiss Army knives
of motion.
This is not a surprise to the vast majority of people who think about what humans do, but I think it
is a surprise to the folks who are so focused on the running hypothesis. We are an animal that needs to
do a variety of things with our locomotive system, Carrier says. We do more than just walk
economically and run long distances.
All of this movement dictates a couple of fundamental conditions of our existence: we need to take
on enough nutrients (not just energy but nutrients) to power all of this motion, and we need outsize
brains to control diverse types of locomotion. Thinking, creating, scheming, mating, coordinatingall
those activities also require big brains, but locomotion alone is enough to seal the deal. The evolution
of our unique brains was locked into the evolution of our wide range of movement. Mental and
physical agility run on the same track.
FUEL
There is a paradox at the center of human nutrition. All the other parts of our body seem very good at
what they do, are standouts in the animal kingdom, but we are truly lousy at digestion, which is
limited and puny. Literally so, because we have to be lousy at it. First off, digestion is an
energetically demanding process, so why burn the calories just to take on calories if there is a better
solution? But second, if we are going to be able to move around rapidly upright, we need small guts,
and small guts mean short intestines, less real estate for digestion. This bit of elemental engineering is
a consequence of a number of design features, but the counterrotation we talked about with running is
a good case in point. Unlike all the other apes, which are quadrupeds, we have a significant vertical
gap between the bottom of our ribs and the top of our pelvis, the territory of the abdominal muscles.
These muscles effect the leverage necessary to keep us reliably upright and control the twist of
running, so we need a light, tight abdomen, or tight abs, which restricts room for intestines.
This anatomical adjustment explains much in human makeup and behavior, but start with a simple
and profound fact: our short guts mean we cant eat grass, and this is no small thing, especially if you
consider that two million years of evolutionary history occurred in savannas and grasslands.
Grasslands are enormously productive in biological terms; that is, they efficiently convert solar
energy into carbohydrates. But that energy is wrapped in the building block of all grasses, cellulose,
and humans cannot digest it, not at all.
Our primary method for overcoming our inability to digest is to outsource the job. Our prey
animals, the ungulatesgrazers and browsers, largelyhappen to be very good at digesting
cellulose. These quadrupeds can handle such tasks as chewing cuds, patiently feeding and refeeding
wads and tangles of grass into a labyrinth of intestines contained in a monumental bulge of a gut.
There is no ambiguity in the fossil record, in paleoanthropology or anthropology, in everything we
know about the human condition, past and present. Humans are hunters and meat eaters. There is no
such thing as a vegetarian society in all the record. Eating meat is a fundamental and defining fact of
the human condition, at the gut level and bred in the bones.
Discussion about this has generally been cast in terms of protein. Essential amino acidsproteins
are necessary building blocks for that highly adapted body. The only complete source of those
amino acids is meat. True as that may be, it misses some essential points, as have anthropologists and
nutritionists in trying to do the calculations that explain our continued existence. When we think of
meat today, we think of, well, meat, defined as muscle tissue. We disregard the rest, all those other
tissues of the animal body. Its not a new mistake.
In the nineteenth century, when Europeans were exploring North America, a few explorers and fur
trappers made contact with the nomadic Indians of the northern plains, a people who, like many
hunter-gatherers, lived almost exclusively off animals. The Europeans of necessity adopted that diet
and soon found themselves quite ill, even to the point of sprouting open, running sores on their faces.
They were like we are today and ate only muscle meat. But then the Indians showed them the choice
parts, the bits of liver and spleen, bone marrow and brain and the fat, especially the fat. The
Europeans ate as they were told and got better because the organ tissue contained some essential
micronutrients lacking in the muscle meat.
The basic energetics of an animal diet involve not just protein but also and especially fat and
micronutrients and minerals, a matter of bioaccumulation. Grazers store excess energy as fat, in and
of itself a dense, rich source of calories to fuel our demanding bodies; but in doing so, they
bioaccumulate a rich storehouse of elements like magnesium, iron, and iodine that the deep roots of
grass pull from mineral soil. This is also an important factor. Certainly we could (and do) get many of
these by eating plants directly, but they are far more concentrated in meat. To get everything we need
from plants, we would have to eat far more than we literally have the stomach for. Further, these
minerals and micronutrients tend to be unevenly distributed on the face of the planet, as any miner for
magnesium, iron, or iodine will tell you. But the big grazers tend to be migratory and range over vast
areas, thereby averaging out conditions and balancing geologys uneven hand. Over time, grazing
animals accumulate a full range of nutrients as no stationary plant can, and we take advantage of that
life history as stored and accumulated in an animals body.
Yet our need for variety and diversity in diet also shows up in our omnivorous habit. Humans have
for all human time eaten a wide array of plants and wandered far and wide to gather them, and this,
too, is more than a simple matter of energetics. Diversity ensures the range of micronutrients to
support the complexity of the human body, the importance of which will emerge in detail as we
develop this story. All of this gets greatly aided by our cultural adaption involving the use of fire,
which allows cooking and so further aids in concentration and digestion. Add to this our
microbiomes, which are another way of outsourcing to compensate for our poor digestive abilities.
Our guts are loaded with thousands of species of bacteria that break down food and add valuea lot
more than we think.
By and large, though, these patternsnomadism, bipedalism, and omnivoryare defining for our
entire genus and have accrued over the course of two million years of hominid history. Yet there is a
variation in this theme that illustrates its refinement and gets to our more central question: the
difference between Homo sapiens and all other hominids, now extinct. The general approach to food
outlined here is true of all the species of hominids, even Neanderthals; yet recall that our basic
question is why the single species of humans, modern humans, beat out people like the Neanderthals.
Neanderthals were indeed huntersin fact, highly skilled huntersand, if anything, they were
more selective to very large prey animals than Homo sapiens were, meaning that Neanderthals had
the skills and social organization necessary to kill elephants with spears. They had big hunks of
protein and fat, the very thing that gave all hominids the edge. Neanderthals had bodies that were as
upright and graceful as ours. They had plenty big brains. What they did not have, compared with the
Homo sapiens of their day, was fish. More to the point, they had not learned how to tap this source of
nutrition that was all around them.
Their chief competitors, Homo sapiens, had. Evidence of fishing first appears in Africa, but only
in Homo sapiens. When our species showed up in Europe and Asia about forty thousand years ago,
fishing of marine and freshwater sources was widespread and important on both continents.
This is not to argue that fish gave Homo sapiens the edge that wiped out Neanderthals,
Denisovans, and Homo floresiensis, the other hominid species already in Asia and Europe then
although its possible. But it does signal something important to modern nutrition, especially in the
case of salmon. Remember: we can prove that those ancient Homo sapiens ate fish because of
chemical signatures, which is to say that some elements not present in terrestrial species were present
in fish, and those elements accumulate in human bones, the fossil record. Further, anyone who has
ever witnessed a salmon migration, even in todays relatively impoverished conditions, understands
that collecting this protein took almost no effort, as it was an almost unimaginable abundance. Forget
persistence hunting: salmon eaters need only sit at streamside and rake it in, literally tons of high-
quality protein. But each of those salmon, one of the worlds most peripatetic species, has ranged
thousands on thousands of miles across diverse marine and aquatic environments during its short life
cycle. That is, each fish has sampled and bioaccumulated a diverse collection of micronutrients
lacking in a terrestrial diet. Remember the value of diversity realized by nomads hunting across
diverse environments. Nomads eating a nomadic marine species takes that idea up a notch: nomadism
squared.
EMPATHY
The message here is diversity, and we will hear it again. But this is a small element of the larger
success of humans. The details remain somewhat in dispute, but from such evidence paleo-
anthropologists have through the years assembled a list of traits they believe defined us as humans. In
a recent book, the British scholar of humanitys roots Chris Stringer offered one such list, as good as
any:
Complex tools, the styles of which may change rapidly through time and space; formal artifacts
shaped from bone, ivory, antler, shell, and similar materials; art, including abstract and
figurative symbols; structures such as tents or huts for living or working that are organized for
different activities (such as toolmaking, food preparation, sleeping, and for hearths); long-
distance transport of valued materials such as stone, shells, beads, amber; ceremonies or
rituals, which may include art, structures, or complex treatment of the dead; increased cultural
buffering to adapt to more extreme environments such as deserts or cold steppes; greater
complexity of food-gathering and food-processing procedures, such as the use of nets, traps,
fishing gear, and complex cooking; and higher population densities approaching those of
modern hunter-gatherers.
It is a long list that accounts for much, but its elements, the traits, are derivative. They certainly
derive from how we move, our athleticism, and what we eat and how we get it. But there are
activities in here that do not derive from simple biological energetics, how we translate energy into
life. Symbols (and remember: words are symbols, so this includes language)? Art? Music? Ritual?
Clearly this list is telling us that something important and unprecedented has happened in our brains,
something well beyond bipedalism, tight guts, voracious appetites, salmon, and the big brains that
were characteristic of the hominid line for the preceding two million years.
The biologically unprecedented structures in the brain that enable these abilities dont leave much
of an impression in the fossil record, so there is no hard evidence of when they appeared. We have
come to know them only recently through neuro-science, an exploding field that continues almost
daily with discoveries that illuminate the complexity of the brain. Yet a couple of structures, a class
of cells or parts of the brain weve known about for some time, give us some hint as to why human
abilities exploded on the scene fifty thousand years ago. For instance, since the 1920s, weve known
about spindle neuronsa uniquely shaped set of cells that first showed up in ape brains, and to a
lesser extent in dolphins, whales, and elephants, all animals known for having unique abilities.
Humans have many more of them in very specific areas of the brain, and they are involved in complex
reactions like trust, empathy, and guilt, but also in practical matters like planning. (You might ask why
empathy and planning run together. Good question. Answer coming.)
Add to that a related and even more wondrous set of cells that neuroscientists call mirror
neurons, first discovered in the 1980s and 90s by a group of scientists in Italy. These get more to
the point of empathy. The term mirror is apt. If we monitor a monkeys brain while the monkey is
eating a peanut, the readout shows a set of firing neurons associated with activities like using a hand
to pick up the peanut, chewing, and registering the satisfaction delivered by the food. But if a monkey
watches another monkey eat a peanut, that same set of neuronsthe mirror neuronsfire in his brain,
as if he himself were the one eating the peanut. This is a major part of the circuitry of empathy, which
is defined as a notch up from sympathy. More than simply realizing the feelings of another, we also
literally feel them ourselves.
It would be hard to overstate the importance of this in social cohesion, but a bit of reflection
shows how far this extends. It gives us some sense of another persons story, ascribing consciousness
to other beings. It allows us to understand that they do not see the world as we see it, the importance
of which is best understood by observing people who do not have this ability. For instance, people
who have autism are notoriously altered in this very circuitry and these abilities, which is why they
dont lie. They dont see the point of lying, because they think everyone else knows exactly what they
know.
This consciousness of anothers point of view is exactly what enables the more elegant and
refined form of lying so valuable to all humans: storytelling. It allows abstraction and
conceptualization, which in turn allows language. It allows a concept of the future, which in turn
opens the door to planning and scheming and is why planning is related to empathy. But it also gives
us a sense that others see us, and hence body adornment shows up in the archaeological record. So
does art, which is an extension of adornment but also a mode of storytelling, a symbolic
representation of the world external to us.
All of this, on the other hand, comes at a great cost. As we have said, the brain is a costly organ in
terms of the energy required to keep it humming along. Any additions simply increase that load, but
these are more than simple additions, more than a few more cells tucked away in a discrete corner.
The activities associated with spindle and mirror neurons are characterized not by the firing of a few
cells but by the assembly of networks of cells all firing in concert, a glow of energy humming around
the entire brain. These, unlike many of our more mundane tasks, are whole-brain activities, heavy
calculation loads. This load translates into a requirement for even more calories to support it.
Yet there are more than these immediate costs involved, hinted at by one of the more intriguing and
sobering bits of evidence in all the vast collection of bones: the case of a single individual, D3444.
We know him only by his skull, but thats enough to tell us he was a Dmanisi man, which places his
life in what is now the nation of Georgia about 1.8 million years ago. He is not even Homo sapiens;
Dmanisi people were like Neanderthals, a separate species of hominids that left Africa long before
Homo sapiens and eventually settled the grasslands east of what is now Europe. D3444 is a special
case simply because his skull has no teeth, but, in fact, he had no teeth long before he died.
Anthropologists believe this is evidence of infirmities that would have made him dependent on others
for his survival. He needed help, and he got it, because hominids take care of those who cant take
care of themselves and have done so since before they were humans. This generosity has real
biological costs in terms of energy spent. All of this means that empathy must confer benefits greater
than those costs, or it would not still be with us. This is axiomatic in evolutionary biology.
Yet any accounting of this matter can easily miss the even larger point in play. We need not look
long and far for cases of humans caring for helpless humans, and this brings us to what is perhaps the
most salient point of humanity, the fundamental fact of our existence largely overlooked in these
discussions, because like many fundamental, important, and profound facts of life, it hides in plain
sight. We take it for granted.
The biological term that we need now to move this discussion forward is altricial, meaning
simply helpless young. Of course they are. Helpless is almost the very definition of the young of
any species, from baby robins to newborn, sightless puppies. But this topic teases out probably the
most significant difference between our species and all other animals now or ever. Our young are
more or less helpless for a very long time, longer than any other speciesfourteen, fifteen years.
(Some present-day parents would insist that its twenty-five or thirty years.) No other species is even
remotely close to us in this regard. This, too, is a defining fact of the human condition.
And it is not happenstance but a predictable, derivative trait, given our big brains. Humans cannot
be born with fully formed brains simply because the resulting head would not fit through the birth
canal. Rather, our brains are built and formed after we are born, like a ship in a bottle, a process that
takes fifteen, maybe twenty years.
Volumes of understanding and entire disciplines and sets of wisdom derive from this simple fact,
but applying it to paleo-anthropology offers a new lens on the human condition. In fact, some in the
field now argue that this simple fact of life is the most salient characteristic of human nature, the
founding fact of our life. Our young are so dependent that no parent is capable of the task of
supporting and caring for that infantnot just the attention and protection, but the teaching and
feeding. Hunters and gatherers must meet the energy demands of lactating mothers back in camp.
Mothers simply cannot raise infants alone, and this dictates social bonding. The basic social contract
has babies as its bottom line. Without this, the human species cannot go on as it is. All evolution
hinges on successful reproduction of the next generation. In the case of humans, this is an enormous
task. Through all human time, across all human cultures, there emerges a number associated with this
task. It takes a ratio of four adults to one child to allow humans to go on. This is the real cost of our
big brains.
This is why we must cooperate, and why tools like empathy and language evolved to enable that
cooperation. All else of human nature is derivative of this single human condition.
Empathy and violence, tribalism and warfare, storytelling, dance, and musicall derivative. Our
business as we go forward is to build the case for your well-being as it is built in humans: in mind,
body, energetics, and motion, in the elements of life. But understand from the beginning that evolution
working in bone, muscle, neurons, fat, food, and fightfinally built a creature that is human. How
are we different from all the rest of life? The paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall offers a good
summary. To put this at its most elementary, humans care at least to some extent about each others
welfare; and chimpanzeesas well as probably all of our other primate relativesdo not.
Our other primate relatives did notat least not to the extent that we doand they are extinct.
About the Authors
John Ratey, MD, is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical
School. He is the author of numerous bestselling and groundbreaking books,
including Spark, Driven to Distraction, and A Users Guide to the Brain. He
lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Richard Manning is an award-winning journalist. He is the author of nine books, including
One Round River. His work has appeared in The Best American Science and Nature
Writing 2010, Harpers, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other
publications.
You can visit John Ratey online at johnratey.com.
The-Ratey-Institute
@jratey
Little, Brown and Company
June 2014
Chapter 1
Sarah Stevens would pick truth. I knew she would.
I mean, yeah, sure, there was an outside chance she would pick dare. But since the dares on this
particular day were limited by (A) the confines of a fifteen-passenger van and (B) the moral authority
of its driver, there wasnt a lot of point to picking dare.
Now, generally when you play truth or dare in eighth grade, all the dares end up being some sort
of expedition to explore the anatomy of the opposite gender. I dare you to put your hand here or your
lips there. But not so much when youre with your church youth group, and not so much when your
youth group pastor, Joe Slater, is driving, and it just so happens that he recently took the youth group
to a weekend-long seminar called I Kissed Dating Goodbye, where you learned that you should
save physical exploration, including all forms of putting your hand here or your lips there, for
marriage.
So in this particular church-van environment, picking dare was pointless. If you did, you would
end up with something lame, gross, and improvised, like eating a leftover fast-food squeeze packet of
mayonnaise or whatever.
Tony had picked truth, and then he was asked who he liked, which turned out to be some girl from
his Christian school who most of us didnt know. It was kind of a letdown, but now his turn was over,
and he had picked Sarah Stevens.
Sarah, truth or dare?
As long as she picked truth, I knew with complete certainty what he would ask her. Tony had my
back.
Truth.
Tony looked at me. We shared a slight nod. We knew what was about to go down. This was it.
The Big Moment. Our chance to see if our theories were correct, if Sarah Stevens liked me the way I
liked her. If she had been talking with her best friend about me the way I had been talking with Tony
about her.
Do you like Josh? Tony asked.
Check.
Obviously I couldnt ask her myself, even in a game of truth or dare, because that would be
awkward. But I knew Tony would do it for me. I mean, he stuck with me even when I had cancer. And
thats about as serious a test a friendship can face.
We had grown up two doors away from each other, Tony and me. Id always been homeschooled
and hed always gone to Christian school, so I would spend my days waiting until he got home, when
he could come outside and build forts with me.
Then: the cancer.
I was nine. I had a 50 percent chance to live. I would go to the hospital for five days, then come
home for two weeks, then go back to the hospital. When I was home, I had hardly any energy. I didnt
play outside. And I couldnt build forts or ride bikes or do any of the things Tony and I used to do,
before I got sick, and before my left leg had to be amputated from the hip down. But you know what?
Tony didnt care. He would sit inside with me and play computer games or board games or whatever
it was that I had the energy to do. That long year of chemotherapy, thats when I first learned that Tony
had my back.
Everyone at Covenant Presbyterian Church did, really. Even Sarah Stevens, come to think of it.
She had been one of fifty kids who bought Covenant Kids for Joshua T-shirts. And when I first
started losing my hair to the chemotherapy, Sarahs little brother, Jim, had been one of eighteen boys
who gathered in my familys backyard one afternoon and shaved their heads. Thats the thing about
going to church. Theres a bunch of extra rules you have to followlike about datingbut the upside
is that if you get cancer, if your life falls apart, church people will shave their heads and buy T-shirts
for you. They will do anything they can to help you.
Sarah Stevens glanced at a couple of the girls in the van. They smiled, biting lower lips to
suppress giggles. For a moment, I basked in the hope that this meant she was going to say yes.
No, she said, looking at Tony, not at me.
I felt a hot, tingly sensation spread over my skin as I slid down a few inches against the bench seat,
wishing I could just melt directly into its crusty upholstery. Not only did Sarah Stevens not like me,
but she had just said so in front of all fifteen passengers in this van. It was a one-two knockout punch
of rejection plus humiliation.
I disengaged from the truth or dare game until its chatter was mere background noise. After youve
been shut down in front of everyone, publicly declared to be uncrushworthy by Sarah Stevens, who
cares about any-thing else? So what if someone is gagging on a squeeze packet of mayonnaise?
At the retreat center, I set a pair of crutches on the unfinished cement floor, beneath the bunk bed I
was sharing with Tony. We were staying in a rustic cabin with twenty bunk beds and a single naked
lightbulb operated by a hanging string of tiny metal balls. I navigated my way through the maze of
bunks to Joe Slater, who was unrolling his sleeping bag on the plastic mattress of a bottom bunk. Joe
was in his late twenties, with an intense gaze, a booming laugh, and a V-shaped athletic build, all of
which perfectly matched both his name (Joe Slater!) and his job description (youth pastor!).
Hey, Joe, what are we going to do next?
For me, not knowing the activity schedule was like living in an environment where the weather
could fluctuate by one hundred degrees at any moment: I never knew what to wear.
Were going to dinner, he said. In the dining hall.
Dinner. Got it. Keep the prosthesis on.
Since my leg is amputated all the way up at my hip, my prosthesis includes three artificial joints:
hip, knee, and ankle. Which makes the leg very heavy and cumbersome to wear.
There are a lot of amputees who run and play sports with their prostheses on. These tend to be the
amputees who are popularized in the media and thus the sort who come to mind when the average
person thinks of the word amputee. But most of these amputee-athletes are below-knee amputees,
meaning their legs end somewhere between the ankle and the knee. If you are a below-knee amputee,
particularly if you are missing only your foot, a prosthesis can allow you to run just as fast as an able-
bodied person. Above-knee amputees, though, have a harder time, because they dont have the
muscles of the quadriceps to propel their knees forward. It is possible to run with an above-knee
prosthesis, but it is difficult and certainly not as fast as running with a real human leg. Most difficult
of all, though, is the hip-disarticulation level, which is what I am. For hip disartics, running on the
prosthesis is not possible. The leg simply doesnt swing through fast enough.
So for most types of athletic activities, I would take my leg off and either run with my crutches, or
set my crutches down and hop. I was faster and more agile without the leg. But I was also more self-
conscious, and with the crutches, I didnt have my hands free to, say, carry a plate of food. Which is
why I would wear my leg to the dining hall for dinner, and why I planned to wear it to all nonathletic
social activities during the retreat.
After dinner, Joe got up and gave the rules for the weekend. The usualno going into the other
genders cabin, no talking after lights-out, no going off anywhere by yourself. Stuff like that. Then Joe
told us to open our Bibles, and he gave a talk, which is youth-group-speak for a sermon. The usual
no getting distracted by worldly pursuits, no motives except to bring glory to God, no sexual or
impure thoughts. Stuff like that.
He prayed and then announced that we were all meeting by the lake in ten minutes. Prosthesis still
on, I walked over to Joe.
What are we going to do next? I asked.
Joe frowned, not wanting to ruin the surprise.
By the lake? I persisted.
Dont tell anyone but its nighttime capture the flag.
Cool, thanks.
That meant leg off, using crutches, so I would be able to run. Of course, even with my crutches, I
wasnt an especially useful teammate in capture the flagI couldnt really hold the flag and move at
the same time. But at least on the crutches I could run around to make it look like I was participating.
The participation would be fake, but what did that matter when the alternative was wearing, you
know, a fake leg? Thats what it means to be an amputee: Youre always putting on a show.
Down by the lake, we divided into teams, counting off by ones and twos. I tried to shift in line so I
could be on the same team as Sarah Stevens. It worked. Not that I was going to talk to her or anything,
not after her bombshell during truth or dare, but for some reason it seemed important that we be on the
same team, working together to capture the same flag.
Chapter 2
On Saturday morning, after a pancake breakfast, I did not have to ask Joe what we were going to
do next because he announced it to the group: hiking at Shenandoah National Park. It was going to be
an all-day trip, and we should wear our bathing suits under our hiking clothes.
When we loaded into vans for the drive to the hiking trail, something totally insane happened:
Sarah Stevens sat beside me. We were so close that one of her two legs and my one leg were
almosttouching. And its not like she had to sit beside me. There had been other vans. There had
been other rows with available seats in this van. She chose to sit beside me. Which made me wonder
what if she liked me after all? Maybe she was lying yesterday in truth or dare?
I thought about this as I walked along the hiking trail. It really did seem like she liked me. Not only
had she sat beside me in the van, but sometimes when I looked at her, like this morning at breakfast or
last night during Joes talk, she was already looking at me and then we would both look away from
each other.
The trail eventually led to a waterfall. It was a for-real one, too, like what youd see on a
postcard, about one hundred feet of vertical drop. While the rest of the group was splashing around in
the foamy pool underneath, I climbed by myself up a trail so steep you had to grab on to exposed tree
roots to keep from slipping. It was tricky because Id have to let go of my forearm crutch handle for a
second, allowing the cuff of the crutch to dangle from my wrist, while I grabbed at the root and pulled
myself up like on a chin-up bar. At the top, there was a rock the size of a small car that jutted out over
the falls. Sitting on it was a guy and a girl, midtwenties, with their arms draped over each others
shoulders, sharing what appeared to be some kind of homemade cigarette.
Hey, kid, the guy said to me.
Hey, I said.
This place is legit, huh?
Very legitimate, yes.
How old are you?
Thirteen.
You got a girlfriend?
I thought about Sarah Stevens.
No.
The guy took a drag on the cigarette.
Let me give you a tip. Once you get yourself a girlfriend, he said, nodding his chin toward the
girl he was intertwined with, bring her right here. Sit on this rock.
He winked at me as if I should understand. I didnt, but nodded anyway.
Trust me, he said. Youll be glad you did.
Cool. Thanks.
When we got back to the retreat center that afternoon, I found Joe Slater.
What are we gonna do next? I said.
Showers. Then dinner.
What about after that?
Joe looked away for a second, squinting into the woods.
Listen, Josh, sometimes its best to just go with the flow. To have some faith that God will take
care of things. Every moment of your life doesnt need to be planned out in advance. Sometimes the
best moments are the spontaneous ones you dont plan for. You get what Im saying?
His words were true in the way most things printed on greeting cards are true. But I wasnt asking
him about the schedule because I had a problem with spontaneity. I was asking because I needed to
know whether or not to wear my leg. Only, I didnt want to tell Joe, because doing so would violate
my Rules of Being an Amputee.
I had developed these rules during the three years since Id lost my leg. It wasnt like I sat down
one day and said, What are some good rules I can write for myself? Instead, they had taken root and
sprouted without conscious attention, like weeds in my mind. And they grew in the exact opposite
direction of how it feels to be an amputee. They were a correctionor maybe an overcorrection.
These were my rules:
1. Never be a burden.
2. Never be different.
As Joe and I stood there by the vans in the gravel parking area, wearing T-shirts and semiwet
bathing suits, towels draped over our shoulders, I considered telling him the reason I always wanted
to know the schedule: I needed to decide whether to wear my leg or not. But doing so would violate
both of my rules. It would make me a burden, because if he knew I was making a decision about
whether or not to wear a prosthesis based on each activity he planned, it might affect the way he
planned the schedule. Instead of thinking, Would this be a fun activity for the students? hed be
thinking, I wonder if Josh will want to wear his prosthesis for this game? Or maybe he will already
be on his crutches at this point in the day, which would mean we should play this other game instead.
And obviously, telling him would violate rule number two as well, because it would identify me as
different. I mean, no one else in the youth group was fluctuating their limb count depending on the
activity.
And yes, I get that I was very different from everyone else. I was visually different, conspicuously
different, obviously different. All you had to do was look at me. I was missing a leg. Either I was
using crutches and there was no leg there at all or I was wearing one that didnt look quite right and
caused me to limp.
So yeah, I was different, and there was nothing I could do about it. But when youre faced with a
significantly life-altering negative situation you cant control, you grasp at the little things you can
control. The little opportunities where you can make choices for yourself. I couldnt choose to get my
leg back, no, but I could choose to ask my youth pastor about the schedule without telling him my
hipdisarticulated leg was the reason I was asking.
This is why, instead of explaining all this to Joe, I was just like, Yeah, thats probably good
advice. But seriously, though: What are we doing after dinner?
Joe sighed and then smirked. The talent show.
The talent show had been announced before the retreat, in case people wanted to bring their
clarinet or whatever, but no one knew when in the weekend the event would take place.
Except, now, for me. Dinner, then talent show: leg on.
Okay, cool, thanks, I said.
At the talent show, Joe Slater himself had an act, one where he awarded Most likely to style
superlatives. He would say someones name and then make a reference to something funny that had
happened at the retreat, like Most likely to walk into a spiderweb on the hike or Most likely to
snore, and then everyone would laugh and cheer.
Josh Sundquist, he read off his list. Most likely to ask, What are we going to do next?
He impersonated me using an annoying little kids voice. I felt a stab of betrayal, like Joe had
revealed a secret Id confided in him. But it was my fault. I had chosen not to tell him why. I was
confident he would have happily given me the entire schedule printed on a sheet of paper a week in
advance of the retreat, if thats what I wanted. And if he had known, certainly he would not have
made a joke about it in the talent show. People will bend over backward to be helpful and
accommodating if they know its about your disability.
But I had chosen to keep the reason a secret because it was about my disability. Because I didnt
want to be a burden. Because I didnt want to be different. And ironically, this had led to both of my
rules being broken. Even though I never told him why I was asking, I had clearly become a burden to
Joe. Otherwise he wouldnt have given me the award. That was the joke here: I had asked so many
times that I had become annoying. And a burden. And because none of the other students had
overheard me asking Joe for the frequent schedule updates, no one actually got the joke, so they didnt
laugh at my award like they did the others. My award was met with awkward silence, and then a
smattering of applause. Which made me feel very different indeed.
I stole a peek at Sarah Stevens. She was staring at me. When our eyes met, she looked away.
Chapter 3
As far as periods of life go, middle school gets a lot of hate. But theres one really, really good
thing about middle school, which is that if someone likes you, there is a 100 percent chance that you
are going to find out, because he or she will tell someone who will in turn tell someone else, and after
five more minutes everyone within a fifty-mile radius, including you, will know about it. And
fortunately, gossip travels just as well through the social fabric of a church youth group as it does
through a school.
As it happens, I found out that Sarah Stevens liked me through instant message. I was talking to
Tony, who had heard it via instant message through Sarahs best friend, Eileen Adair. So the
information was very close to the source. In fact, it had never progressed beyond the level of best
friends, so it was pretty much guaranteed to be true.
I replied to Tony with an excessive amount of unnecessary punctuation, like, ARE YOU
SERIOUS!?!!!???!?!!????
Tony was indeed serious, and furthermore, it turned out Sarah Stevens was pretty serious, tooat
least serious enough that she wanted to go out with me. Yes. You read that correctly. Sarah Stevens
wanted to go out with me. This bit of information, also revealed via Tony, boggled my mind. I stared
at the computer screen in disbelief, my face alternating between slack-jawed shock and wide-
mouthed grin.
Sarah Stevens liked me! She liked me after all! She had lied in truth or dareI was the one she
liked!
But as amazing as it was, none of it mattered. Because I wasnt allowed to date until I was sixteen
years old.
Mom and Dad had always had that rule, since I was little. No dating until youre sixteen. So from
the beginning, my interest in Sarah and whether or not she liked me back had been a purely
hypothetical exercise. But what if what if they would make an exception for Sarah Stevens?
Conservative is the very best description of my parents, for that is what they are in every sense of
the word. Not just politically and religiously (although that, too), but also environmentally (we
always had a rotting compost pile of peels and skins and other food scraps in the backyard, which
Mom used as fertilizer for her vegetable garden) and economically. Especially economically. For
example, lets say theres a mouse living in the kitchen. My mom will set out one of those little
disposable wooden mousetraps with a piece of food on it and catch the mouse. But rather than throw
the whole mess away, like most people would, my mom removes by hand the bloodied, partially
decapitated rodent carcass and then cleans, disinfects, and resets the mousetrap so she can reuse it,
rather than throw away the first one with its dangling mouse appendages and spend a dollara
dollarto buy a new one.
Both my parents are wire-frame skinny, my mom because shes a raw vegan, and my dad because
hes married to one. As men grow old, the waistline of their pants tends to sink down beneath an
expanding gut, or if they stay thin, their pants creep up on their chest. Im confident my dad will fall
into the second group, eventually turning torso-less, just a gray-haired head and bean-pole arms
popping out of a pair of wool trousers hiked up to his armpits like a strapless dress.
But I digress. The point is that as extremely conservative people, my parents want everything to
stay the same. Or, even better, to return to the way things used to be. So, as I learned at a young age, if
you need to persuade them of something, one technique is to frame your argument around the idea that
you are making a case for these values.
I made my opening statement the next Sunday while we were driving home from church in our
minivan. Mom and Dad were up front. My nine-year-old brother, Matthew, was beside me in the way
back, and in the middle sat my five-year-old brother, Luke, and a car seat containing our newly
arrived baby sister, Anna.
So you know how weve always been friends with the Stevens family? I asked my parents.
I paused to allow them to mentally confirm that yes, we had indeed always been friends with the
Stevenses. In fact, Mom and Dad would no doubt be remembering that the Stevenses had been in our
homeschool group for a year when Mrs. Stevens homeschooled Sarah. And as I said before, Sarahs
brother Jim had shaved his head for me when I had cancer. Now he and I were in the same Boy Scout
troop. Dad and Mr. Stevens were tennis partners. So obviously this was how things had always been.
Yeah said Dad, in a tone that said, I know youre trying to set us up here, I just havent
figured out how yet.
Well, I thought of a great idea to ensure that our families remain close, I said in my best mature
young man voice.
Whats that? asked Dad.
I should go out with Sarah.
Go out with her where? asked Mom.
We wouldnt go anywhere, I said. I mean, we would just be boyfriend-girlfriend.
You mean like go steady? asked Dad.
I dont know what that means, I answered.
Its when you stop dating multiple people and date just one girl, said Dad.
Why would you be dating multiple people at the same time? I asked.
You know, like maybe you take Betty-Sue out on Friday and take Barbara out on Saturday, and
then you decide you want to only go out with Barbara, he said.
So youre cheating on Betty-Sue?
Nono, I said Dad stammered.
Then youre cheating on Barbara?
No, youre dating both of them.
At the same time? Do they know about each other? I asked, confused.
Yes. No. I mean, maybe they do. It doesnt matter. Not unless youre going steady with one of
them, which means you arent dating anyone else.
Okay, well, people dont do that anymore, I said. Now you only go out with one person. No
one dates more than one person at the same time.
Hmm, said Dad.
It was not lost on me that the subject had been changed. So anyways, can I date Sarah?
Well have to think about it, said Mom, her go-to phrase for a soft, kindhearted no.
All right, well, just so you know, she likes me and wants to go out with me, so if Im not allowed
to go out with her, that might make our friendship with the Stevens family kind of awkward, I said.
The friendship weve always had, I couldve added, but by the way Mom and Dad glanced
worriedly at each other, I could tell Id already scored a direct hit on their conservative fears.
In the coming weeks, additional rules and boundaries were set up for my protection. No
touching, other than hugging, which had to be brief, no lingering. No seeing her without adult
supervision. Not more than twenty minutes on the phone per day. Yeah, fine, whatever. I agreed to
each of their stipulations with all the thought and care I put into reading an update to the iTunes User
Agreement Terms and Conditions.
It was a big night, one of the biggest of my life, so I chose my very coolest clothes. I wore my light
blue suede skater shoes, both of them, one on each foot, because I was wearing my leg. Over the top
of said prosthesis I chose my cool jeans: dark wash with a wide, straight cut. Id bought them at
T.J.Maxx for thirty-six dollars, a purchase that had required not buying any other clothes for three and
a half months in order to save upbecause my parents gave me a thrift-store-sized clothing budget of
only ten dollars per month to buy all my clothes.
2
A subcommittee composed of Eileen and Tony had
arranged for this to be the night. Furthermore, the subcommittee had agreed that Sarah would say yes
in response to my question. Even so, I was insanely nervous as I walked up to her before youth group
started.
Signaling that she had been waiting for this moment and wanted it to be semiprivate, Sarah took a
few steps away from her group of friends, meeting me halfway across the room. She was wearing her
bright red ski jacket and a big smile. I felt the effects of adrenaline as I walked toward her, real leg,
fake leg, real leg, fake leg: the tightness in my chest, the constricted blood vessels, my pulsing heart
pumping blood into my flushed cheeks.
Hi, I said. We did not hug. In fact, we remained well out of each others personal space, like
strangers talking on the sidewalk at a bus stop.
Hi, she said, still smiling.
Will you go out with me? I had rehearsed the words enough times that they tumbled out on top of
each other in one simultaneous burst. Fortunately, since she had been expecting the question, Sarah
was able to decipher my meaning.
Her smile broadened, if that was even possible. Yes!
I nodded a few times in thoughtful approval. Cool.
I gave her a high five, like a handshake sealing a gentlemans agreement. And then I walked away.
I want to be clear, though: There was a lot of thinking in between those two sentences, in between
the high-fiving and the walking away.
I thought: Nice! Cool! Were going out. So now what? What am I supposed to do now? Hold
her hand? Talk to her? But what would we talk about? What do girls like to talk about? Makeup?
Glitter? I didnt really know. I had never thought about this part. I had always thought about whether
she liked me, and whether she would say yes if I asked her out. Never about what would happen if we
were actually going out.
Ergo, I walked away. Fled the scene. Hit and run.
I found Tony. He raised his eyebrows expectantly.
She said yes!
He gave me a high five.
But when youth group started a few minutes later, Sarah had disappeared. Just vanished.
Part of me was sad. I had wanted to sit near her, or maybe even in the chair right beside hers,
during the talk. Let other people wonder if we might be going out. That sort of thing. But a bigger part
of me felt wonderfully, gloriously relieved. With Sarah gone, I didnt have to worry about talking to
her or holding her hand or wondering how I was supposed to behave now that we were going out. It
was a lot of pressure, this going-out business, and not having to actually interact with my new
girlfriend definitely made the having-a-girlfriend part way easier.
The next day, while I was doing my schoolwork at my desk in my room, I thought about Sarah,
how she was at school with her friends. I wondered if maybe she was thinking about me, especially
now that we were going out. I wondered if she was bragging to her friends, Josh Sundquist asked me
out last night! We are totally going out now! I hoped so.
That afternoon, I went online and waited for Sarah to sign in. Finally, late in the afternoon, an
instant message popped up on my screen. But it wasnt from Sarah. It was from her BFF, Eileen.
hi, sarah just wants to be friends, the message said.
It knocked the wind out of me. I didnt know what to say in response. Finally, I typed:
Me: are you breaking up with me?
Sarahs BFF: well sarah is. but she still wants to be friends.
Me: why?
Sarahs BFF: because she values your friendship
Me: no i mean why is she breaking up with me?
Sarahs BFF: she thinks going out will hurt your friendship.
Me: ok thanks for telling me.
I signed off and went into my room and shut the door and cried into my pillow. My first
relationship. Ended after twenty-three hours, almost before it even began. I was angry and confused
and sad. Why hadnt she told me herself? Why did she have her friend tell me? And why over instant
message? She couldve at least had the decency to ask her friend to break up with me in person, or
through a carefully worded handwritten letter on embossed stationery. An instant message just seemed
so casual, so cheap, like our relationship was a crumb Sarah was wiping off the table with a flick of
the back of her hand. She still wanted to be friends? Really?
A few weeks later, I deleted my instant messenger account. I was done with chatting online. It was
too easy to be someone youre not, to say things you wouldnt otherwise. Like how you liked
someone, or how you wanted to break up with them. If you werent willing to say it to me in person, I
didnt want to hear it from you online.
After those twenty-three hours, our families werent as close as we used to be. Things changed
after all. Oops. Sorry, Mom and Dad. And so I was left alone with my questions: Why didnt Sarah
give me a chance to prove myself as a boyfriend? And where had she disappeared to at youth group
after I asked her out?





HYPOTHESIS
Subject behaviorbreaking up with me approximately twenty-three hours after the initial onset
of our romantic relationshipsuggests that she may not have had romantic feelings toward me to
begin with. This would indicate a possible error in the chain of gossip that had led me to believe such
feelings existed.
3
Interview with subject is required to validate hypothesis.





INVESTIGATION
Chapter 4
I arrived before Sarah Stevens. It had been more than ten years since Sarah and I went out for
twenty-three hours. I didnt count her as my first girlfriend. If I did, she would be my only girlfriend,
and having had one twenty-three-hour girlfriend is much sadder than having had no girlfriends at all.
So thats what I told myself: Ive never had a girlfriend. If it doesnt last at least one day, it doesnt
count.
That said, Sarah Stevens was still a significant blip on my romantic radar, and all these years Id
been curious to understand why she broke up with me so fast. So there I was.
It was a few days before Christmas. I looked out the windows of Starbucks and saw the snow on
the sidewalk. It would be a white Christmas, something you dont see very often in Harrisonburg,
Virginia. Sarah and I were both in town visiting our families for the holidays. I had sent her a
message on Facebook a few days before about getting coffee.
She arrived late, following a string of apologetic text messages about not having a car, her dad
having to drive her, and his driving very slowly in the snow. She walked in wearing a beret that
suggestedaccuratelythat she was now an actor living in New York. We hugged (no lingering, of
course), ordered drinks, and sat down by the window. We caught up on the facts: She just got cast for
a production of Les Misrables. What part? Cosette, one of the leads. What was her living situation?
Looking for a new roommate on Craigslist. How was it being back home? Reminds her how much
nicer people are here in Harrisonburg than in New York. That sort of thing. It was easy to like her and
to see why I like- liked her back when I was thirteen.
I couldnt really think of a particularly smooth segue, so I began with, Its weird to think we
were you know sort of like together for a little while there in middle school.
She laughed. I noticed she had this two-syllable chuckle that was always perched just beneath the
surface, ready to jump out at the slightest sign of humor. Hee-HUH.
She said, Actually, since I was going to see you today, I went through my old diaries at my
parents house. I found some stuff about you!
I had to resist the urge to jump across the table and grab her shoulders and scream, What? Im in
your diary? You read it this morning? Tellmetellmetellme!
Instead, I responded with deliberate restraint, one eye-brow cocked in casual curiosity. Interested
but not desperate. Stuff about me, you say?
Yeah, like one time we were going to this retreat together, I wrote about it.
My mind: retreat? Retreat! You wrote about the retreat? TELLMETELLMETELLME!
My mouth: silent. Nodding.
Anyway, we were in the van, and I guess we were playing truth or dare or something.
The truth or dare game!
And someone asked if I liked you, but you were sitting right there, so I lied.
What? It was a lie?
And I said that I didnt like you even though I totally had a huge crush on you.
With this she burst out laughing, overcome by the humor of this story from her diary. I laughed,
too. I mean, what else was I going to do? How do you react to that? When it turns out that Sarah
definitely liked you after all, that she admits to lying in truth or dare?
Wow, thats uh hilarious, I said. I remember that retreat. Oh yes. I remember.
That was such a long time ago, she said.
I take a sip of my green tea. Yeah. Remember how we dated for, like, a day?
She burst out laughing againnot her two-syllable giggle but an all-out laugh, as if I had just hit
the punch line of a killer joke.
I remember. She paused, some more laughs bubbling up. I mainly remember when you asked
me out, I think it was at youth group or something, and you were like, Will you go out with me? and
I was like, Yeah, and then you were like, Cool, and then you justhere she laughed some more,
the memory obviously reaching its crescendowalked away. And I was so freaked out. Id never
had a boyfriend before. I was like, Oh my gosh, Josh is never going to talk to me again! Now that we
are going out, we arent going to be friends anymore!
I remember you, like, disappeared right after I asked you out.
Oh yeah, I asked one of the leaders, I think it was Melissa She struggled for the last name.
Bruning? I offered.
Yeah, Melissa Bruning came with me to the bathroom, and I just cried the whole rest of the night,
and she talked me through it, Sarah said. She was still smiling, amused by the story even though we
were talking about a time when she, it turns out, was crying. Yes, crying. Because I asked her out.
Thats a bad sign for your dating life right there, if girls burst out crying when you ask them out.
So you were worried we wouldnt be friends anymore?
Well, yeah, she said. I mean, you literally walked away immediately after asking me out. It was
sooo awkward. I figured we probably wouldnt talk at all if we were boyfriend and girlfriend.
You were probably right, I admitted.
So when you walked away like that, I could see that our friendship would be ruined if we dated,
so I justI just She seemed to struggle with the words to describe our breakup, as if she was
having to dump me right now all over again and wished she could call on a BFF to come to her
rescue. I dont know
I threw her a line. No, that makes sense, I said. I was pretty awkward.
And as I said it, I thought: Probably I still am, judging by the number of girlfriends Ive had.
We both were, she said.
I didnt recall her ever being awkward, but thats the funny thing about awkwardness: You can
never tell how much of it is in your head and how much of it is real. Because if you ask the other
person if its realthat is, if she feels it, toothen automatically it is. Because discussing
awkwardness is always, well, awkward.
About the Author
Josh Sundquist is a Paralympic ski racer, cancer survivor, video blogger,
motivational speaker, and mediocre rapper. Every Tuesday, Josh releases a
new video to 150,000+ viewers on his YouTube channel. As a motivational
speaker, Josh speaks at college campuses, high schools, and corporations
such as Google. He is also the author of an adult memoir, Just Dont Fall.
You can visit him online at joshsundquist.com.
To learn more, visit weshouldhangoutsometime.com.
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
December 2014
PROLOGUE
Where would God be without America? My friend Dave asked me that question a few years ago. I
thought it was an odd query, but by the look on Daves face, it was also a serious one. Dave and I had
been engaging in a mostly friendly debate about whether or not America was a Christian nationI
said, No, and he said, But it should bewhen, right in the middle of a back-and-forth about the
role that the religious doctrines of the Puritans played in helping to shape American culture, he
blurted out his question in an obnoxious I gotcha tone. Staring at me like wed suddenly entered the
inquisition part of our conversation, Dave smirked. Its not a complicated question, Matthew.
A few moments later, I shrugged. I guess I dont know the answer. Tell me. Where would God be
without America?
I have no idea. Which is my point. Without the United States, God would probably be a tourist
attraction in London or maybe homeless in Canada. Dave thought for a second. Or buried in a
secret library in the Vaticans basement. My friend grinned, but only long enough to take a breath.
What Im trying to say is that America has been very good to God. And Im convinced that God
wouldnt be nearly as popular today without this country.
Are you suggesting that God needs America?
Not exactly. But I think hes better off with us than without us.
To prove his point about Gods semi-dependency on America, Dave rattled off a nine-digit
number and told me that was how many copies of the Bible that America had distributed around the
world in the last ten years. He listed off the names of fifteen or so white evangelistsgood godly
men, he saidand then told me that no other group had produced more born-again decisions for
Jesus, here and abroad, than American Christians. Dave mentioned the number of American
missionaries, the number and variety of American Christian radio stations, how many times in a year
Americans plant new churches, and a larger-than-I-expected dollar amount for how many American-
written Christian books had been sold the year before. And then, hands flapping, Dave talked about
our nations love of Christian stuff, our passion for helping people in other countries find freedom,
democracy, and Jesus, and our eagerness for keeping prayer and other Christian values in the cultural
spotlight.
Blazing with enthusiasm, Dave said, Do you see what I mean, Matthew? Weve helped to make
God famous and known throughout the world. What other country has even done half as much as the
United States in promoting God?
The longer Dave talked, the more he made God sound like an American tourist attraction, a
family-friendly exhibit, or a ride at Dollywood suitable for kids who were more than forty-two inches
tall. He made God sound like a brand name, one proudly made in the USA.
When Dave finished telling me all the reasons why he believed God needed America, I said,
Well, I dont think anybody questions the fact that America and Christianity have shared the same
bed from time to time. But I hate to break it to you, man, God gets around. So suggesting that God
needs us in order remain famous and relevant seems like a stretch. I mean, youve said a lot about
America. But youre making God sound like a to deity whos in the fetal position in the corner of a
room rocking back and forth.
I could tell that Dave was becoming restless with our conversation, so rather than pressing my
point further, I decided to blurt out an uncomfortable question of my own. So is it true? I said.
Have you really joined a Christian Zionist movement?
Suddenly, Daves interest in talking to me was resurrected. He reached into his briefcase, pulled
out a three-fold pamphlet, and pointed to what looked like a hand-drawn picture of Israel. It all
comes back to this tiny piece of land right here, man. Its all about Gods people.
Having grown up in a small nondenominational church, Dave told me hed learned early on about
Gods love for Israel, but never thought about how it impacts Israel today. Eventually, Daves telling
me about his journey toward embracing Christian Zionism brought the conversation back to where our
talk began: Was the United States a Christian nation?
America isnt Gods chosen country, he said, but right now we are Gods most important
country when it comes to aiding the affairs of Israel. He tapped his fingers on the map. It all comes
back to Israel. Thats been Gods plan all along. Since Americas beginning. Since Abraham, really.
God loves America, but were just a means to an end.
He meant the End, as in the final minutes of the Eleventh Hour, the Last of the Last Days, that
moment in the Book of Revelation when the Divine Fat Lady brings down the house, so to speak.
Dave talked about the End like a child talking about the Magic Kingdom, full of wonder and
delight. I dont fear whats coming, he said. Im looking forward to it. And I actually get to be a
part of it.
Dave told me that the End was a foregone conclusion, that there was nothing we could do to stop it
from happening, that Gods final initiative was already set in motion. It could happen at any time. In
fact, according to him, the only unanswered question is how we as Americas Christians help the
process along. And thats where the Christian Zionists come in.
We are actively looking for ways to help God with his conclusion. Thats what we believe is our
calling, our mission, what God wants from us.
Please tell me youre joking, Dave.
Joking? Of course not. I would never joke about something like this.
I was speechless.
Dave, I said. How exactly does somebody help God with the End?
My question made Dave uncomfortable. Eventually I was able to get him to disclose that one of
the ways the members of his home church were helping the cause was by funding an organization
that encourages (and pays for) young Jewish-American professionals to move to Israel. He explained
that by helping Jews return to their homelandthe homeland most of them have never visited, mind
youthey fulfill biblical prophecy about Israel becoming whole again. Dave and company were also
working through a comprehensive biblical prophecy study, a video course led by Chuck Missler, a
biblical futurist who lends his scriptural knowledge to uncovering secrets about what the End will
bring. He, along with his wife, Nancy, also runs a Christian Zionist mission called Koinonia House.
At the time, Id never heard of Missler and figured he was just some fringe apologist who had a cult
following online. But I assumed wrong. Misslers following is large, spirited, and apparently
includes Robert Downey Jr., who once mentioned his love for Missler on Jon Stewarts Daily Show.
Listen, man, Dave said, I know you think Ive turned into a nutcase. But eventually, Gods truth
will be revealed. And perhaps then youll understand.
Im sure I will. Brimstone is rarely confusing.
Dont joke about this, Matthew. A half-cocked grin cracked across his face. If you study your
Bible, youll see that everything Im talking about is there in black and white. And despite what you
might think, God is not your punch line, friend.
We live in America, Dave. People here have been making God into a punch line since the
beginning. Im not suggesting thats a good thing, but its true nonetheless. We Americans have
attempted to create and shape Gods narrative for centuries.
Dave rolled his eyes and started gathering his belongings. After packing his Bible, notebook, and
highlighter into a backpack, he swung it across one shoulder.
But when youre living Gods narrative, how can that be a bad thing? The fact remains that no
other country has done more for God than America. We are a part of his story. And while we arent
perfect, we are
A means to an end. You said that already. Just remember, Dave, the scariest punch lines
involving God always come from people who arent joking. We both know that.
Dave stood up. He turned around, forced a smile, and said, And Matthew, you know as well as I
do that punch lines are only scary for those who arent in on the joke. Thats why we keep sharing the
joke. Right? So we can get as many people in on the joke as possible. Because we know for a fact
that whosoever isnt in on the joke will not like the punch line.
Are we still talking about God, Dave?
He didnt answer. Im not sure he could answer that question, at least not honestly. The more we
talked, the more I began to think that Dave was still getting to know his most recent concept of God,
still learning Gods dynamicshow he/she/it workedand how he fit in. But Daves divine story
wasnt simply one that he was reading and discovering; by all indications he believed that Gods was
a story he was helping to write, shape, and manipulate. Not only that, but hed cast himself as a
participant in the narrative, not a major character, perhaps, but somebody whose actions affected the
outcome of others in the story of God.
Hes not alone. To some extent, we are all growing God, stuffing his mouth full with ideas,
themes, and theologies, fattening him up with a story line we believe to be true. Our intentions may be
good, but then again, Im not sure intentions matter when it comes to Gods image. For good or bad,
we are all molding God to reflect our own personal, American interpretation of Christian faith.
For four hundred years, America has been Gods Country. At some point after the death of Queen
Elizabeth I in 1603, and before the formation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, a group of
religious outsiders from Great Britain decided that God needed to cut his losses in theologically
wrecked Europe and start fresh in the newly discovered western hemisphere. What transpired is a
relationship between deity and geographical location like none other.
While Gods Country isnt exactly a divinely inspired moniker, we cant deny that God is one of
this countrys favorite pastimes, an almighty part of our Americana, like playing baseball, cruising
strip mall parking lots, and popping antidepressants. Americans love God so much that hes threaded
throughout our national history, printed in all caps on our national currency, combined with patriotism
and embroidered onto hats and polos, and inked with needles into the bodies of a multitude of
American hipsters. God happens a lot in this country. Why? Because America has always welcomed
God with open arms, congressional protection, free speech, and tax-exempt status. And even though
laws have been created to define how, where, when, and to what extent God is allowed to happen in
America, with a permit or two we can pretty much do whatever the hell we want to with God, just as
long as somebody cleans up his/our mess. Regardless of how one defines our relationship to God,
whether you see it as an on-again, off-again affair or a holy matrimony, one thing is clear: God and
America have been exchanging DNA since the beginning.
According to Gallup, nine in ten of us answer yes when asked whether or not we believe in
God. Thats down from the 1940s, but only slightly. And while atheism and agnosticism are on the
rise, and there are more Americans identifying as nonesnonreligious peoplethan ever before,
God is alive and well in America.
1
But who is Americas God? Its true that the word God is
rather ambiguous, often meaning different things to different people. Believing in God in America can
vary from believing in Jehovah, Jesus, or Allah to believing in Nature, a Spirit Mother, or some
other grand Universal presence that usually enjoys silence and book clubs. Today, one persons God
is another persons fairy princess. Still, the majority of Americans believe in God as defined by
Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. And not surprising, 77 percent of us identify God in the context of
the Christian faith.
2
This book is about that God, the one in which three-quarters of us believe. But
that statistic begs repeating my earlier question: Who is this God of American Christianity? Is it the
God who is worshiped by congregations that belong to the Presbyterian Church of America? Or is it
the God who is worshiped at congregations that belong to the Presbyterian Church (USA)? Is the
Assemblies of Gods God Americas real God? Or is God a Baptist, and if so, which kind of Baptist:
Southern, Primitive, Free Will, Old Regular, Reformed, Independent Fundamental, Sovereign Grace?
Is God Methodist? A Lutheran? A Nazarene?
An Episcopalian?
Did Jerry Falwell, the preacher and political pundit who founded Liberty University, once
worship the same God that pastor and Purpose Driven Life author Rick Warren currently worships?
And is Rick Warrens God comfortable sitting in the same room as the God whom Pentecostal
evangelist, healer, and magician Benny Hinn worships? Can the God of American Christianity be both
the God of the Quakers and the God who is worshiped by gun-fanatical evangelicals? Is God pro-life
or pro-choice, probirth control or pronatural family planning, pro-war or pro-peace, pro-Israel or
pro-Palestine, pro-gay or pro-straight? Does God have a gender? Does God favor men over women?
Or does God believe in equality?
Even when defined within the theological, political, and social boundaries of American
Christianity, theres a wide range of ideological possibilities for GodCreator of the Universe,
Greek Orthodox, God hates fags, universal salvation, and everything from believing that
sinners are held in the hands of an angry God to believing that God occasionally abducts small
children and takes them on exclusive guided tours of heaven. Are the ways of God predetermined? Or
is God, when interacting with humanity, more of a Great Observer than a Holy Meddler?
America is affecting God. While that idea goes against the orthodoxy that Americas mainline
Christian churches adhere tothat God is the same yesterday, today, and foreverstill, can we truly
deny the fact that Americas God is not the same as Americas God was in the beginning? The United
States of America affecting God isnt a new occurrence. Since our countrys conception, the men and
women who conceived of our countrys ideas and values also helped create a fertile environment for
God to change and shift, grow and evolve while oddly remaining the same in our eyes.
Today, among those of us adhering to American Christianity, God is a very adaptable word, a
vernacular ice-cream cone that we accessorize, decorate, and smother in something decadently sweet.
Many of us, after topping our God with our ideals of what he representshope, politics, marriage
legislation, worship songs, or a literal hellinvite others to taste and see that our God is good.
Because most of us believe, regardless of what weve piled atop our two scoops of God, that he
our American Godis good.
This is not only a book about God, it is also about Gods people, more specifically, Gods American
people. In the process of writing this book, researching and collecting stories, immersing myself in
this countrys history, and refamiliarizing myself with the beliefs, ideas, and passions that Americans
embrace about God, I was reminded how closely related people are to the story of God. It is the one
constant regarding the history of religion; the worship of anything is as much about humanity as it is
about the God or god(s) that people worship. In some cases, thats all it is about.
Most of us learned about Gods story through the stories of Abraham, Moses, King David, and the
Prophet Daniel. While God played an important role in the plotlines of each of those biblical
narratives, was God the most important character? Maybe. For many, the supernatural parts of
biblical narrative are the themes that might spark our imagination to wrestle and wonder about the
divine, but would we even give the unbelievable a second thought if the story offered no humanity
in which to relate? I doubt it. Frederick Buechner said that if you dig beneath the surface of a persons
theology, youll eventually find their personal story. Buechners 1970 book The Alphabet of Grace
started with these words: At its heart most theology, like most fiction, is essentially autobiography.
He continues, mentioning the names of theologians like Aquinas and Tillich, [These men are]
working out their systems in their own ways and in their own language, are all telling us the stories of
their lives, and if you press them far enough, even at their most cerebral and forbidding, you find an
experience of flesh and blood.
My New Testament professor once put me in my place regarding Gods role in our story. Mr.
Turner, he said in a tired voice after a long debate, people are always involved in Gods story.
Even when were not the subjects, were always the narrators.
For four hundred years, Americans have narrated Gods story, and during that time, God has
grown and evolved, become bigger and more unbelievable. Our stories have added theologies and
folklore, miracles and fear, pro-this narratives and anti-that themes, ghost stories and strobe lights,
Sarah Palin and more than a little humanistic sensibilities. In our efforts to make God known, weve
quite possibly turned God into something that resembles us, a big fat American with an ever-growing
appetite for more. What follows is the story of God as told, shaped, and affected by America.
Because God is not the same as he was yesterday, not here, not among Americas faithful.
CHAPTER ONE
AN AMERICAN RESURRECTION OF GOD
In 1801, a rumor spread across the United States that God was doing something miraculous in the
tiniest of places, Cane Ridge, Kentucky. According to James Bradley Finley, a then nineteen-year-old
from North Carolina, the rumor was true: A mighty work of God was happening, a spiritual revival
like nothing hed seen before.
The noise was like the roar of Niagara, Finley wrote later in his autobiography. This wasnt far-
fetched, considering twenty-five thousand campers had congregated on that field in the middle of
Kentucky and there were reports of people being tossed to and fro by the Spirit of God. Finley
described God as like the tumultuous waves of the sea in a storm and the crowd as like the trees of
the forest under the blast of [a] wild tornado. For five days, Finley watched God do things hed
never witnessed before. A longtime Presbyterian, Finley was uncomfortable with what he saw, at
least in the beginning. But the young conservative Christian warmed up to the experience, eventually
calling it a most astonishing and powerful revival, the biggest movement of God since the day of
Pentecost.
1
Americas Pentecost happened during the first week of August in 1801, when God brought
together the largest group of people that most of the attendees had ever witnessed firsthand. The
majority were Methodists, Baptists, or Presbyterians. Considering that Methodists stood on the
opposite end of the theological spectrum from Presbyterians, and that most Baptists stood wherever
their pastors told them to, their willingness to worship together was a marvelous achievement,
perhaps the most miraculous part of what happened at Cane Ridge.
Denominational unity was for the most part frowned upon by a majority of Americas churches.
Still, like Finley, those who attended Gods party in the Bluegrass State werent accustomed to
seeing God show up, let alone seeing God show up carrying a bag of heavenly tricks. Finley wrote
about people becoming struck with terror and conviction, hastening through the crowd to escape, or
pulling away from their relations, others trembling, weeping, crying for mercy, some falling and
swooning away. Finley said that God moved through the crowd like a tsunami, slowly engulfing
people in the Spirit, causing people to hop around like pogo sticks or to perform backflips off wagons
and tree stumps. Amid the chaos, God, according to Finley, stirred up a universal cry for mercy, [a]
bursting forth in loud ejaculations of prayer or thanksgiving. This work of the Holy Spirit, Finley
admitted, exhibited nothing to the spectator but a scene of confusion.
2
Then, amid all of that divinely inspired ejaculating, God also killed a man. Thats how Finley tells
it, that God killed a daring blasphemer, a pompous blowhard who, upon becoming drunk with
liquor, stupidity, and the devil, mounted his horse and started riding straight through circled
gatherings of prayer. After interrupting two or three prayer circles, [the man] fell from his horse
as if hit by lightning. Finley watched as a multitude of people gathered around the mans lifeless
body, cheering and shouting as if Lucifer himself had fallen.
3
Too interested in what he witnessed,
Finley watched [Lucifer] closely, while for thirty hours he lay, to all human appearance, dead. The
following day, the mans lifeless form began twitching and shaking. Leaping from the ground, he
hopped, skipped, and performed somersaults while shouting nonsensical sounds of pleasure and
praise. These temporary murders happened quite often according to Barton Stone, one of the ministers
who preached at Cane Ridge, who said that the falling exercise was very common among all classes,
the saints and sinners of every age and of every grade, from the philosopher to the clown. [They]
would generally, with a piercing scream, fall like a log on the floor, earth, or mud, and appear as
dead.
4
Behold, the strange works of God in America were at hand in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1801.
Whatever happened that week, whether every detail written by the people who experienced those
Spirit-filled days is true, false, or somewhere in between, the truth is that the larger-than-life camp
meeting altered the future of God. How could it not? The God that the men and women experienced on
Kentuckys hillsides was one that most Americans had never before encountered. In the months and
years following Americas Pentecost, spirit-filled revivals broke out across the nation, causing a
multitude of Americans to become entranced in holy bliss, overwhelmed and intoxicated with the
Spirit of God.
Americas God had indeed grown since his Puritans days, days of piety when wigs and robes
were worn behind pulpits, and few things were more exciting than catching ones neighbor living a
secret life as a Baptist or, worse, an Anglican. Could the God who was causing people to get down
on all fours or lie slain in the spirit really be the same God who led the Puritans across the Atlantic
from England to Boston? And if so, what on earth happened in America to cause such a shift in how
people experienced and worshiped God?
Whatever it was that happened to God between 1630 and 1801, the transformation continued after
the revival in Cane Ridge. If Americas God was indeed the same yesterday, today, and forever, then
it would seem that Gods understanding of same was evolving.
In the spring of 1630, the story of God was on the brink of change, a new beginning that would
forever affect how humanity interacted with the divine. According to John Winthrop, one of the men
in charge of organizing the initial stages of Gods transition to the New World, a fresh start was all a
part of Gods dream for America. God had big plans for Winthrop, or maybe it was the other way
around. Either way, this quiet but feisty Puritan lawyer was elected governor of the Massachusetts
Bay Company, a position he was well suited for, considering Puritanism fit him like a straitjacket.
Early on, Winthrop wasnt a big proponent of organizing a mass exodus out of the Church of England,
but eventually he became convinced that not only did the Puritans need to leave Great Britain, but
God wanted him to play the role of white European Moses and lead Gods people out of the Old
World.
Winthrop imagined himself as a Puritan of biblical proportion, and believed that Operation New
England was about far more than he and his buddies having more space to stretch their spiritual legs.
Thus stands the cause between God and us, Winthrop wrote in his thesis, A Model of Christian
Charity, a personal declaration of sorts that boasted Winthrops vision for what America might
become. We are entered into covenant with [God] for this work. The work that Winthrop alluded to
was no small task, either. The New Worlds Moses was convinced that he and his fellow Puritans
had been divinely called to create a utopia, a Promised Land where God and his people would
prosper. We shall be as a city upon a hill, he wrote, [and] the eyes of all people are upon us.
5
The vision that Winthrop saw was that of a holy and magnificent existence, a spectacle so bright
and lovely, it would cause people to stop, stare, and feel jealous that they werent a part of it too.
Though Winthrop hoped that the work he and his Puritans were about to engage in was going to
change the course of history, little did he know that his actions would also alter the story of God.
In many ways, the term Puritans is misleading, because it implies that Winthrop and friends were
one unified religious group. But in truth, these radical Protestants consisted of people from many
different religious factions. They didnt necessarily agree on all theological points. Their unified
name, the Puritans, was given to them because of their common desire to purge the Church of
England of what they considered to be unbiblical religion, which included anything that smelled like
pope. When they failed to purify Englands church of Catholic traditions (the Roman Catholic Church
was a religious institution that many Puritans called the Whore of Babylon), these disgruntled
Protestants began conspiring to move God to a new and mostly untainted continent far, far away from
the loose churches of England and Rome.
What were the Puritans thinking, bringing God to a New World? By most accounts, their leaders
were quite intelligent people, many of them educated men and women with a dutiful love for God. So
did they really think that moving God to an untamed wilderness was the best alternative, particularly
for their God: a sovereign, doctrinally stout, damnation-prone deity who despised change and hated
the sight of human skin? Its no secret that the Puritans God wasnt the easiest to get along with. He
was stuffy. And finicky. And sometimes barbecued heretics.
The God of the Puritans was basically the same God that John Calvin had encountered almost a
century earlier. Like Martin Luther, Calvin believed that the Roman Catholic Church was vile, and he
became a vocal and influential supporter of the Protestant Reformation. However, amid his war
against Catholicism, Calvin also developed a new spin on God, a spiritual thinking about faith, sin,
and Christianity that emphasized the doctrines of Gods sovereignty, predestination, limited
atonement, and the supreme authority of the holy scriptures. Calvins God was big, in control, and at
times choosy about whom he held hands with. One hundred years later, among the Puritans, John
Calvins God had also evolved to become nitpicky, hellbent on human holiness, and impossible to
please.
Still, the Puritans dedicated their lives to making God happy. Which wasnt easy, considering they
viewed themselves as a depraved group of people, hideous and rotten to their very core. The Puritans
saw themselves as ill-minded refuse whose souls were filled with cobwebs, demons, and nasty
fixations for deviant pleasures. They were Calvinistic in their thinking there as well. Somewhere
along Calvins spiritual journey, the angst-prone priest became convinced that God thought humans
were disgusting creations, dirty little beasts whose filth began in their bowels, which dumped into
their souls. Total depravity became one of Calvins most affecting theological tenets. Essentially he
had refashioned Saint Augustines theology of original sin, the idea that Adam and Eves sin in the
Garden of Eden was so great that sin became genetic, an unholy gene that preconditioned every human
born after them for sinful behavior. Calvin took it a step further. From his perspective, humans were
not just genetically predetermined for sin, they were evil beyond repair, and in fact incapable of
doing the slightest good in the eyes of God.
Considering their God was so hard to please, its a bit surprising that nobody pondered how their
plans to move him to the New World might make him feel. This was the early 1600s, remember, and
God had only recently started engaging in quasi-personal relationships with some of Englands
common folk. This new ideaGod hanging out with regular peoplewas primarily the result of the
availability of the 1611 King James Bible. Still, Gods availability to the common man was limited at
best. Most people couldnt afford to purchase Gods Word, and even if they could, the chances that
they could read and understand it were dim. Until this time, engagement with God happened in
communities, at churches, and by way of pastors and priests telling people what God thought about
them. The Puritans certainly had visions of making God more accessible to people without the need
for bishops and priests, but as it were, their God was just beginning to learn how to teach middle-
class people with moderate comprehension skills about the depravity of their own souls. If their God
only had minimal experience with everyday English folk, how comfortable was he going to feel
developing relationships with indigenous people whose genitalia he might see?
Truthfully, moving God probably wasnt their best option; however, from Winthrops perspective,
it was their only alternative. But since not all of the Puritans agreed, Winthrop knew that convincing
those still on the fence about moving would be strenuous. So when it came to framing the big move
into a narrative, one that might make the adventure seem exciting and divinely inspired, Winthrop
went to the one thing that Puritans almost always relied on when it came to framing big scary
unimaginable ideas: He used theology. Theology was the fairy dust in the Puritans kingdom, the
magic potion for motivating a company of fear-filled people to step out in faith and do something
brave, difficult, and incredibly stupid. Even among todays American Christians, theology is still a
pretty convincing manipulator, mostly because its often guilt-inducing. And few things motivate
conservative Christians more than a holy helping of guilt poured atop a Bible verse taken out of
context. Our fairy dust today is far less rich and smothered with scripture than what the Puritans
offered. Contextual integrity as it relates to the Bible wasnt something the Puritans often considered
when applying biblical narrative to everyday circumstances or enormous adventures that might kill
you. Winthrop and company didnt worry about things like context; they were far too preoccupied
with their journeys subtext: Run away from the Whore!
So shortly before Winthrop was set to depart with an undetermined number of people for greener
(and Native American inhabited) pastures, the Reverend John Cotton traveled to the port of
Southampton, England, carrying with him an important message. Reverend Cottons gracing the future
travelers with his presence was a big deal. Not only was he one of the most respected clergymen in
all of the Church of England, but he was by all accounts the most important Puritan voice in the entire
country. Cotton represented the purest parts of the Anglican Church, and though at the time he wasnt
planning to join the party in America (he would, in 1633, decide to move), his support was,
according to Winthrop, heaven-sent.
And the message Cotton brought with him? It pretty much changed everything.
Moreover I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them, that they may dwell in a
place of their own, and move no more. Thats how the Reverend Cotton began his lecture to the Bay
Colony, with a passage out of the Second Book of Samuel, a beautiful sentiment about God looking
for real estate to plant a beautiful garden of Jewish people.
Like Winthrop, Cotton doesnt waste time considering the context of Bible verses; hes too
focused on selling the big idea to worry about its truth. Cotton arrived at Southampton on a mission,
to separate the chaff (the Euro-losers) from the wheat (the Future American Winners) and give these
scared-out-of-their-minds men and women a reason to believe that moving twenty-seven hundred
miles from everything they knew and loved was a fantastic idea. By the time Cotton finished,
preaching about moving to New England wasnt just a grand idea, it was the greatest idea in the
history of ideas. And most importantly, it was Gods idea, one that hed designed on their behalf
before the foundations of the earth had been formed together.
Though Cottons sermon was wordy beyond repair, he delivered one of his best theological
conjurings on that day. Not only did he make the Children of Israel disappear from the narratives of a
number of Old Testament stories, but he intentionally inserted a brand-new noun in the stories,
replacing the people formally known as Gods chosen people with Gods new chosen people, the
Puritans. By the time Cotton completed his sermon, he had stood with his Puritan brothers and sisters
at the edge of the Jordan River and they had witnessed together their first sight of the Promised
Americaland. Hed led them to the walls of Jericho (which looked a lot like Massachusetts) and
marched before them until they all came tumbling down. Hed battled alongside them and killed
Philistines, Moabites, and Native Americans. Hed braved with them the brute strength of a British
Goliath and sent Great Britains fleets, cannons, and redcoats hightailing it back to the Old World.
Using chapter and verse and a whole lot of theological imagination, the great John Cotton put his
soon-to-be colonists squarely in the middle of Gods biblical story, weaving together with words a
holy narrative, a marvelous adventure of Puritanical proportions, a miraculous destiny where Gods
new chosen people would become the recipients of Gods providence, Gods promises, and
eventually Gods executive order to do whatever the hell they wanted. Gods vision seemed almost
too good to be true. But not according to Cotton.
Standing before a packed house at the Church of Holy Rood in Southampton, Cotton inspired the
attendees minds and hearts with a collection of words he called Gods Promise to His Plantation.
I will plant them. Cotton spoke that sentiment four different times to the future colonists, a way
of describing God as an Almighty Gardener. Cotton told his spiritual brothers and sisters that the
Good and Gracious Gardener was preparing to plant a mighty forest in the New World. He said that
Gods Puritanical garden was going to be huge, far bigger and more lush than any of his previous
gardens, and that they should not be filled with worry, because the Gardener would be sure to care
for his little seedlings, that they should find comfort in the fact that God would till, weed, fertilize,
and water them regularly. But there was more. If everything went as planned, if the Puritans were
well behaved and followed Gods commands, the Gardener would grow the New Worlds forest into
mighty trees of righteousness.
6
Adding to the God-vision, Cotton said, When he promised to plant a people, their days shall be
as the days of a Tree. As the Oak is said to be an hundred years in growing, and an hundred years in
full strength, and an hundred years in decaying.
7
On that day Cotton prophesied a major story line, not only for himself but for all of the Puritans.
And while he presented it as Gods plan for the Puritan people, it was more or less Cottons Puritan
plan for God. He ended his eighteen-page sermon with a mighty declaration from God Almighty:
For consolation to them that are planted by God in any place, that find rooting and establishing
from God; this is a cause of much encouragement onto you, that what he hath planted he will
maintain, every plantation his tight hand hath not planted shall be rooted up, but his own
plantation shall prosper, & flourish. When he promiseth peace and safety, what enemy shall be
able to make the promise of God of none effect? Neglect not walls, and bulwarks, and
fortifications for your own defence; but ever let the Name of the Lord be your strong Tower;
and the word of his Promise the Rock of your Refuge. His word that made heaven and earth
will not fail, till heaven and earth be no more.
8
Reverend Cotton changed the story that day. He single-handedly steered the course of Gods future
in the same direction that the Puritans were headed. No wonder the Puritans failed to consider how
the New Worldand soon-to-be United States of Americamight affect God. Because in their
minds, this big move became less about pursuing religious freedom and everything to do with
following the divine destiny that God had called them to. What was that divine destiny? The Puritans
believed that it was their responsibility to resurrect God from the dead, to fight tooth and nail to keep
God safe and out of the hands and parishes of the Whore of England.
The truth of Cottons words didnt matter. People believed they were true. Belief, under the right
conditions, almost always trumps truth. And sometimes belief can manifest its own truth.
Nevertheless, the Puritans did exactly as Cotton requested. They flocked like geese to New England.
Over the next ten years (from 1630 to 1640), during what many historians call the Great Migration,
more than twenty thousand Puritans made America their Promise Land, their home.
And thus America became Gods home too.
Not long after God, John Winthrop, and the rest of the Bay Company arrived on Americas shorelines,
the news from the Old World turned bleak. With every arriving ship, more bad tidings were reported.
Englands troubles in many ways caused the seeds of nationalism to gestate in the hearts and minds of
the Puritans. These people had just traveled nearly three thousand miles to a new home. Considering
that some arrived sick and others didnt arrive at all, many were thinking, This was a mistake!
While it might seem dark and mean-spirited, even for Puritans, learning of the bad news happening in
Englandof Anglican officials becoming bigger bullies toward their Puritan brothers and sisters,
sentencing many to prison, torture, or execution, and scattering others into hidingrevived many of
the doubters faith in their decision to make theirs and Gods future in the New World. The Old
Worlds bad news was for the Puritans Good News indeed. Though God hadnt started printing study
Bibles for women and teenagers, and heavenly 401(k) plans wouldnt become a reality for another
350 years, all signs seemed to suggest that the Almightys exit strategy out of England was well under
way.
One Puritan who seemed certain that God was leaving England was Thomas Hooker, a respected
clergyman still living there. In fact, Hooker became so depressed about the events happening in his
homeland that amid one of his great mournings he wrote, As sure as God is God, God is going from
England. The minister knew this to be true because God delivered the news firsthand. What if I
should tell what God told me yesternight, he wrote, which was rhetorical, since that question ended
with this statement, that He would destroy England and lay it waste? Eventually, Hooker escaped
his homeland safely. After a short stint in the Netherlands, he made a beeline to New England. Boston
seemed to be his only recourse since, according to him, that was where God was safe-housing his
Noahs, a moniker that spoke more about the genocide he was predicting for all of the non-Noahs
living it up in England:
So glory is departed from England; for England has seen her best days, and the reward of sin is
coming apace; for God is packing up of his gospel. God begins to ship away his Noahs,
which prophesied and foretold that destruction was near; and God makes account that New
England shall be a refuge for his Noahs and his Lots, a rock and a shelter for his righteous ones
to run unto; and those that were vexed to see the ungodly lives of the people in this wicked
land, shall there be safe.
9
Like the Reverend Cotton, Thomas Hooker framed his ideas using Old Testament names and
themes, inserting himself and the people he loved into the good parts and those who disagreed with
him into the not-so-good parts. Hooker wrote with a desperate tone. And yet even as he joined his
fellow Noahs aboard the Ark in Boston, he seemed to hold out a small thread of hope for
godforsaken England. Oh, therefore my brethren, he wrote, lay hold on God, and let Him not go
out of your coasts. (He is going!) Look about you, I say, and stop Him at the towns end farewell,
or rather fare-ill, England!
God had not been an American for five minutes and already somebody was making his sovereignty
into a melodramatic off-Broadway show. But this shouldnt be surprising, really. Certainty as it
relates to faithsomething that the Puritans werent in short supply ofalways leads to exaggerated
displays of religiosity. As most of us know, certainty makes us cranky, reactive, and always two
prophetic signs away from the End. Which was exactly how the Puritans viewed America, as
Gods last stand! America was the worlds last hope, a grand fulfillment of Luthers Reformation, a
second installment of the Israelites Promised Land, and about as close as we were going to get to the
divine fruition of the Kingdom of God. In other words, the City Upon a Hill just got skyscrapers and a
subway.
That America would become Gods shining example to the world of how society and religion should
coexist has been a narrative threaded throughout our nations history. John Winthrops vision of a
city upon a hill has become one of Americas unofficial mottos. Though I doubt Winthrop intended
his use of Jesuss words to become such an overused political tagline for speeches and op-ed pieces,
thats just what happened. Derivatives have been used by American people in every arena, from
preachers to politicians to pundits. Some people use the phrase to praise Americas Christian
history. Others use it as a way of chiding the American people for trying to undermine Winthrops
dream. Most often, when Winthrops city upon a hill gets mentioned, at least in a serious manner,
its for political effect. A host of U.S. presidents, from John Adams and Abraham Lincoln to John F.
Kennedy and George W. Bush, have offered their unique spin on the sentiment. Even Sarah Palin paid
homage to the phrasing during her run for vice president alongside Senator John McCain in 2008. In
America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag, Palin writes, America is an exceptional
nation, the shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan believed it is. Palin combines Winthrops ideal
with an idea that many call American exceptionalism, a concept that paints America as the greatest
nation in the world. Palin writes that many people dont believe we have a special message for the
world or a special mission to preserve our greatness for the betterment of not just ourselves but all of
humanity.
10
Ronald Reagan loved borrowing the words of Winthrop to define America, something he did
throughout his political career. But in 1989, during his final speech as president, Reagan sat in the
Oval Office and explained his own vision:
The past few days when Ive been at that window upstairs, Ive thought a bit of the shining
city upon a hill. The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America
he imagined. He journeyed here on what today wed call a little wooden boat; and like the
other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. Ive spoken of the shining city all
my political life, but I dont know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But
in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-
blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free
ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls
had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. Thats
how I saw it, and see it still.
11
Was that how John Winthrop saw it? Its not that Ronald Reagans vision was particularly evil,
but Reagans city is very much a nationalized idea. Winthrop seemed far too consumed with the
pursuit of humility
12
to cast such an American-focused ideal. As a Puritan, he certainly doused his
humble thoughts with more than a dash of pride; still, he cant have imagined an America that
resembled anything remotely similar to the Godtropolis that Reagan (and Palin) seemed to visualize.
Or perhaps Reagan was right. Maybe Winthrops city upon a hill was indeed a municipality
brimming with capitalism, patriotism, and a very liberal immigration policy. Lucky for Reagan,
Winthrop never fully explained the details of his vision.
However, two generations later, one Puritan did expound on Winthrops city. Cotton Mather, a
Puritan preacher, had been inhaling American exceptionalism since he was a kid, an ideology he no
doubt inherited from his father, Increase Mather, and his grandfather Richard Mather, both celebrated
clergymen of the Bay Colony. Though Mather was born nearly three decades after Winthrops death,
his professional work showcases a lifelong interest in the Bay Colonys first governor. Not only did
Mather write a two-part biography about Winthrop, but in 1710 he paid homage to Winthrops city
in Theopolis Americana, which means God City: America:
Our glorious Lord will have [a] holy city in America, a city the streets whereof will be pure
gold. We cannot imagine that the brave countries and gardens which fill the American
hemisphere were made for nothing but a place of dragons. We may not imagine that when the
kingdom of God is come and his will is done on earth as it is done in heavenwhich we had
never been taught to pray for if it must not one day be accomplisheda balancing half of the
globe shall remain in the hands of the devil, who is then to be chained up from deceiving the
nations.
13
Cotton Mather had drunk the Kool-Aid, the juice made by John Cotton and John Winthrop seventy
years earlier. Mather believed that God had created the universe and that front and center he had
carved out a spot for America. Is Mathers Theopolis the America that Sarah Palin prays for, a holy
city with streets made of gold and underground pipelines filled with black gold? An America that
stomps around the world like she owns the place? Because at the heart of this kind of relationship
between God and Americaone that seems to believe an executive order is just another way of
saying thy kingdom come, thy will be donethere sits a swelling amount of pride, a nationalized
pride, a pride that continues today to shape our understanding of America as well as our
understanding of Americas God.
While the Bible says that pride goes before a fall, in Americas case it also goes before a rise to
power. And while we rarely hear people today brag like Sarah Palin does about how exceptional
America is, the narrative she promotes still plays out in our countrys Christianity, from the intent and
purposes of our missionaries to how Christians in some areas of the United States treat Muslims to
the powerful roles that Christians still play today in areas of politics, domestic affairs, and foreign
policy. This American pride is found in the very roots of our nations God, a God who would soon
put America squarely in control of our own destiny. And perhaps by default, in control of the destiny
of God.
About the Author
Matthew Paul Turner is the author of numerous books, including
Churched, The Christian Culture Survival Guide, and Hear No Evil. Before
he began writing and speaking full-time, he served as editor of CCM
Magazine and as music and entertainment editor of Crosswalk.com. He and
his wife, Jessica, along with their two children, Elias and Adeline, live in
Nashville, Tennessee.
You can visit him online at MatthewPaulTurner.com.
To learn more, visit jerichobooks.com/portfolio/great-big-american-god.
Jericho Books
August 2014
1 Robert Krulwich, Born Wet, Human Babies Are 75 Percent Water. Then Comes the Drying, 26 November 2013,
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/11/25/247212488/born-wet-human-babies-are-75-percent-water-then-comes-drying.
2 On the face of it this is a simple poetic statement, but in fact it is quite a profound and transformative claim. Kurt Vonnegut, Welcome
to the Monkey House (New York: Delacorte Press, 1968), xiii.
3 J. F. Helliwell, R. Layard, and J. Sachs, eds., World Happiness Report 2013 (New York: UN Sustainable Development Solutions
Network, 2013), 3.
4 Ibid., 4.
5 S. Lyubomirsky, K. M. Sheldon, and D. Schkade, Pursuing happiness: the architecture of sustainable change, Review of General
Psychology 9, no. 2 (2005), 11131.
6 World Happiness Report 2013, 58.
7 J. H. Fowler and N. A. Christakis, Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the
Framingham Heart Study, British Medical Journal 337, no. 2338 (5 December 2008), http://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a2338.
8 World Happiness Report 2013, 69.
9 Madhu Kalia, Assessing the Economic Impact of StressThe Modern Day Hidden Epidemic, Metabolism 51, no. 6, Suppl. 1
(2002), 4953.
2 Whenever I argued this was not enough money to fill a wardrobe, my parents would respond that if I bought everything at the Salvation
Army Thrift Store on its monthly ninety-nine-cent day, I could buy ten new (well, new to me) items per month.
3 Anecdotal evidence does suggest that factual errors may be created when information is passed between BFFs, particularly if said
information is shared via online chatting platforms. In fact, there is a direct correlation between the number of times a piece of
information has been passed along and the number of factual errors it contains.
1 Gallup polling: Frank Newport, God Is Alive and Well: The Future of Religion in America (New York: Gallup Press, 2012), chapter
1.
2 Frank Newport, In U.S., 77% Identify as Christian, Gallup Politics, December 24, 2012, http://www.gallup.com/poll/159548/identify-
christian.aspx.
1 James B. Finley, Autobiography of Rev. James B. Finley; or, Pioneer Life in the West (1853), ed. W. P. Strickland, 166, 362, 364.
2 Ibid., 366.
3 Ibid., 364.
4 Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 61.
5 Governor John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity, http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/charity.html.
6 Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: Americas Forgotten Founding Father (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 173.
7 John Cotton, Gods Promise to His Plantation, http://quintapress.macmate.me/PDF_Books/Gods_Promise_to_his_plantation.pdf.
8 Ibid.
9 Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism, 157.
10 Sarah Palin, America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 69.
11 Ronald Wilson Reagan, Farewell Address (January 11, 1989), Miller Center, University of Virginia,
http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3418.
12 In A Model of Christian Charity, Winthrop cites from the Book of Micah, chapter six, verse eight: He hath shewed thee, O man,
what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
13 Garry Wills, Head and Heart: American Christianities (New York: Penguin Press, 2007), 35.
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Copyright
The excerpts have been used with permission of the authors.
The Shift (Hachette Books) copyright 2013 by Tory Johnson
Factory Man (Little, Brown and Company) copyright 2014 by Beth Macy
Blue Mind (Little, Brown and Company) copyright 2014 by Wallace J. Nichols
Shadows in the Vineyard (Twelve) copyright 2014 by Maximillian Potter
Go Wild (Little, Brown and Company) copyright 2014 by John J. Ratey, MD, and Richard Manning
We Should Hang Out Sometime (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) copyright 2014 by Josh Sundquist
Our Great Big American God (Jericho) copyright 2014 by Matthew Paul Turner
Cover design by Keith Hayes
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