Eric Zencey

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Eric Zencey (born 1953) is an American author of two books.

Panama^[1] is an historical novel ^[2] set in Paris in 1893, in which the American historian Henry Adams becomes entangled in the Panama scandals, the scandals and political crisis that befell France as a consequence of the bankruptcy of the French Panama Canal Company a decade earlier. Briefly a best seller, Panama was widely and favorably reviewed as a literary thriller.

Virgin Forest^[3] is a collection of twelve related essays about how we think about and treat nature. The collection was published by the University of Georgia Press, and is loosely tied together by a theme: the importance of history to an ecological understanding. "If we are out of place in nature, we are also out of place in time, and the two kinds of exile are related." ^[4]. It includes an essay, "The Rootless Professors," first published in The Chronicle of Higher Education in 1985, which argues that one root of modern culture's ecological problem is the fact that post-secondary education is, without exception, performed by a transient class of intellectuals who owe no allegiance to place. That this is no longer true is in part due to the influence of his work; his call for a new class of educators, one "equally at home in the cosmopolitan world of ideas and the very particular world of watersheds and growing seasons" helped inspire the current movement for "place based education" ^[5] and education for ecological literacy.^[6]

Zencey is contributing editor for the North American Review ^[7], and has been a fellow of the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Bogliasco Foundations.

Zencey currently teaches for Empire State College in Prague and New York State.

Contents 1 Bibliography 1.1 Novels 1.2 Essays 2 References

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Novels

• Panama ISBN 978-0425156025 (1995)

[edit] Essays

• Virgin Forest: Meditations on History, Ecology, and Culture ISBN 978-0820322001 (1998)

[edit] References