This is a reprint of John Holt's controversial book about the rights of children and how adults and children can live and learn together more enjoyably and transparently by rethinking their relationships. Under the guise of care and protection, children are kept in the walled garden of childhood, outside the world of human experience, for longer periods than ever before in human history. But for many children and parents, the walled garden of childhood is more like a prison, where authorit...

Can men overcome their darkest nature and most compelling fears in this life, even if this struggle ultimately leads to their deaths? The wildly spectacular Arctic north of Canada is the setting for The Lost Patrol, a page from history Four men were led by Royal Northwest Mounted Police Inspector Francis J. Fitzgerald as they attempted to deliver annual reports and mail to the district office. The patrol left Ft. McPherson, Northwest Territories in late December 1910 headed for Dawson City...

After years of working to change schools from within—testifying before Congress and addressing audiences around the world about how to make schools better places for children—John Holt founded Growing Without Schooling magazine in 1977 to support self-directed education and learning outside of school. Each issue is a lively exchange among readers and Holt, packed with useful advice, resource recommendations, and all sorts of legal, pedagogical, and parenting ideas from people who pioneered...

Growing Without Schooling (GWS) is the first publication about learning outside of school, homeschooling, and unschooling founded by the late teacher and author John Holt. Published continuously from 1977 until 2001, the 143 issues of GWS are filled with practical, hands-on advice from parents and children who are living and learning in their homes and communities. Each issue also contains legal, educational, and social advice and commentary about self-directed education and how it can be ...

Very little comes easy in the West, not even murder. Here, Ed Bouchee, a small town private detective living on the northern high plains, is asked to investigate a gruesome murder. From that moment on nothing is as it seems. Up is down and white fades to black. Bouchee and his headstrong Springer spaniel companion, The Dog, wander the slightly mean, out-of-kilter streets of Biederbeck, and the lonesome, often terrifying, mountain backroads of central Montana in search of Mark Grace’s kille...

Natalie and the valley’s derelicts live in a wilderness paradise, but a gold mining company is about to savage a local mountain known as Jane’s Hill. Can they stop it? Probably not. But Natalie -- a woman whose attitude was sizably influenced by the life and writings of Gertrude Stein -- continues to work on the problem as she throws “sedate salons” at her Joint, a two-story lodge of rough-hewn logs, and fishes the clear streams for brookies. She knows the mine will kill the river. That’s ...

John Holt tells us, "It's now been more than fifty years that I've been fishing, and roaming and loving Montana and the rest of the northern high plains. Lines on maps don't mean a damn thing to good country or to me. Montana flows into Alberta and British Columbia and Wyoming. The western Dakotas are the same place as Eastern Montana only with different names. Land is connected, not defined by human limitations. I first thought of writing and compiling this book while working a stream tha...

Can men overcome their darkest nature and most compelling fears in this life, even if this struggle ultimately leads to their deaths? The wildly spectacular Arctic north of Canada is the setting for The Lost Patrol, a page from history Four men were led by Royal Northwest Mounted Police Inspector Francis J. Fitzgerald as they attempted to deliver annual reports and mail to the district office. The patrol left Ft. McPherson, Northwest Territories in late December 1910 headed for Dawson City...

The West has been celebrated with songs, words and photographs for well over 100 years. This novel is about poet John Wesley Gill, who lives in the Sweet Grass Hills, and his struggle to come to grips with the changing West as he also decides to resurrect his writing career through good deeds and very dark ones including murder. The book is a reflection of his travels. Gill's poems define his road experiences and this lyricism is reflected in the narrative that takes him along rough roads ...

The author poses the rhetorical question: "So how did this book come to be? How did this collection of articles and stories wind up in one place in this book?" At a local bookstore in Livingston, Montana, a group of writers were talking about compilations of people's work and do they have any merit. Yes, they do, was the conclusion – and thus John Holt has culled this marvelous collection of his articles and musings from a number of publications. It's like a philosophical travelogue, fishi...

John Holt tells us, “It’s now been more than fifty years that I’ve been fishing, and roaming and loving Montana and the rest of the northern high plains. Lines on maps don’t mean a damn thing to good country or to me. Montana flows into Alberta and British Columbia and Wyoming. The western Dakotas are the same place as Eastern Montana only with different names. Land is connected, not defined by human limitations. I first thought of writing and compiling this book while working a stream tha...

John Holt is more commonly known for his prose -- novels like Plain Crazy in Paradise, Blown Away Under the Big Sky, and The Lost Patrol, or fact-filled articles in such publications as Men’s Journal, Fly Fisherman, and Crossroads. A resident of Montana, he likes writing about the Great Outdoors, the beauty and savagery of nature, pastoral sojourns into the wild. But here Holt reveals another side of himself -- the poet. Here are nearly three score of his poems, which like his books show a...