Man Bites Log: The Unlikely Adventures of a City Guy in the Woods

Five side-splitting years in the life of a big-city journalist who decided to pack it in and head for the simple life in rural Maine. But the simple life turned out to be a complicated business. While his wife homeschooled their two kids on a boulder-strewn farm, Alexander battled firewood poachers, guinea hens, corporate polluters and his own expectations—eventually running for local office. Alexander had been the executive editor of Variety and was a senior editor at People when he decided that the glitz of Tinseltown and the glamour of Manhattan didn’t quite hold the allure they once had. So, family in tow, he moved to a farm in rural Maine where he found himself forced to confront neighbors “who speak slowly but are hard to understand, and drive slower but are impossible to pass.” In the course of this sobering and hilarious how-not-to, Alexander covers the gamut from doing his best to avoid setting his woods on fire, and the occasional intrusions from his previous life (featuring cameos from Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks), to what E.B. White calls the “basic satisfaction of farming”—manure.Approaching what passes for small-town life in rural New England with gusto and the nose for a scoop of a seasoned reporter, Alexander puts a new spin on a literary genre that began with Thoreau’s reportage from Walden. USA Today called Man Bites Log one of the best nature books of 2004. It’s essential reading for lovers of nature writing and back-to-the-land literature, or anyone who wonders if la dolce vita can be found in a pile of dung. This classic tale is back in a brand new e-edition with a beautiful new cover and other original artwork, plus two bonus chapters.

Max Alexander is an author, journalist, onetime farmer and failed politician. Failure is in fact a central theme in his books, which have been called "how-not-tos," although many of his subjects refuse to cooperate and actually make something of themselves, against all odds. His latest book, "Bright Lights, No City," chronicles a three-year adventure in the West African country of Ghana, where his entrepreneur brother has been attempting to launch a new for-profit business providing innovative goos and services to low-income customers. Alexander is a former senior editor at People magazine in New York and, before that, the executive editor of Variety and Daily Variety, the showbiz trade publications, in Los Angeles. His writing-on topics ranging from crime to adventure-appears in dozens of publications including Smithsonian, Saveur, Prevention, This Old House and The New York Times. In addition, Alexander has edited books by such notable authors as George Plimpton and film critic David Thomson. He is currently working on a book about China. He lives with his wife and two sons in an 1816 center-chimney Cape in midcoast Maine.