The Complete Half-Aspenite

by Bruce Berger

The Complete Half-Aspenite chronicles the decades after skiing and culture invaded the splintering mining town that was Aspen, a period that might be called the Bohemian Years. In witty and evocative prose, Bruce Berger recounts the Aspen missed by the glitz-mongering media, a sublime stew of intense garage sales and flammable recycling, of hilarious architecture and tragic lunches, of grand eccentrics, bears and magpies, of physicists and musicians who made permanent contributions to world culture—the alchemy of human invention and natural splendor that make Aspen a place like no other.

Hardcover

Published December 2, 2005

Reviews

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I haven't read all of the essays in this collection, those that I have perused are lovely little gems. There's such variety in the subjects, from the author's experiences with the music festival to his take on magpies. The writing is first-rate, suffused with a gentle wit and passion like alpenglow on the mountains surrounding this once quaint town, now small but cosmopolitan city. Bruce Berger has lived in Aspen off and on since the Sixties, and many (or perhaps all?) of these pieces appeared previously in local and national publications.