CD-ROM Edition. Not a DVD, not an audio CD, no illustrations. Produced in a Microsoft Compatible Format for reading, printing or research. About the Author: Scott Nearing (August 6, 1883  August 24, 1983) was an American radical economist, educator, writer, political activist, and advocate of simple living. Nearings chosen lifestyle of "Tolstoian," ascetic, rural self-sufficiency may be reasonably interpreted as the attempt of a self-aware dissident individual to avoid inevitably negative participation in the internal life of the group (be it government or political party), while retaining a keen and almost obsessive interest in the dynamics of society and the world as a whole. Allen Ginsberg, the Beat Generation poet, referred to Nearing as a "grand old man, a real mensch" in his poem America.