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2 Burnside Americana- Great Plains

Great Plains

by Frazier Ian

Great Plains Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

National Bestseller

With his unique blend of intrepidity, tongue-in-cheek humor, and wide-eyed wonder, Ian Frazier takes us on a journey of more than 25,000 miles up and down and across the vast and myth-inspiring Great Plains. A travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a western adventure, Great Plains takes us from the site of Sitting Bulls cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde, to the scene of the murders chronicled in Truman Capotes In Cold Blood. It is an expedition that reveals the heart of the American West.

Review:

"Extraordinary...One thinks of such American originals as John McPhee, Wallace Stegner, Edward Hoagland, Peter Matthiessen, and Evan S. Connell." Washington Post Book World

Review:

"{Frazier has been} a humor writer for The New Yorker since 1975....Although {his book} is about America, it is most emphatically not one of those ego-driven travel diaries into the soul of a nation....Frazier is a great storyteller, and he tells stories here about the waves of migration over the Plains, about Indian tribes, about war-makers and moneymakers, about local heroes and national villains. Everywhere, he treats the land and its stories as gifts to be shared, a kind of potluck to which we're all invited." Laura Shapiro, Newsweek

Review:

"The expansiveness in these pages is not only a wide swath of space and sky, but of imagination and emotion....At first glance Frazier's narrative seems deceptively freewheeling, nothing more than a rambling journey engaginglytold. But soon patterns begin to emerge....When he meets Crazy Horse's grandson, Le War Lance, for instance, on a street corner in New York City, Frazier gives him directions to Astor Place, named after John Jacob Astor, the owner of the American Fur Company who was indirectly responsible for the needless deaths of War Lance's ancestors. In his endnotes, Frazier points out that part of Astor's fortune 'went toward the eventual creation of the New York Public Library, where I read of his greed.'...'Even after "reclamation,"' he notes, strip-mined land 'gives you no year to think about but the year when the stripping happened.' Frazier's quest in {this book}, and his exhilarating accomplishment, is to free the imagination from this time prison." Sara Mosle, The New Republic

Synopsis:

In a work that is at once a travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a Western adventure, Frazier takes readers on a journey of more than 25,000 miles up, down, and across the vast and myth-inspiring Great Plains.

About the Author

Ian Frazier lives in Montclair, New Jersey. His previous books include Great Plains, Family, and Coyote v. Acme

Product Details

ISBN:
9780312278502
Author:
Frazier, Ian
Publisher:
Picador USA
Author:
Frazier, Ian
Location:
New York
Subject:
Description and travel
Subject:
Social life and customs
Subject:
History
Subject:
United States - State & Local
Subject:
United States - Midwest - West North Central (General)
Subject:
Essays & Travelogues
Subject:
Great plains
Subject:
United States - State & Local - General
Subject:
United States / West / Mountain (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, UT, WY)
Subject:
Travel
Subject:
Great Plains Description and travel.
Subject:
Great Plains History.
Edition Number:
1st Picador USA ed.
Edition Description:
Picador USA
Series Volume:
98-354
Publication Date:
May 2001
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Yes
Pages:
320
Dimensions:
8.30x5.59x.85 in. .63 lbs.

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