National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction, 1996
A New York Times Editors' Choice for Book of the Year
Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award
Winner of the PEN West Creative Nonfiction Award

In 1909 maps still identified eastern Montana as the Great American Desert. But in that year Congress, lobbied heavily by railroad companies, offered 320-acre tracts of land to anyone bold or foolish enough to stake a claim to them. Drawn by shamelessly inventive brochures, countless homesteaders — many of them immigrants — went west to make their fortunes. Most failed. In Bad Land, Jonathan Raban travels through the unforgiving country that was the scene of their dreams and undoing, and makes their story come miraculously alive.

In towns named Terry, Calypso, and Ismay (which changed its name to Joe, Montana, in an effort to attract football fans), and in the landscape in between, Raban unearths a vanished episode of American history, with its own ruins, its own heroes and heroines, its own hopeful myths and bitter memories. Startlingly observed, beautifully written, this book is a contemporary classic of the American West.

"No one has evoked with greater power the marriage of land and sky that gives this country both its beauty and its terror." Washington Post Book World

"Exceptional....A beautifully told historical meditation." Time

"Championship prose....In fifty years don't be surprised if Bad Land is a landmark." Los Angeles Times

"[V]ivid and utterly idiosyncratic....This seemingly informal yet careful blend of chronicle and personal reportage is social history at its best." Publishers Weekly

"[A]s good a book as I have read about rural America in a very long time....[It] reminds the reader how much America has always been nourished by the optimism of its immigrants." Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Times Book Review

"A stunning triumph." Newsday

"Raban crafts this sad tale magnificently, contrasting the emigrant's hope and determination with the bad faith of those who led them blindly into this forbidding landscape. It's a bitter, compellingly-told tale." Dwight Garner, Salon

"Raban shows a travel writer's eye and a social critic's sensibilities while probing the land, homesteaders' journals and letters, and the reminiscences of their descendants. Recommended." Library Journal

"[A] masterpiece in which we clearly see the vivid paradoxes of America's history and Raban on his own personal journey, as one of our wisest and most articulate travellers." Paul Theroux, author of My Other Life

"Because Mr. Raban is both English and a marvelous observer, he sees aspects of the plains invisible to the native-born. At once expansive and intimate, Bad Land is a valuable addition to the literature of the West." Ian Frazier, author of Great Plains

"Bad Land is uncommon in its conception and its exquisite perceptiveness....Raban is searching and compassionate, even mirthful, as captivated by his story as an African explorer." Richard Ford, author of Independence Day

A New York Times Editors' Choice for Book of the Year

Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award

Winner of the PEN West Creative Nonfiction Award

"No one has evoked with greater power the marriage of land and sky that gives this country both its beauty and its terror. "

--Washington Post Book World

In 1909 maps still identified eastern Montana as the Great American Desert.  But in that year Congress, lobbied heavily by railroad companies, offered 320-acre tracts of land to anyone bold or foolish enough to stake a claim to them. Drawn by shamelessly inventive brochures, countless homesteaders--many of them immigrants--went west to make their fortunes. Most failed. In Bad Land, Jonathan Raban travels through the unforgiving country that was the scene of their dreams and undoing, and makes their story come miraculously alive.    

In towns named Terry, Calypso, and Ismay (which changed its name to Joe, Montana, in an effort to attract football fans), and in the landscape in between, Raban unearths a vanished episode of American history, with its own ruins, its own heroes and heroines, its own hopeful myths and bitter memories. Startlingly observed, beautifully written, this book is a contemporary classic of the American West.

"Exceptional. . . .  A beautifully told historical meditation. "

--Time

"Championship prose. . . .  In fifty years don't be surprised if Bad Land is a landmark."

--Los Angeles Times

Jonathan Raban is the author of Soft City, Arabia, Old Glory, Foreign Land, For Love and Money, Coasting, and Hunting Mr. Heartbreak. He won the W.H. Heinemann Award for Literature in 1982 and the Thomas Cook Award in 1981 and 1991. He has also edited the Oxford Book of the Sea. He lives in Seattle.