Synopses & Reviews
National BestsellerWith 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
National Bestseller
Most travelers only fly over the Great Plains--but Ian Frazier, ever the intrepid and wide-eyed wanderer, is not your average traveler. A hilarious and fascinating look at the great middle of our nation.
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 Bull's cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde, to the scene of the murders chronicled in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It is an expedition that reveals the heart of the American West.
Synopsis
National BestsellerWith 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.
About the Author
Ian Frazier is the author of Great Plains, The Fishs Eye, On the Rez, Family, and Travels in Siberia, as well as Dating Your Mom, Lamentations of the Father, and The Cursing Mommy's Book of Days. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.