Synopses & Reviews
Imagine a grunge nort Jersey version of John McPhee's classic The Pine Barrens and you'll get some idea of the idiosyncratic, fact-filled, and highly original work that is Robert Sullivan's The Meadowlands. Just five miles west of New York City, this vilified, half-developed, half-untamed, much dumped-on, and sometimes odiferous tract of swampland is home to rare birds and missing bodies, tranquil marshes and a major sports arena, burning garbage dumps and corporate headquarters, the remains of the original Penn Station--and maybe, just ,maybe, of the late Jimmy Hoffa. Robert Sullivan proves himself to be this fragile yet amazingly resilient region's perfect expolorer, historian, archaeologist, and comic bard.
Review
"A different kind of search for the diverting sublime... what a tremendous feat of the imagination! To celebrate the natural (and unnatural) beauties of a wasteland!" San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"A fine, intrepid work of reporting that finds revelations...in a stubbornly wild marshland in the middle of the megalopolis. The Meadowlands is funny, interesting, surprising, and bizarre." Ian Frazier
Review
"Does for the Meadowlands, where creeks can be the color of antifreeze, what Thoreau did for Walden Pond." USA Today
Review
"The 20th century has done its worst by the Meadowlands, but as Sullivan superbly demonstrates, there is life in the old landscape yet, a friskiness that shakes off into the clayey muck the hellspawn of progress." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
Imagine a grunge north Jersey version of John McPhee's classic The Pine Barrens and you'll get some idea of the idiosyncratic, fact-filled, and highly original work that is Robert Sullivan's The Meadowlands. Just five miles west of New York City, this vilified, half-developed, half-untamed, much dumped-on, and sometimes odiferous tract of swampland is home to rare birds and missing bodies, tranquil marshes and a major sports arena, burning garbage dumps and corporate headquarters, the remains of the original Penn Station and maybe, just maybe, of the late Jimmy Hoffa. Robert Sullivan proves himself to be this fragile yet amazingly resilient region's perfect expolorer, historian, archaeologist, and comic bard.
About the Author
Robert Sullivan has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, Outside, Condé Nast Traveler, and Vogue, where he is a contributing editor. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and two children.