Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
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 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.
With his distinctive blend of intrepidity and wide-eyed wonder, Frazier relates the tale of his 25,000-mile drive across the Great Plains states. In the tradition of Mark Twain's Roughing It, Great Plains is a heartfelt expedition through western America.
Synopsis
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.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
The miscellany in ''Great Plains'' is not uniformly captivating. Here and there, the narrative falls back on the quirky lists, the pointless deadpan and the grandmother's-trunk monologues of which New Yorker reporting, in its most mannered moments, is occasionally guilty, but more often Mr. Frazier displays an ability to revive tired subjects. -- New York Times
Editorials
From the Publisher
“Extraordinary...One thinks of such American originals as John McPhee,
Wallace Stegner, Edward Hoagland, Peter Matthiessen, and Evan S. Connell.” —The Washington Post Book World
“This is a brillant, funny, and altogether perfect book, soaked in research and then aired out on the open plains to evaporate the excess, leaving this modern masterpiece. It makes me want to get in a truck and drive straight out to North Dakota and look at the prairie.” —Garrison Keillor
“History written with passion and delight... Frazier is a great storyteller.” —Newsweek