Hungry Mind Review
"The Moby Dick of American history."--Hungry Mind Review
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Whereas Blue Highways dealt with Heat-Moon's auto trip across America, PrairyErth (an old term for heartland soils) records a journey mostly on foot across the tallgrass prairies and grasslands of Chase County, Kans. In a great cornucopia of a book, a majestic, healing hymn to America's potential, Heat-Moon attempts to penetrate the spirit of the land, a land which explorer Zebulon Pike and later white settlers stole from the Kansa (Kaw) Indians. There are now only six full-blood Kaw survivors, most of whom live on a reservation in Oklahoma. Heat-Moon writes of a feminist rancher who hires women primarily, of a farm couple swept aloft by a tornado, of abolitionists who wanted slaves free but not equal. He pauses to ponder fence posts, arrowheads and the nesting habits of pack rats. He talks to conservationists and coyote hunters, excerpts pioneer diaries and recreates the 1931 airplane crash that killed football hero Knute Rockne. Each chapter is prefaced by a map and by pages of quotations ranging from Thoreau to Frank Lloyd Wright. First serial to the Atlantic; BOMC selection. (Oct.)
From The Critics
"Bill McKibben has called this book "the deepest map anyone ever made of an American place" -- a majestic survey of land and time and people in a single county of the Kansas plains. It takes the author--by car, on foot, and in mind--into the core of our continent and backward and forward through a brilliant spectrum of time and place."
Library Journal
This new work from the author of Blue Highways ( LJ 11/1/82) is an immersion into the past, present, and future of Chase County in south central Kansas. Located in the heart of the Flint Hills, the sparsely populated area contains one of the best remaining tracts of tallgrass prairie that once covered much of the Midwest. (``PrairyErth'' is an old geologic term for prairie soils). Having spent six years engaging in ``participatory history,'' Heat-Moon creates a feel for the land and a rural way of life that seems to be dead or dying across America. Dividing his book into quadrangles, he presents a verbal map that examines the county's geological, natural, and human history. This is a fascinating book that could be improved only with the addition of an index. Highly recommended, especially for local, natural, and Western history collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/91; BOMC selection.-- Tim Markus, Evergreen State Coll. Lib., Olympia, Wash.
Kirkus Reviews
The long-awaited return of Heat-Moon, whose bestselling Blue Highways (1983) ranged far and wide on the byways of America, offers a memorable view of the American heartland—in the form of a splendid survey/view of a single Kansas county, the location of the last remaining expanse of tall-grass prairie. Through hundreds of vignettes and thumbnail sketches, constituting a meticulous examination of the hills and households of rural Chase County, Heat-Moon lays down a fascinating grid of interlocking experiences gathered over a five-year period. Each section of the book starts with materials from the author's "commonplace book," in which relevant passages taken from 19th- and 20th-century ruminations on the American West and Kansas prepare the thematic ground for the material to follow. Facts, observations, chance encounters, and personal detail intermingle superbly in a unique travelogue, as both the "countians" and the many facets of their world are revealed and transformed by gentle metaphysical speculations. Feminist caf‚-owners and retired limestone cutters give of themselves in their own words, while discussions of prairie soil and Osage oranges, recent native history, and distant geologic events enrich the human connections. One samples these offerings as easily as one might ramble through the stacks of a well-stocked, highly personalized library, effortlessly acquiring in the process more information than seems possible about the American experience. Rewarding and restless, evocative in its parts and deeply resonant as a whole, this is a strong successor to Blue Highways, establishing Heat-Moon as a master chronicler in the grand tradition. (Maps and drawings.)
