Bad Land by Jonathan Raban
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER * Startlingly observed, beautifully written, this book is a contemporary classic of the American West. * "As good a book as I have read about rural America in a very long time." --The New York Times Book ReviewIn 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.
Jonathan Raban, the author of Waxwings and Passage to Juneau, was born in England and has lived in Seattle since 1990. The National Book Critics Circle Prize, the Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Award, the PEN/West Creative Nonfiction Award, the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association's Award, and the Governor's Award of the State of Washington are among his accolades.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780679759065 |
| ISBN 10 | 0679759069 |
| Title | Bad Land |
| Author | Jonathan Raban |
| Series | Vintage Departures |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Random House USA Inc |
| Year published | 1997-10-07 |
| Number of pages | 384 |
| Prizes | Winner of National Book Critics Circle Awards 1996 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |