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Americana: Dispatches from the New Frontier
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List Price: $13.95
Special Price: $11.16
Your Savings: $ 2.79 ( 20% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Anchor
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.929
EAN: 9781400033553
ISBN: 1400033551
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: 2004-04-13
Publisher: Anchor
Release Date: 2004-04-13
Studio: Anchor
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Editorial Reviews:
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Harley-Davidson bikers . . . Grand Canyon river rats. . .Mormon archaeologists. . . Spelling bee prodigies…
For more than fifteen years, best-selling author and historian Hampton Sides has traveled widely across the continent exploring the America that lurks just behind the scrim of our mainstream culture. Reporting for Outside, The New Yorker, and NPR, among other national media, the award-winning journalist has established a reputation not only as a wry observer of the contemporary American scene but also as one of our more inventive and versatile practitioners of narrative non-fiction.
In these two dozen pieces, collected here for the first time, Sides gives us a fresh, alluring, and at times startling America brimming with fascinating subcultures and bizarre characters who could live nowhere else. Following Sides, we crash the redwood retreat of an apparent cabal of fabulously powerful military-industrialists, drop in on the Indy 500 of bass fishing, and join a giant techno-rave at the lip of the Grand Canyon. We meet a diverse gallery of American visionaries— from the impossibly perky founder of Tupperware to Indian radical Russell Means to skateboarding legend Tony Hawk. We retrace the route of the historic Bataan Death March with veterans from Sides’ acclaimed WWII epic, Ghost Soldiers. Sides also examines the nation that has emerged from the ashes of September 11, recounting the harrowing journeys of three World Trade Center survivors and deciding at the last possible minute not to "embed" on the Iraqi front-lines with the U.S. Marines. Americana gives us a sparkling mosaic of our country today, in all its wild and poignant charm.
Experience the many faces of America with Hampton Sides as he:
AMERICAN ORIGINALS
. . . drops in on the charmed life of skateboarding icon Tony Hawk; studies counter-terrorism at the G. Gordon Liddy spy school; goes Hollywood with American Indian Movement radical-turned-movie-star Russell Means; steps out of the closet with Mel White, religious right ghostwriter-turned-gay activist; mushes the Iditarod Trail with Alaska legend Joe Redington.
AMERICAN EDENS
. . . runs the rapids during a man-made flood in the Grand Canyon; crashes the redwood retreat of California’s elite Bohemian Club; debriefs the “bio-nauts” as they emerge from captivity in the Biosphere; dives into America’s greatest swimming hole; gets ecstatic with the Zippies at their secret all-night techno-rave.
AMERICAN RIDES
. . . ponders silver bubbles at the annual Airstream RV convention; revs it up at the Harley-Davidson rally in Sturgis, South Dakota; sails the Chesapeake with snooty owners of a rare antique sailboat known as the log canoe; roams the streets with D.C.’s hard-core band of bike couriers.
AMERICAN BY BIRTH, SOUTHERN BY THE GRACE OF . . .
. . . speaks in tongues with black Pentecostalists of the Memphis-based Church of God in Christ; fishes for lunkers at the Bassmasters Classic; goes underground with the world’s greatest cave rescuer; unravels the mystery of a notorious teen murder in rural Mississippi.
AMERICANS ABROAD
. . . crosses the Sahara Desert with American endurance runners at the infernal Marathon des Sables; bushwhacks through MesoAmerica with Mormon archaeologists in search of lost tribes of Israel; visits a high school friend who’s become an Uzi-toting Zionist pioneer in the West Bank; walks the route of the Bataan Death March with characters from Ghost Soldiers.
AMERICAN OBSESSIONS
. . . cranks it up with high-end stereophiles at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas; gets bowled over by 5,000 squealing salesladies at the annual Tupperware convention; plumbs the mysteries of the "schwa" at the National Spelling Bee; scrapes at the stucco of the neurotic architectural tradition known as Santa Fe Style.
AMERICA, POST 9/11
. . . traces the harrowing stories of three World Trade Center survivors; goes off-roading in the Imperial Sand Dunes; almost embeds on the Iraqi frontlines with the U.S. Marines; remembers Shane Childers, the decorated Marine who became the first American combat death in Iraq.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Makes me interested in the not so interesting - Kindle Version
Comment: Skateboarder? Why would I even be interested in a skateboarder? Yet Sides writes it so well, I couldn't put it down!
I read with anticipation his meeting Gordon Liddy but Liddy doesn't show up until the end for just a small bit. Yet getting there was so much fun! And I am not even interested in Liddy.
I love having this book on my Kindle. I know I can 'open it up' anytime and find a great short story to read.
Hampton Sides - keep 'em coming!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Comment: After reading "Ghost Soldiers" I found "Americana" to be disappointing.
"Americana" is a collection of unrelated magazine articles, and they seem to have been written to accompany the photos of the magazine, instead of standing on their own. Some of the characters Sides writes about are interesting, but there's not much drama to the essays.
Sides is an outstanding writer, as he proved with "Ghost Soldiers" -- a captivating and amazing story that was hard to put down. But be cautioned: "Americana" takes effort to get through!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting read
Comment: Great start to this collection of essays... "What is an American?" Most of these essays are very interesting reading... a few are just a bit slow. I've used the essay on Bass fishing in my HS English classes to highlight "good writing." My students have enjoyed scoring his work with the six traits... great writer!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Facets of America often unseen and unknown
Comment: This is the third book by Hampton Sides I have read. I absolutly loved it!
Indepth insights into American subcultures, personalities, locations and events conveyed in masterful color and detail. Humor, pathos, irony, Sides elicits the full gamut of emotions. From the first page to the last, pure genius.
Sides has become my favorite author. Can't wait for his next book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: More than great writing - great reporting
Comment: As a newspaper columnist for The Register-Guard in Eugene, Ore., I loath the well-written but poorly reported essay. That's why I'm so anxious to endorse Sides' "Americana," which is, to be blunt, the best collection of essays on beyond-the-press-conference America I've ever read. Sides is not only a master of language - "they survey the scene with frozen smiles, like old-time Kremlin leaders on a reviewing stand" - but an observer extraordinaire. What makes his pieces shine is his incredible attention to detail, his not only seeing the aging band Steppenwolf at the Harley gathering, but REALLY seeing them: "haggard dinosaurs with tubercular-blue skin, their scaly forms mailed in black leather." From bikers to Tupperware women, from skate boarders to national spelling bees, Sides shows us an America that you won't always find on prime time. And does so with an open mind, an insatiable curiosity and a keen wit. But what places the book at the forefront of such collections is two last-chapter essays - "Point of Impact," about 9/11 and "First," about the war in Iraq. Sides' humor is delicious, but when he gets serious, as he does for these two pieces, he can tell a gripping story like few other American writers. If you want to better understand Americans - and treat yourself to uncommonly great writing in the process - "Americana" is for you.
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