So, I'd been intending to finish the book I'm reading, PrairyErth, before officially recommending it to my closest friends, but I can wait no longer. Truth is, I'm still a little under half-through; it is a slooow read-one I'm tackling almost exlusively on my bus-ride in & back (an event in which I have probably been averaging less than three times a week for the past month). But if slow, to say it is engaging and delicious is to undersell it. I say this now: this is clearly the best work of non-fiction I have ever read, and it's not even close.
I've never read a book quite like it-it is some sort of combination of historical study, geographical study, ethnography, and philosophical exploration. William Least-Heat Moon, the author essentially spends three years exploring every inch of Chase County, Kansas-the county to the south of Council Grove's Morris County. Though many images and characters in the book evoke certain personal feelings, I swear-my personal connection to that part of the country does not play into my opinion of the quality of this book. I dearly wish there were more books of this sort, exploring other counties in the country. But in Chase County (total population probably under 3,000), a place that many people would assume is relative void of anything of interest, Least-Heat Moon explores all these different aspects of place and makes fantastic, mind-blowing connections, telling very human and compelling stories, with a writing that is of as fine a quality as I have ever seen.
I wish for there to be more WLHM's in the world, and I guarantee one of the most enlightening, philisophically and intellectually stimulating reads in which you will ever embark. PLEASE READ THIS BOOK. I don't want to ever finish this book, and probably won't until mid-September, but I beg and plead for you to begin it. (with your psycho reading style, Mixdorf, you might just finish it in consecutive weekends).
Trying to give much more detail about the book would fall short: please read the editorial reviews from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/039592569X/ref=dp_nav_1/002-8421614-8365666?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=507846&s=books
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3 comments:
I'll try to find it.
I'm not sure there isn't more non-fiction out there like that. How did you come across this, and what have you done to find others of its ilk?
I came accross it because it is a book of some repute in the region from whence my family originates (though it's funny-there is a very socially and environmentally progressive strain running throughout the book that runs counter to the way of thinking of almost everyone that lives down there. They are content enough to ignore that, however, and just focus on the fact that there's a lot of places & names they recognize in the book).
You may be right-there may well be other books out there like this, though I've not heard of them. It reminds me a bit of some of ethnography that geographers at the U would talk about-BIG difference being that Least-Heat Moon is not trying to pretend his book takes the place of empirical research. Of course, there's a bunch of other differences, too...
WLHM wrote another book of critical acclaim, Blue Highways, that I'd like to investigate when I finish.
It may be a narrow genre, but I would guess you could follow a basic line from one book to another.
Even the 'if you liked this book, you might like....' sort of stuff at Amazon or BN.
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