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Title: The Nine Nations of North America by Joel Garreau, John Garreau ISBN: 0-380-57885-9 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: July, 1989 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.85 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The book that changed my life
Comment: This was the book that led me to my chosen career path. Garreau did a brillant job in entwining personal dialogues with stats and facts. The boundaries are well thought out. The most interesting parts of the book are those that deal with regions that lie partially outside the US (Quebec, Islands, Mexamerica, Ecotopia), but all sections have merit. Granted, having an updated version of this book would be nice, but that just gives us grad students something to inspire to. I would definitely recommend that the Aberrations chapter be read by all, as it perfectly demostrates the conflict each nation may inflict on others.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fascinating -- not nearly as dated as you might suspect
Comment: Joel Garreau's Nine Nations of North America is still enjoyable, particularly because it is not nearly as dated as you might suspect. I was given it as a gift in 2001 and read it expecting Garreau's fieldwork to show me how people in North American regions used to talk. However, much of what Garreau heard and felt as he traveled accorded with things I'd heard and felt in my travels in the '90s and '00s. The only thing that struck me as (semi-)dated was Garreau's devotion of a significant portion of each chapter to how that "nation" was facing the energy crisis. Is such a concern really dated, though, given how the intervening years' explorations and exploitations more or less tabled the discussion for a future date?
As the holder of a B.A. in Geography, I winced at his choice of the word 'nation' when clearly the better term is 'region'. Nations are not defined by their interests and way of life, but rather an elusive mix of shared histories, cultures, and socio-political happenstances. However, Garreau's work serves to remind geographers that regions are indeed best defined by interests and way of life, despite much attention given to religious or institutional commonalties (i.e. "civilizations") recently.
What do I think of Garreau's boundaries? Let me answer this way: my brother-in-law recently remarked to me that in trying to correct misconceptions his fellow students at Harvard have about the Midwest, he'd explained that he felt Michigan was a lot more like Pennsylvania (typically considered a "Northeastern/Mid-Atlantic/East Coast" state) than it was like Kansas (often grouped with Michigan as a "Midwestern" state). I laughed and handed him Joel Garreau's Nine Nations of North America. That myriad others have made similar observations I do not doubt. This is the service of Garreau's work: a corrective to our customary understanding of how North America is broken up.
Do I buy into Garreau's boundaries, though? With some minor amendments, yes. I agree that Manhattan, the D.C. area, Alaska, and Hawaii are "aberrations" and would add Central Florida to that list, or perhaps move it into "The Islands", but it is clearly no longer part of "Dixie". A more minor quibble I have would be to shift the northern boundary of the Foundry into Lake Superior rather than splitting the U.P. with "The Breadbasket" (no way Copper Harbor or Marquette is a "Breadbasket" town). If I knew northern Wisconsin better, I would say Superior and Wausau are more likely Foundry towns than they are Breadbasket; that's my suspicion based on the fact that that area is woodsy, rugged, and pocked with mills and factories, and thus perhaps not as concerned by the fate of agribusiness as Kansas City or Minneapolis is.
One last and funny (but not "ha ha funny") thing is that Garreau, in trying to circumscribe New England, notes that there's significant French population along the northern tiers of Maine and New Brunswick, and if it were not for the absurdities of political borders, would put them in with Quebec. However, one thing that characterizes New England (and that perhaps he misses) is its history and culture of significant French influence, from Nova Scotia to Rhode Island.
Highly recommended.
Rating: 3
Summary: intriguing
Comment: This is almost a travel book, more than anything else. Garreau's Nine Nations are probably not intended to be political predictions about the near future. Not rigorously researched in an academic manner, it is a bunch of Studs Terkel-type interviews mixed with the ideas about a place that people observe during widespread travels and a fair bunch of statistics (without footnotes).
Written in the depths of the energy crisis of the 1970s and Carter's Moral Equivalent of War, it does seem a bit obsessed with energy at first. But after the introduction and the New England chapter, it picks up more balance, although, as with any reporting, one can never pin down the author to a particular viewpoint.
As a look at the arbitrary and somewhat meaningless nature of national and state/province borders; every continent ought to be looked at in this way! If you can only live and explore one part of it, 'The Nine Nations of North America' has plenty to say about the rest.
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Title: Edge City : Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau ISBN: 0385424345 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 September, 1992 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Burden of Southern History by Comer Vann Woodward ISBN: 0807118915 Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: October, 1993 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Boonville : A Novel by Robert Mailer Anderson ISBN: 0060516216 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Where I Was From by Joan Didion ISBN: 0679433325 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: The Tropic of Cracker (The Florida History and Culture Series) by Al, Jr. Burt ISBN: 0813016959 Publisher: University Press of Florida Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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