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Title: PrairyErth (A Deep Map): An Epic History of the Tallgrass Prairie Country by William Least Heat-Moon ISBN: 0-395-92569-X Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 15 February, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.88 (26 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Experience Kansas
Comment: If you want to experience Kansas, with its excruitatingly boring places that slowly creep up on you and leave you blissfully satisfied and in awe of beauty; if you're willing to read long passages of flat text just to discover the beauty of burning fields; I highly recommend PrairyErth.
I grew up in Kansas, about 2 hours from Chase county and was always facinated by the hills, the people, and just the auroa that came from Strong City and Cottonwood falls. After reading "PrairyErth" I am even more mesmorized by the locale.
I have been out of the state for 2 years now, and long to go back. Many friends have complained about the long drives through Kansas, the flat scenery, and boring people. PrairyErth brings to life these flat lands and opens up new worlds of community and life.
For me, reading Moon's book was much like experiencing life in Kansas. I did find some of the chapters long, dry, and dull.. but, that's how some Kansas life is. Moon always concludes these sections with a gorgeous snapshot of the land. He shows us what it is like to be in relationship with the land just as we are in relationship with one another.
He concludes the book with a beautiful journey down the Kaw Trail.
"How do you know when the Prairy is in you?"
"When you see a tree as an eyesore."
Rating: 5
Summary: Chase Count y Saga
Comment: Open the book. Chase County, Kansas has U.S. Route 50 and the Kansas Turnpike running through it. The Flint Hills are the last remaining grand expanse of tall grass in America. The population of Chase County is 3,013. This is clearly William Least Heat-Moon's masterpiece. The closest reading experience I can summon is that of Barry Lopez's ARCTIC DREAMS.
Chase County, Kansas is an empty area in relative terms. The arrangement of the book is to follow a sort of geographical grid. The author introduces new concerns with a series of paragraphs and quotations from other works. Individual stories are inserted for interest and historical verisimilitude. For example, Gabriel Jacobs was a Dunkard preacher from Indiana. He and his wife arrived in Chase County in 1856.
The book is filled with maps. Cottonwood Falls, State Lake, Spring Creek, Den Creek, Rock Creek, Cottonwood River, Sharp Creek, Roniger Hill, Landon Rocks and Bazaar are shown on the map of the Bazaar Quadrangle. Chase County is tall grass country and beef is the major pursuit. It absolutely depends upon grass. The work of Chase is to turn soil and cellulose into humaly digestible carbohydrates and protein. Tribal people took their health from prairie plants. Antelope are returning to the Flint Hills through a restocking program. The author observes that the land in Chase County is like a good library, it lets a fellow extend himself. Common Chase properties of the land are the vales and uplands through which the author enjoyed traveling.
A review by me cannot do justice to this book. The work is as multi-dimensional as EXECUTIONER'S SONG by Norman Mailer. Vachel Lindsay traveled down the Cottonwood Valley. A student going to high school in Chase County thinks there is no privacy, no opportunity to be one's self. A grade school teacher told the author she hoped that pople in Chase County could learn to love themselves less and the children more. The largest cottonwood in Kansas has a trunk 27 feet around. The Timber Culture Act of 1873 gave 160 acres of land to the settler who would plant ten of these acreas in trees. In 1931 a Fokker plane carrying the famous football coach Knute Rockne crashed in Chase County near Bazaar. People ariving in Chase County after 1862, the Homestead Act, were limited to taking a quarter section, 160 acres. Most county bottom land had been claimed by 1870. Absentee land ownership has been a fact of life in Chase County since the 19th century when the English aristocracy and the railroads owned large tracts.
The author says that for him writing is not a search for explanations, but a ramble. He believes that Chase County is the ideal place to develop a prototype of a new agricultural community. The book began when the author arrived at Roniger Hill with an image of a topographical grid in his head. Of the dozen settlements in Chase County, three or four can still be called villages and two are towns. The significance of praryerth is that Chase County lies among it. "The Praryerths and Blackerths are deep soils, lightly granular, relatively nonacid, unleached, with full stores of humus and minerals."
Rating: 5
Summary: A deep, thorough mapping indeed!
Comment: In the heart of the Flint Hills of east-central Kansas lies Chase County, where the green grass waves across all horizons, and where a natural and human history of unbelievable richness belies the wide-open remoteness of the landscape. This history, except for one nationally noteworthy event (Kunute Rockne's demise in a plane crash), had become largely obscured by time and scattered to the prairie winds until reassembled masterfully by the author (WHLM).
A voluminous beast of a book at over 600 pages, PrairyErth is a true "deep map" as advertised, but much less imposing than its cumulative immensity would threaten. It is best read in no particular order, easily compartmentalized by chapters that have distinct identities. One easily can read the section on Bazaar, then Cottonwood Falls, then Matfield, and so forth, irrespective of their relative positions either in the book or on the map. WLHM fittingly divides this rectangular county into quadrangles, adeptly mixing autobiographical sketches of his sojourns by road and trail with all manner of compelling tales of the area's people and structures, from native tribes through European settlement to the early 1990s (press time). A historical treasure chest erupts from every chunk of PrairyErth, pouring forth tales of family feuds, western outlaws, railroad and cattle barons, Civil War partisans, raging prairie fires both natural and deliberate, governmental skullduggery and intrigue, the Rockne crash, buildings built and buildings burned, changes in flora and fauna over the centuries, and even the cherty limestone itself which gives the area its name.
I read this book after several trips through Chase County, and the attention to detail of WLHM was captivating. He described tallgrass and sky scenes just as I had photographed, and even found some of the same graffiti-laden stone fenceposts I had perused off of Highway 177. It makes one wonder what will be lost forever without similar "deep mapping" of any and every other county across the American plains, each of which must have a similarly complex and flavorful story. The only detraction or annoyance -- a minor one -- was WLHM's unabashed leftist slant to his occasional political commentary; but this will bother only a small fraction of readers. I recommend PrairyErth enthusiastically to anyone interested in the American prairie or Western history.
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Title: Blue Highways:A Journey Into America by William Least Heat-Moon, William Least Heat Moon ISBN: 0316353299 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 19 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: River Horse: The Logbook of a Boat Across America by William Least Heat Moon, William Least Heat-Moon ISBN: 0140298606 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 03 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Columbus in the Americas by William Least Heat-Moon ISBN: 0471211893 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 30 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: River Journey by Clarence Jonk, William Least Heat-Moon ISBN: 0873514351 Publisher: Borealis Books Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez ISBN: 0375727485 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 02 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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