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Before
he became a best-selling author with the acclaimed World War II
epic Ghost Soldiers, Hampton Sides established a reputation
as a sly observer of the contemporary American scene, writing
for Outside, The New Yorker, Men’s Journal, DoubleTake
and other magazines. For two decades, he has traveled the continent
exploring the America that thrives just behind the surface of
our mainstream culture. In this collection of 30 pieces, Sides
gives us a fresh, alluring, and at times startling America brimming
with fascinating subcultures and bizarre characters who could
live nowhere else.
We follow Sides as he crashes the redwood retreat
of an apparent cabal of powerful military-industrialists, drops
in on the Indy 500 of bass fishing and joins 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 the Tupperware
party to Indian radical Russell Means to skateboarding legend
Tony Hawk. We retrace the route of the historic Bataan Death March
with veterans from Ghost Soldiers and hunt for lost tribes
of Israel with Mormon archaeologists in Mexico.
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 frontlines
with the U.S. Marines. Americana gives us a sparkling mosaic of
our country today, in all its wild and poignant charm.
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