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Ian Frazier
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Great Plains Kindle Edition

by Ian Frazier (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 495 ratings
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National Bestseller

Most travelers only fly over the Great Plains--but Ian Frazier, ever the intrepid and wide-eyed wanderer, is not your average traveler. A hilarious and fascinating look at the great middle of our nation.

With his unique blend of intrepidity, tongue-in-cheek humor, and wide-eyed wonder, Ian Frazier takes us on a journey of more than 25,000 miles up and down and across the vast and myth-inspiring Great Plains. A travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a western adventure, Great Plains takes us from the site of Sitting Bull's cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde, to the scene of the murders chronicled in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It is an expedition that reveals the heart of the American West.

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  1. Print length
    199 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  5. Publication date
    May 4, 2001
  6. File size
    3435 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Frazier, staff writer for the New Yorker and author of Dating Your Mom , here explores the Great Plains at random, seeking the past and embracing the present. According to PW , "This is an engaging blend of travelogue, local color, geography and folklore." Photos. 100,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Extraordinary...One thinks of such American originals as John McPhee,
Wallace Stegner, Edward Hoagland, Peter Matthiessen, and Evan S. Connell." --The Washington Post Book World

"This is a brillant, funny, and altogether perfect book, soaked in research and then aired out on the open plains to evaporate the excess, leaving this modern masterpiece. It makes me want to get in a truck and drive straight out to North Dakota and look at the prairie." --Garrison Keillor

"History written with passion and delight... Frazier is a great storyteller." --Newsweek

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B009LRWVBY
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (May 4, 2001)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 4, 2001
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3435 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 199 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 495 ratings

About the author

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Ian Frazier

Ian Frazier

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Ian Frazier is the author of Great Plains, The Fish's Eye, On the Rez, and Family, as well as Coyote v. Acme and Dating Your Mom, all published by FSG. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
495 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Badazz
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Story-as Vast as the Plains
Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2013
Verified Purchase
The Great Plains, by Ian Frazier is a top notch, travelogue and cultural study. Why exactly should a discriminating reader buy or read a book which describes a part of the country that so many Americans either fly over, or try and get through as fast as possible? In short, Frazier's description of this region of America is worth reading if only for his outstanding use of the English Language. Additionally, the Great Plains is as storied and as colorful a region of the United States as any other.

The book was written in the late 1980s, when President Reagan was busy building up the military and aggressively confronting the Soviet Union. In that conflict, the Great Plains played a central part-namely it was, and remains, the area which the United States Air Force stores its Nuclear Missiles, and houses its fleets of bombers. It was the home turf of Strategic Air Command. Frazier looks at the situation full in the face, he genuinely is concerned about the fate of the world with so many warheads hidden under the sea of grass. Remarking on events current to the books publishing adds to the work, it gives an all important layer of time to the place described.

This book is a delight to read, for those whose roots sink into the region as well as people on the coasts who become curious about what they are flying over. A vast, rich, and fertile story.
5 people found this helpful
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Dennis Waters
4.0 out of 5 stars Sure is flat, isn't it?
Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2009
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Great Plains is an enjoyable book, a sweeping, eclectic view of a part of America many of us see only from airplane windows. It reads like what it mostly is, an extended (old-style) New Yorker piece, though Ian Frazier is no John McPhee.

Indians, cowboys, ranchers, farmers, charlatans, outlaws, explorers, miners, soldiers - they're all here as Frazier zigzags up and down the 100th meridian in his beat-up van. The picture that he paints is of a vast, mostly empty region, across which many have wandered but few have stayed. It is bleak but Frazier finds it invigorating.

The book is now twenty years old and some of the material is even older, so there are places where it sounds dated, as in the Cold War references in the discussion of the nuclear missile installations spread across the northern Plains.

The only place where Frazier failed, I think, was in his compressed discussion of the final years of Crazy Horse. There are too many characters and too much action to fit into twenty pages. It left me confused. Frazier joins many in his admiration of Crazy Horse, but the formal demands of this kind of journalism preclude extended biography.

But that is a minor nitpick for an otherwise good read. Recommended.
7 people found this helpful
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Josephine Briggs
5.0 out of 5 stars great plains
Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2009
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I liked this book very much. It is complicated, interesting, informative and a good study of the 10 plains state and which part of them contains the actual plains. The book is like a large tapestry with many different elements woven in. There is the geography of the land, the plants, animals, people plus much more. This is also a book of joie d' vivre, love of life, a French impressionist painting of the beauty and joy of being alive,the joy of small incidental occurances too easily forgotten. Ian Frazier also uses stream of conscience as different scenes, places and people flash before his eyes. He then goes back in history to the lifestyle of the Indians before the white men came to the plains and how when they did come how riciculous the red men thought the white mens ways and customs were. Then he comes back to today and what is happening now. So, back and forth, back and forth from history to present. Mr Frazier tells of how the plains were becoming settled and civilized and of the colorful characters who lived and helped shape this area into what it would become. Crazy Horse was a favorite and he also liked George Custer and believed Custer also loved this wide open land, some parts rolling, some like a rumpled bed and other areas as flat as a board which makes heaven and earth seem to come together. I believe Mr Frazier loves this wide open country because he spent two years living here and writing about it and driving back and forth crossing much. But he writes back and forth from past history to present. But the book ends concerning future times and is concerned with nuclear missal sites. Tomorrow land
10 people found this helpful
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Matt F
3.0 out of 5 stars quirky but well written
Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2022
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I don’t know what I expected when I bought a book called “Great Plains” but I didn’t expect what I got. Frazier weaves together mostly interesting personal stories about his travels through the plains area with some historical context. Ultimately this is good writing and is entertaining but it’s not much more than that.
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Michael S. McKnight
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2023
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Having lived in SD for over 40 years I can safely say this book captures the Great Plains perfectly. An excellent read.
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Top reviews from other countries

BtotheS
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Reviewed in Italy on November 9, 2018
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A beautiful book , suggested reading
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Shuswap Outdoors
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on August 20, 2016
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great read!
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F. J. Court
4.0 out of 5 stars Bill Bryson on speed!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 24, 2012
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Good reportage, probably not in depth enough and a bit fractured in places as his journey does not follow an established pattern. Not laugh out loud, but found myself smiling quite a lot. Unbiased about the native Indian which a lot of US books are not, they seem to thrive on matter of fact racism.
It is a quick read, and gives a good insight into US culture of cars, driving and their paranoia in the cold war.
One person found this helpful
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George
3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
Reviewed in Canada on February 5, 2016
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A good read but Frazier is no Least Heat Moon.
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Roger Taylor
1.0 out of 5 stars Dull.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 3, 2021
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A really boring book which failed to live up to the New Yorker review. Gave myself a medal fo finishing it! Could have been so much more interesting.
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