Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating introduction to the Great Plains
Review: Ian Frazier is a skillful writer of non fiction. I would compare this book to John McPhee's Coming Into the Country. Frazier traveled some 25,000 miles across the Great Plains states that is from the Dakotas to Texas. He has tried (successfully) to distill the essence of the Great Plains in this regrettably short book. We learn where tumbleweed comes from-the steppes of Russia, what it's like to operate a Minuteman silo, how immigrants were enticed to come to the Great Plains. That the railroads wanted Germans but no French or Italians. Financing of agriculture is discussed-no loans west of the 100th Meridian. He writes of the the Dust Bowl and the population declines in 2/3rds of the counties. How an agricultural agent went to the steppes of Russia to get hardy wheat seeds and led to the popularity of pasta. This is not a travel guide. If you want detailed travel information, I suggest the Off the Beaten Path series of the Dakotas, Nebraska. and the other Plains states. The book could have been longer and better organized. For example the author mentions Odessa but does not mention the meteor craters, the million barrel tank, the Moynihan (sp?) sanddunes, the Mojo. He mentions the Black Hills but not pitchfork fondue. If you plan on going through the Plains states, you should read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Giants in the Earth
Review: Ian Frazier writes about the wonders he's found driving up and down the North American plains. His personal accounts and stories may prompt many readers to recall the wonders that they too have found on the plains. For me, those wonders include: • The disquieting shift in the natural and built landscape that marks the state line between Minnesota and South Dakota. • The unlikely success of Horace "Go west young man" Greeley and his colony in southern Weld County, Colorado (a present-day fulcrum of US agriculture, with its county seat in the city of Greeley). • And in northern Weld County, the reverberating legacy from the 1970s of the International Biological Program (a continuing fulcrum of biodiversity, ecosystem and global change science). Are these wonders you particularly want to know about - phenomenon capable of enlarging your imagination? You'll have to trust me. The problem is - and in the book Ian Frazier implicitly works around this reality of the plains - phenomenon take on an idiosyncratic character on the plains, becoming - by comparison with the continental vastness of the geography - small, isolated and trivialized - swallowed up by "Giants in the Earth," as author O.E. Rolvag titled his great Great Plains novel. I think that's why Frazier tells us about his car getting stuck in the Montana mud - because the impulse plaguing all stripes of colonists on the plains is to assert their consequence in the landscape. Paradoxically, Rolvag's metaphor, "Giants in the Earth," also refers to the lives of extraordinary personalities, who during their lifetimes on the plains exerted a force comparable with that of the geography. Remarkably, such persons have lived, and Frazier profiles several of them: Billy the Kid, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and others. Then there's the Canadian plains, places where Frazier failed to visit and which hold their own wonders. Are they still breaking ground in Manitoba? Are they still naming their kids Thor, to honor an Icelandic heritage? Are the pressed-tin steeples on their cathedrals still slumping at unambiguous angles? Enigmatic stories there, but Frazier missed them - Proving his message, I think, that the plains remain larger than any person can cross, filled with more stories than one imagination can easily contain.
Rating:
Summary: A Journey Through the Heart of America
Review: Ian Frazier's multi-Plains-state odyssey encounters Indians, farmers, cattlemen, outlaws, Anabaptists, the United States Air Force, and most importantly, Lawrence Welk. An enjoyable, readable book, Frazier's tale is however ultimately tragic. The history of the Plains is largely a succession of social, economic and ecological disasters, including the destruction of the buffalo and the Indian cultures, the boom-and-bust farming era, the Dust Bowl, the depletion of the Ogalalla Aquifer, and, most heartbreakingly written of all, the strip-mining of coal. Frazier has a mystical experience during a fashion show in Nicodemus, Kansas, experiencing a redemptive joy and a vision of the West that might have been. Nevertheless, his journey as a whole discloses the ruins of conquest, and human beings alienated and spiritually adrift. With the exception of Crazy Horse and Gerard Baker (ranger at Fort Union), no character in Great Plains seems to love the Plains for their own sake. This vast and formerly rich region, so influential in defining America itself, is something to alter, or escape from. The book's final paragraph eloquently summarizes Frazier's tragic vision. A Wyoming rancher is quoted in Great Plains as saying, "I like beating on things and making them do what I want." His words are perhaps the most concise summary of our Anglo-American attitudes toward the Plains, and indeed all of the Americas.
Rating:
Summary: Let's Go Right Now!
Review: Imagine a car trip thru the Plains states with Umberto Eco and Bill Bryson. You are along in the back seat. As you drive along Umberto enlightens on western lore....Crazy Horse as American culture hero, Lawrence Welk as a musical powerhouse, smallpox vaccination programs for Indians in the 1830's, the ecological importance of tumbleweeds, and on and on. Bill takes us to see Sitting Bull's house lot, abondoned ABM control centers, a cattle ranch 50 miles long, off beat museums, cheap motels. There's plenty of hitchhikers and odd characters along the way to add their stories. Neither one of these authors are in the book, but to me Frazier has the many of their good attributes and it makes for a most plesant read. As you turn the pages you don't know what's around the next bend. But for sure there's going to be bizzare revelations and fun sightseeing. My favorite chapter is #4. It's sort of how the west was tamed. Told in a stream of conscieness using fact/sentences barely related, it's good. Frazier really knows Indians and western lore. I'm sure you'll find it a fun read and maybe see the plains diferently.
Rating:
Summary: Frazier's writing is original and beautiful.
Review: In college, we used Great Plains as a text for an upper level writing class. Frazier does more than tell interesting stories about the Great Plains. His writing is flowing and terse and poetic or maybe just lists. It is a creative and new way to tell an old story.
Rating:
Summary: Plain Joy
Review: Let me add just these two things to the remarks of the many other reviewers: Ian Frazier's rhapsodic discussion of the joy the Great Plains engender (like the mysticism of deserts and the melancholy of moors) is good reading. Sitting Bull, though not an eyewitness, reported that Custer fell laughing in his last battle. Frazier expertly uses this intriguing anecdote to discuss the joy he connects with the Plains.
And that last page of the book! This is some of the best and most evocative prose I've read anywhere. It's worth the price of the book to read that one page. It's nearly hypnotic and I hope soon to memorize the entire ending.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your money.
Review: Mr. Frazier gives a pretty good litany of historical facts, but his haphazard presentation leaves one to wonder whether he was totally coherent during his two years on the plains. His style is reminiscent of someone who never quite grasped the finer points of high school English composition, and the entire description of his travels seems to reflect someone who is permanently mired in a 1960's-era drug trip. I grew up in northwestern Nebraska and am intimately familiar with the region and its history, so I expected a more thorough, considered discussion in this book. Boy, was I disappointed!
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Modern Day Ride Through History
Review: On the Great Plains is a great look at the land and it's history by a vagabond traveler that initially hooks up with a Sioux indian by the name of Le War Lance in New York and suddenly transports himself in a rusty van to travel the lonely highways of the Great Plains. While rambling through the country side Frazier provides a history of the land and a description of its present day state with a description of the people as well. Stories of Custer, Bonnie Clyde, Crazy Horse ( a particularly long fascination), Billy the Kid and the descriptions of the places that made them famous. Also fraught with humor such as a descriptively long ride to Sitting Bull's former cabin site located beyond the middle of nowhere with a guide that has to study intently a fuel additive bottle before believeing its not the right kind of alcohol. The history and stories of people and places are endlessly fascinating such as the inhabitants of Nicodemus, a black pioneer town that never completely died and that has an annual festival attended by the whole county, the story of Lawrence Welk and how he was once hit by a thrown brick, a description of a present day rendezvous at the site of Brent's Fort, a visit with the future and controversial Superintendent of the Little Bighorn Battlefield Gerad Baker and many more descriptions and historic story telling. More poignant in that Frazier travels as a modest man that sleeps frequently in his van while listening to the land outside including the ocassional vehicle that goes by in the night. A precursor to "On the Rez".
Rating:
Summary: A Charles Kuralt View of the Plains, People and History
Review: Starting with a chance meeting with a Sioux native American and somehow leading to an exhaustive visit to the Great Plains, Ian Frazier travels just like Charles Kuralt meeting people, places and history along the way. He doesn't see everything but he describes what he sees just like anyone else that travels the backroads and highways. He adds tremendous history about the places such as the history of the west from Custer, Sitting Bull to Billy the Kid to the 20th century to Bonnie and Clyde to the present day. Vivid historical perspectives such as Brents Fort a once major rendevouz for trappers and now for reenactors, pictures and grand detail on the Sioux Indians particularly Crazy Horse. All told vividly with wonderful dots of humor. All taken from the vantage point of a man traveling in a rusty van who often sleeps by the side of the road. Like his off road trip to Sitting Bull's last lodge site, it's not a tourist book, it's a excursion through the plains that's strictly freelanced. This book is the the springboard to "On the Rez".
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting If Uneven Plains Impressions
Review: This book is interesting at times. Unfortunately, it is also uneven and uninspired in places. The author paints impressions of the Great Plains, that wide open part of America that makes up the midlands west of the Mississippi. There is no central theme or organized approach to this writing. It meanders with the pace of Plain's rivers and sometimes cuts back and forth like headwaters in their mountain birth places. Ian Frazier, the author, is good at describing Crazy Horse, for whom he feels strong admiration, mountain men, an ICBM system in Montana, black and white harmony in what may be the sole surviving Freedman's town in the Plains and other historical tidbits. At times his specific writings are engaging and filled with interesting anecdotes (so are his end notes, which are worth perusing). His various portrayals of aspects of Indian life are perhaps the most engaging parts of the book. However, at other times Frazier lays out pages where nothing much interesting happens in encounters he has with various folks of the Mid West. It almost seems as if journal entries had been inserted at various points to fill out the book -- entries that had not made it into the first draft. At one point he lists for several pages one and two sentence descriptions of inhabitants from one county around the turn of the Twentieth Century -- the type that one would find in a local census. The list isn't very illustrative and I wondered why he had thought it worthy after the first few entries proved they were plain folk about whom not much is known. Overall, I'd rate this 3 1/2 stars if Amazon had such a rating. The writing can be good and Frazier is witty in places (although overwrought in others). Some of the place descriptions and historic images are well done and hold the reader's attention. The scenes are disjointed and some uninteresting travel impressions of the author are interspersed throughout. I was left feeling that a book about as big an area as the Great Plains could have been less, well plain.
|
