Rating: 
Summary: Well worth reading, but flawed
Review: This book should be irresistible to anyone who has driven past a teetering wreck of a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and wondered "What happened?" Here is a partial answer, somewhat satisfying. Despite a rambling organization and a not a few pages of tangential musings (that surely would NOT have been missed), it was a nice cross between a thoughtful road-trip essay and a couple of hours with your great-grandfather's diary. In early chapters, the author presents as an impartial observer; unfortunately, by the final chapters, the reader is so conscious of Mr. Raban's political leanings that much of the "history" ends up looking like interpretation. Still, taken for what it is - one individual's POV - it can be recommended. It would make a wonderful travel book, and I'm almost sorry I read in my living room instead of on the road.
Rating: 
Summary: A verbal landscape with breadth and depth.
Review: This book should not be read as a historical thesis. Raban paints a landscape with words and pays homage to a band of settlers who submit their dreams and desires to the capricious will of an unforgiving land. Unabashed commercialism, rugged individualism, stupidity, greed, superstition, and pure cussedness drive the characters, while the vast stillness of the plains slowly takes its toll . Read it and you will be left with rich images of the people and the land.
Rating: 
Summary: Two years after reading it, I still can't forget it
Review: This is one of my favorite books...it really brought to life for me the odd mix of idealism and severe hardship of our midwestern settlers. Raban's style of story telling is relaxed and detail oriented, but once I'm into it, it has a life of its own....the writing is just incandescent. I could really imagine myself trying to get my family through a minus thirty degree winter with the wind howling through my thin wooden house, and hardly any food in the pantry. It seems that Raban's British sensibilities may have caused some unsatifying stereotyping of Montanans among his readers, but I didn't read this book to get a politically correct viewpoint. I read it because as much as any writer working today, Raban is able to let me experience the situations he is writing about. One of the very few books I have read twice.
Rating:
Summary: Two years after reading it, I still can't forget it
Review: This is one of my favorite books...it really brought to life for me the odd mix of idealism and severe hardship of our midwestern settlers. Rabin's style of story telling is relaxed and detail oriented, but once I'm into it, it has a life of its own....the writing is just incandescent. I could really imagine myself trying to get my family through a minus thirty degree winter with the wind howling through my thin wooden house, and hardly any food in the pantry. It seems that Rabin's British sensibilities may have caused some unsatifying stereotyping of Montanans among his readers, but I didn't read this book to get a politically correct viewpoint. I read it because as much as any writer working today, Rabin is able to let me experience the situations he is writing about. One of the very few books I have read twice.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent blend of psychology, history and geography
Review: This very well written book is an excellent expression of how geography, history, and psychology (at an individual and group level) are completely intertwined with each other. The author does a wonderful job of telling the bleak and often heartbreaking stories of the early homesteaders of the Montana badlands. He traces the history of some of these families to the present day and even "follows" some of those who pulled up stakes and moved further west. Throughout the book one continuously senses the overwhelming influence of the vast "great American desert" and how it shaped the lives of the people who tried to make a living farming it in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.My only complaint is that a particular 20-30 page section of the book makes extensive reference to photographs which sound as if they would have added a great deal to the reader's experience of the book. Unfortunately, the author is describing HIS experience of looking at the photos - none are included anywhwere in the book - and I found myself wishing I could take a look at them too. The last rather minor complaint aside, I considered this to be an excellent book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Reader beware.
Review: To read this book one would come away thinking all of Montana was wasteland. It furthers the unfortunate impression of Montana and its residents as backward and naive. The author compares the landscape to that of the moon which only suggests he has never been to the moon. Having grown up in central Montana I have come to resent this bi-coastal mentality that generalizes us as a politically backward home for Unabombers and the like. There is truth to the role of the railroads and the inability of the land to support families on 320 acre tracts. There is no mention, however, of the fact that Montana is one of the largest wheat producing areas in the world....hardly a moonscape. The homesteaded land on which I grew up on was, and is, very fertile and produces as much per acre as any wheat producing land in the country. The effect of agriculture welfare on the people and the markets is not unlike all other types of welfare....promoting dependence and no way out. It is the system that has us all spoiled with unrealistically cheap food and results in larger and larger "corporate farms." It is the only game in town and the result, naturally, is resentment by the grower. The research into the homestead era was good but I came away feeling his main contribution was to taint the area and its people and generalize us in a very unfortunate way. If one wants to read about the area, the hardships and its people, choose Ivan Doig. Doig lives in Seattle but grew up in Montana and has the credentials to communicate, more accurately, the true nature of the State.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful word photograph of Montana dry farming.
Review: Whether Jonathan Raban is entirely H.C. (historically correct) or not, the story of man against the elements of government, weather, and big business ring true. In reading Bad Land, I gained more understanding of what binds my brother-in-law to his family's centennial dairy farm as the bottom falls out on milk and beef prices. Never did I suspect that a documentary on farming could keep me awake, much less delight me with its lyrical quality of writing. Raban is not afraid to paint pictures or expand his readers' vocabulary with the English language as it should be written and spoken. After years of believing Great Falls to be the end of palatable Montana, I feel Raban's Bad Land pulling me to experience my own imigrant excursion
|
