{"product_id":"bad-land-an-american-romance-9780679759065","title":"Bad Land: An American Romance","description":"\u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BESTSELLER - NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER - Startlingly observed, beautifully written, this book is a contemporary classic of the American West. - \"As good a book as I have read about rural America in a very long time.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1909 maps still identified eastern Montana as the Great American Desert. But in that year Congress, lobbied heavily by railroad companies, offered 320-acre tracts of land to anyone bold or foolish enough to stake a claim to them. Drawn by shamelessly inventive brochures, countless homesteaders--many of them immigrants--went west to make their fortunes. Most failed. In Bad Land, Jonathan Raban travels through the unforgiving country that was the scene of their dreams and undoing, and makes their story come miraculously alive. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn towns named Terry, Calypso, and Ismay (which changed its name to Joe, Montana, in an effort to attract football fans), and in the landscape in between, Raban unearths a vanished episode of American history, with its own ruins, its own heroes and heroines, its own hopeful myths and bitter memories.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJONATHAN RABAN is the author of the novels \u003ci\u003eSurveillance\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWaxwings;\u003c\/i\u003e his nonfiction works include \u003ci\u003ePassage to Juneau, Bad Land, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Driving Home\u003c\/i\u003e. His honors include the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN\/West Creative Nonfiction Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers' Award, and the Governor's Award of the State of Washington. He died in 2023.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50630334316818,"sku":"9780679759065","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_23fa9a0d-39b3-41f9-9631-b5f742bf9a1b.jpg?v=1732749983","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/bad-land-an-american-romance-9780679759065","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}