Kategoria BISAC: Travel >> United States - General

This is the fourth edition of a work that always has been controversial in Alaska. Yet, it is an important and highly readable classic work that captures a portrait frozen in time of a raw state in turmoil during the oil boom. McGinnis went north to find out if there was anything left of the "last frontier." He found "mind-bending contradictions," as a previous publisher put it--greed, waste, addictions, and racism, among other things, that contrasted with an awesome untamed natural beauty and an honest, open, and independent spirit of the people.

Both a great American adventure and a rare entry into asheltered world, Under the Big Top describes one man's pursuit of every child's fantasy: running away to join the circus. Bruce Feiler's unforgettable year as a clown will forever change your view of one of the world's oldest art forms and remind you of how dreams can go horribly wrong -- and then miraculously come true.

Shortly before his freshman year of college was set to begin, seventeen-year-old Dylan Dethier--hungry for an adventure beyond his small town--deferred his admission and, "like Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey before him, packed his used car and meager life savings and set off to see and write about America"...

"In an era of jet tourism, Jonathan Raban] remains a
traveler-adventurer in the tradition of . . . Robert Louis Stevenson."
--The New York Times Book Review

In 1782 an immigrant with the high-toned name J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur--"Heartbreak" in English--wrote a pioneering account of one European's transformation into an American. Some two hundred years later Jonathan Raban, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, arrived in Crevecoeur's wake to see how America has paid off for succeeding generations of newcomers. The result is...

But this gaiety was only a brittle veneer that covered widespread turmoil and suffering. The good old days were good for but the privileged few. For the farmer, the laborer, the average breadwinner, life was an...