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DirFX - State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America

State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America
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Manufacturer: Ecco
Average Customer Rating: Average rating of 3.5/5Average rating of 3.5/5Average rating of 3.5/5Average rating of 3.5/5Average rating of 3.5/5

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9780061470905
ISBN: 0061470902
Label: Ecco
Manufacturer: Ecco
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 608
Publication Date: 2008-09-01
Publisher: Ecco
Release Date: 2008-09-16
Studio: Ecco
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Editorial Reviews:

From the bestselling editors of The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup comes an American road trip in book form: original writing on all 50 states by 50 of our finest novelists, journalists, and essayists

Inspired by the example of the legendary WPA American Guide series of the 1930s and '40s, now 50 of our foremost writers have produced original pieces of reportage and memoir that capture the 50 states in our time, creating a fresh portrait of America as it lives and breathes today.

At turns poignant and funny, and always insightful, these 50 writers tell us something lasting and revealing about each state through personal memory or contemporary reporting that captures the essential qualities that make each state its own. With an array of revealing facts and figures comparing the 50 states in a range of surprising measures (toothlessness, military enlistment, suicide), State by State is more than an anthology: It is a classic American road movie in book form.

Featuring original writing on all fifty states

Alabama by George Packer
Alaska by Paul Greenberg
Arizona by Lydia Millet
Arkansas by Kevin Brockmeier
California by William T. Vollmann
Colorado by Benjamin Kunkel
Connecticut by Rick Moody
Delaware by Craig Taylor
Florida by Joshua Ferris
Georgia by Ha Jin
Hawaii by Tara Bray Smith
Idaho by Anthony Doerr
Illinois by Dave Eggers
Indiana by Susan Choi
Iowa by Dagoberto Gilb
Kansas by Jim Lewis
Kentucky by John Jeremiah Sullivan
Louisiana by Joshua Clark
Maine by Heidi Julavits
Maryland by Myla Goldberg
Massachusetts by John Hodgman
Michigan by Mohammed Naseehu Ali
Minnesota by Philip Connors
Mississippi by Barry Hannah
Missouri by Jacki Lyden
Montana by Sarah Vowell
Nebraska by Alexander Payne
Nevada by Charles Bock
New Hampshire by Will Blythe
New Jersey by Anthony Bourdain
New Mexico by Ellery Washington
New York by Jonathan Franzen
North Carolina by Randall Kenan
North Dakota by Louise Erdrich
Ohio by Susan Orlean
Oklahoma by S.E. Hinton
Oregon by Joe Sacco
Pennsylvania by Andrea Lee
Rhode Island by Jhumpa Lahiri
South Carolina by Jack Hitt
South Dakota by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
Tennessee by Ann Patchett
Texas by Cristina Henríquez
Utah by David Rakoff
Vermont by Alison Bechdel
Virginia by Tony Horwitz
Washington by Carrie Brownstein
West Virginia by Jayne Anne Phillips
Wisconsin by Daphne Beal
Wyoming by Alexandra Fuller

and an afterword on Washington, D.C.: A Conversation with Edward P. Jones



Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Average rating of 1/5Average rating of 1/5Average rating of 1/5Average rating of 1/5Average rating of 1/5
Summary: State by State: A Panaromic Portrait of America
Comment: Not the content anticipated. Did not enjoy at all, in fact did not read over 50%.
Customer Rating: Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5
Summary: State by State
Comment: My "Landscape and Literature" professor from college would love this book. A project such as "State by State" - 50 separate essays by 50 disparate writers - is bound to leave some people out in the cold. Nobody can possibly cover every possible area of a state in a book like this, nor should they have to. I liked the approach taken as the writers wrote about the personal, the political and made it into something unique.

Some essays are very thorough: Jon "I'm a PC" Hodgman's essay on Massachusetts acknowledges that there is a region west of Worcester and east of the Berkshires. Some essays are very brief: SE Hinton's well-written look at Oklahoma only made me wnat more from her. And some essays are exactly what the author does best: the wonderful Alison Bechdel's look at Vermont is done in her usual style and is all-encompassing to her state's eccentric history.

Underneath it all though, there is a sadness to this book. As the United States becomes a country of big box stores, strip malls, McMansions, suburban sprawl, highways and pharmaceutical factories, we lose the landscape that made our regions unique. The theme of change and what we are losing is especially prevalent on the essays on the South and the West. Only the New England writers seem somewhat assured of their areas, perhaps as aresult of their areas having already lost their industries decades ago. "State by State" is a good book, and a sobering one.
Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Summary: State by State
Comment: I'm enjoying State by State. I'm not reading the stories in order, but rather dipping into the states that I'm most interested in. It's a collection of essays, so you probably won't agree with some of them. This is a great way to catch up on some old favorite authors and discover new ones, both who to read and who to avoid. I lent it to another librarian, who didn't think she would like it, but she raved about it. I'm keeping this volume in the car and find it great for reading when I have to wait somewhere. I enjoyed the demographic tables in the back. It is called "State by State" so it is fair, I guess, that it doesn't include U.S. Territories like Puerto Rico and American Samoa, but I think it is weaker for it.
Customer Rating: Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5
Summary: Some good descriptions of states, some not so good.....
Comment: This is a book of short (mostly) essays by 51 writers covering 50 states + DC. I was hoping in ordering this that it would be something like Charles Kuralt's "On the Road" series and include writing that really gave the sense of history, tradition, and ways of life in the different states. The problem with the book is its inconsistency, in which the writing about a state really varies in terms of what sort of things are covered, the style of the writing, the extent to which a state's history/traditions are covered, etc., etc. This is not a bad book at all, just an uneven book -- It might have been better if authors had been given more guidance as to what to cover and the book been edited to make the "voice" of the writing more consistent ( I don't know how the old WPA guides were in this respect). It was a bit to free form for my taste, with a little too much emphasis on authors' perceptions and less of the description that makes for good travelogue.

There is a buyer beware statement to be made here -- An individual reader will probably enjoy reading about some states but not others -- It is luck of the draw!



Customer Rating: Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5
Summary: By turns frustrating and brilliant
Comment: "State By State" editors Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey have a neat idea here. Inspired by the state guides produced by the Federal Writer's Project in the 1930's, Weiland and Wilsey set out to mimic that behemoth venture on a much smaller scale, giving 50 different writers the opportunity to describe their personal experiences of a particular state.

The first thing that you need to know is that this isn't a travelogue in any real sense. Most of the authors here are striving to describe a sense of place, to give context to what each state means to them on a personal level. There are descriptions of geography to be found, of course, but the real landscape traveled here is of the mind and psyche, as the authors mine impressions and memories of past and present.

As you might expect with 50 different authors, the results are very much hit and miss. Some of the writing is exceptional, a good portion is average, and some is just downright confounding. The language in some of the sections can be coarse, and the chapter on California has a sexually explicit scene described in graphic detail, so this certainly isn't a book for youngsters.

It took me a long time to read this book. I found it difficult to digest more than one or two states per day. Part of my sloth-like pace was due to the personal nature of the memoirs presented here. I found it necessary to let the information soak in slowly, so that I could get the full set of impressions that each author wanted to convey. Sometimes, as with the aforementioned section on California, I just needed extra time to scratch my head and wonder, "what were they thinking?". I found some of the immigrant stories to be particularly powerful, but some of the others, like my home state of Texas for example, would have benefited by being written by a native.

I'll give editor Sean Wilsey bonus points for his introduction. He recounts stopping by my hometown of Lockhart, Texas for some introspection and barbecue, and I can appreciate a man who likes to hit the backroads for some perspective and good eatin'. His book is physically handsome, and a challenging read. Not bad, but it could have been better.

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