Cheap Land Colorado : Off-Gridders at America's Edge by Ted Conover (2022, Hardcover)

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Product Identifiers

PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
ISBN-100525521488
ISBN-139780525521488
eBay Product ID (ePID)23057257823

Product Key Features

Book TitleCheap Land Colorado : Off-Gridders at America's Edge
Number of Pages304 Pages
LanguageEnglish
TopicPolitical Ideologies / Libertarianism, Sociology / General, Ecology, Sociology / Rural
Publication Year2022
IllustratorYes
GenreNature, Political Science, Social Science
AuthorTed Conover
FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height1.1 in
Item Weight22 Oz
Item Length9.6 in
Item Width6.7 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade
LCCN2021-055124
Reviews"Most Americans have never heard of the San Luis Valley: the huge, high, flat area at the headwaters of the Rio Grande. And most have never given a thought to the people there who live on the off-grid edge of American society, and what they might tell us about ourselves. As he has so often in the past, Ted Conover immerses himself in the lives of these forgotten men and women--and emerges with an unforgettable portrait of a slice of American society today." --Charles C. Mann, author of 1491 "Ted Conover has made a career of entering forgotten or marginal American lives and being with those people until he knows them from the inside out. It takes a special empathy, not to say an extraordinary commitment of time, to accomplish his kind of reportage. It seems fundamentally an act of respect. In this account of some back-of-the-moon Colorado lives, he is never once above the folks about whom he is writing. I bet they would say so themselves. I couldn't read the book fast enough." --Paul Hendrickson, author of Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, "Most Americans have never heard of the San Luis Valley: the huge, high, flat area at the headwaters of the Rio Grande. And most have never given a thought to the people there who live on the off-grid edge of American society, and what they might tell us about ourselves. As he has so often in the past, Ted Conover immerses himself in the lives of these forgotten men and women--and emerges with an unforgettable portrait of a slice of American society today." --Charles C. Mann, author of 1491 "Ted Conover has made a career of entering forgotten or marginal American lives and being with those people until he knows them from the inside out. It takes a special empathy, not to say an extraordinary commitment of time, to accomplish his kind of reportage. It seems fundamentally an act of respect. In this account of some back-of-the-moon Colorado lives, he is never once above the folks about whom he is writing. I bet they would say so themselves. I couldn't read the book fast enough." --Paul Hendrickson, author of Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost " Cheap Land Colorado cements Conover among our greatest subcultural storytellers. In these dispatches, he invites readers to ride shotgun along an unraveling edge of the American West, where sepia-toned myths about making a fresh start collide with modern modes of alienation, volatility, and exile. Unflinchingly candid and eternally big-hearted, Conover brings the frontier and its denizens into focus without blurring any contradictions: splendor and brutality, freedom and deprivation, hospitality alongside a deep-seated unease. In a nation whose edges have come to define its center, this is essential reading." --Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century "Ted Conover has produced an intimate, vivid, and deeply engrossing portrait of a modern American frontier. Amid the loneliness, crime, addiction, trauma, poverty, and social marginalization that Conover witnessed he also discovered deep veins of generosity, tolerance, beauty, and love. The result is a moving chronicle of people whom few of us have encountered but whom all of us can recognize." --Luke Mogelson, author of The Storm Is Here, "Most Americans have never heard of the San Luis Valley: the huge, high, flat area at the headwaters of the Rio Grande. And most have never given a thought to the people there who live on the off-grid edge of American society, and what they might tell us about ourselves. As he has so often in the past, Ted Conover immerses himself in the lives of these forgotten men and women--and emerges with an unforgettable portrait of a slice of American society today." --Charles C. Mann, author of 1491, "Most Americans have never heard of the San Luis Valley: the huge, high, flat area at the headwaters of the Rio Grande. And most have never given a thought to the people there who live on the off-grid edge of American society, and what they might tell us about ourselves. As he has so often in the past, Ted Conover immerses himself in the lives of these forgotten men and women--and emerges with an unforgettable portrait of a slice of American society today." --Charles C. Mann, author of 1491 "Ted Conover has made a career of entering forgotten or marginal American lives and being with those people until he knows them from the inside out. It takes a special empathy, not to say an extraordinary commitment of time, to accomplish his kind of reportage. It seems fundamentally an act of respect. In this account of some back-of-the-moon Colorado lives, he is never once above the folks about whom he is writing. I bet they would say so themselves. I couldn't read the book fast enough." --Paul Hendrickson, author of Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost " Cheap Land Colorado cements Conover among our greatest subcultural storytellers. In these dispatches, he invites readers to ride shotgun along an unraveling edge of the American West, where sepia-toned myths about making a fresh start collide with modern modes of alienation, volatility, and exile. Unflinchingly candid and eternally big-hearted, Conover brings the frontier and its denizens into focus without blurring any contradictions: splendor and brutality, freedom and deprivation, hospitality alongside a deep-seated unease. In a nation whose edges have come to define its center, this is essential reading." --Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
SynopsisFrom Pulitzer Prize finalist and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Ted Conover, a fascinating portrait of a group of Americans living off-grid. In the failed rural subdivisions of Colorado's enormous San Luis Valley lives a community of people on the edge. In exchange for freedom from government and landlords, from the congestion and smog of cities, they endure a disconcerting lack of jobs, marginal schools, hard-to-reach medical care, harsh weather, and other privations. Some residents have families, but many, older and disabled, are alone. Some are addicted to alcohol or marijuana. A few are veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. Some are felons; others might be if they were to get caught. Most of the residents have guns. All have chosen to live here, on a last frontier that retains the beauty of a century ago but whose contentious culture reflects an America at the crossroads. In May 2017, Ted Conover left New York City to join them. First volunteering as an outreach worker through a local charitable group and renting a plot for his trailer from a family who was homeschooling their five daughters, he went on to buy his own land and immerse himself in the community for parts of four years--and counting. The result is a close, candid look at a unique brand of Americans: their self-sufficiency, their isolation from society, the connections they forge with one another and with the land. The author creates an indelible portrait of hard lives lived amid a stunning beauty., From Pulitzer Prize finalist and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Newjack , a passage through an America lived wild and off the grid, where along with independence and stunning views come fierce winds, neighbors with criminal pasts, and minimal government and medical services. "In these dispatches, [Conover] invites readers to ride shotgun along an unraveling edge of the American West, where sepia-toned myths about making a fresh start collide with modern modes of alienation, volatility, and exile.... In a nation whose edges have come to define its center, this is essential reading."--Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century In May 2017, Ted Conover went to Colorado to explore firsthand a rural way of life that is about living cheaply, on your own land--and keeping clear of the mainstream. The failed subdivisions of the enormous San Luis Valley make this possible. Five-acre lots on the high prairie can be had for five thousand dollars, sometimes less. Conover volunteered for a local group trying to prevent homelessness during the bitter winters. He encountered an unexpected diversity: veterans with PTSD, families homeschooling, addicts young and old, gay people, people of color, lovers of guns and marijuana, people with social anxiety--most of them spurning charity and aiming, and sometimes failing, to be self-sufficient. And more than a few predicting they'll be the last ones standing when society collapses. Conover bought his own five acres and immersed himself for parts of four years in the often contentious culture of the far margins. He found many who dislike the government but depend on its subsidies; who love their space but nevertheless find themselves in each other's business; who are generous but wary of thieves; who endure squalor but appreciate beauty. In their struggles to survive and get along, they tell us about an America riven by difference where the edges speak more and more loudly to the mainstream.
LC Classification NumberGF78.C665 2022

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