Amazon.com ReviewAmazon Best of the Month, August 2009: How do you describe a 1,300-page book in 150 words? Start with adjectives (some of them opposites): vast, intrepid, passionate, and yes, sometimes dull, illuminating and infuriating, satirical and confessional, exhausting and exhaustive, dirty, fertile, and dry. William T. Vollmann, legendary for his huge, all-consuming books of fiction, history, and reporting, has spent much of the past ten years returning obsessively to one of the harshest but most contested territories in North America, the desert borderlands of southeastern California and northern Mexico he calls Imperial. Wading through water-use arcana, agri-booster archives, and centuries of colonial history; listening to lettuce farmers, motel clerks, and dance-hall hostesses; and crossing the border hundreds of times (while meeting those who cross via other means, and those who try to stop them), Vollmann has written an intensely personal fever dream of an encyclopedia that makes a strange, northern companion to last year's giant borderlands masterpiece, Roberto Bolano's 2666. --Tom NissleyFrom Publishers WeeklySignatureReviewed by Michael CoffeyThis is an exasperating, maddening, exhausting and inchorent book by the stunningly prolific Vollmann, who has really outdone himself. Eleven hundred pages plus endless endnotes about a single county in California is as perverse as Vollmann has dared be—which is saying a lot for a guy who has written a massive collection of tales about skinheads (Rainbow Stories), a seven-volume history of the settling of a measly continent (Seven Dreams) and another seven volumes on the history of violence (Rising Up and Rising Down). But a big book about one county? Well, it's not just any county. Imperial is the southeastern-most county in California, bordering with Mexico to the south and Arizona to the east, across the Colorado River. Is it a place deserving of this seemingly disproportionate chronicle? Today, it is a hot

Vollmann, William T

Viking Children's Books

Penguin Books

Puffin Books

United States, United States of America

First Edition, First Printing, 2009

New York, New York State, 2008

New York, United States, 2009

First Edition, US, 2009

New York, 2010

librusecid_520074

Includes bibliographical references.

Библиогр.: с. 1151-1265, 1271-1299

РГБ

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<p><P><b>An epic study of an emblematic American region by one of our most celebrated writers</b><P>It sprawls across a stinking artificial sea, across the deserts, date groves, and labor camps of southeastern California, right across the Mexican border. For generations of migrant workers, from Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl of the 1930s to Mexican laborers today, Imperial County has held the promise of paradise-and the reality of hell. It is a land beautiful and harsh, enticing and deadly, rich in history and heartbreak. Across the border, the desert is the same but there are different secrets. In <i>Imperial</i>, award-winning writer William T. Vollmann takes us deep into the heart of this haunted region, and by extension into the dark soul of American imperialism.<P>Known for his penetrating meditations on poverty and violence, Vollmann has spent ten years doggedly investigating every facet of this bi-national locus, raiding archives, exploring polluted rivers, guarded factories, and Chinese tunnels, talking with everyone from farmers to border patrolmen in his search for the fading American dream and its Mexican equivalent. The result is a majestic book that addresses current debates on immigration, agribusiness, and corporate exploitation, issues that will define America's identity in the twenty-first century.</p> <h3> The Barnes & Noble Review </h3> <p> Imperial County, in the southeastern corner of California, seems at first glance like an improbable subject for a 1,125-page work of nonfiction. Imperial is known for its winter lettuce, its Sweet Imperial onions, and the Salton Sea, a polluted saline lake it shares with Riverside; otherwise, it's the kind of landscape where there's so little going on that the Navy uses a great swath of it as an air-to-ground gunnery range. Imperial has played the Kuwaiti desert (in <em>Jarhead</em>) and the desert planet Tatooine in <em>Star Wars. </em> Even the county's Chamber of Commerce can muster only a few facts about it: the county was established in 1907; its highest point is Blue Angel Peak (4,548 feet), its lowest the Salton Sea (a paradoxical 235 feet below sea level). How much, you have to wonder, can there be to say about Imperial? </p>

From the author of Europe Central, winner of the National Book Award, a journalistic tour de force along the Mexican-American border – a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle AwardFor generations of migrant workers, Imperial Country has held the promise of paradise and the reality of hell. It sprawls across a stirring accidental sea, across the deserts, date groves and labor camps of Southeastern California, right across the border into Mexico. In this eye-opening book, William T. Vollmann takes us deep into the heart of this haunted region, exploring polluted rivers and guarded factories and talking with everyone from Mexican migrant workers to border patrolmen. Teeming with patterns, facts, stories, people and hope, this is an epic study of an emblematic region.

For generations of migrant workers, Imperial County--the California desert region where the U.S. borders Mexico--has held the promise of paradise and the reality of hell. Award-winning writer Vollmann takes readers deep into the heart of this haunted region.

2015-12-26